A well-deserved verdict against Rudy Giuliani

It’s remarkable to see just how far Rudy Giuliani has fallen from grace. He’s come a long way from being the once celebrated “America’s Mayor” to now being held liable for defaming two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

On Friday, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million to Freeman and Moss after making false claims that they engaged in ballot tampering in the 2020 election. These are words that I never thought I would hear, much less write about as I came of age watching Giulani prosecute bad guys, clean up crime in New York City and go after organized crime.

After the 2020 election in which then-President Donald Trump lost the state of Georgia to Joe Biden, Giuliani was reckless in spreading cruel and false information about the two women, a Black mother and daughter from Fulton County. He repeated false claims that they stuffed vote-counting machines with suitcases of fake ballots and were caught on video allegedly passing a USB drive as part of a vote-stealing scheme. The supposed suitcases were regular ballot boxes, and the supposed USB drive was a ginger mint, a state investigation found. But the false claims were circulated online, and in media reports, and Freeman and Moss faced a torrent of threats and harassment as a result.