Deadbeat Alert! Rudy Says He Can’t Afford To Search Own Records
By Josh Kovensky
May 2, 2023 12:47 p.m.
Debts appear to be mounting for Rudy Giuliani, as two judges over recent weeks have heard claims that the Trump attorney can’t pay his bills.
Giuliani argued this week, for instance, that he can’t afford to conduct some document searches as part of a defamation suit filed against him by Georgia polls worker Ruby Freeman.
In a declaration submitted in the case, Giuliani said that he would have to pay more than $320,000 “to become current on my arrearage” with legal document host TrustPoint One and to “have access to the documents as well costs incurred in searching the documents again for additional files requested by Plaintiffs.”
“I do not have the funds to pay this amount at this time,” he said in the declaration.
Attorneys for Giuliani said that they want Freeman, who the former NYC mayor falsely accused of being involved in an extensive voter fraud scheme, to cover the costs of the search.
The documents that Giuliani says he can’t afford to sift through encompass electronic records seized by the FBI in April 2021 searches of his apartment and offices. Giuliani unconvincingly argued in the court filing that he had “no recollection of texting or messaging prior to April of 2021 regarding Plaintiffs or the 2020 Election controversy in Fulton County, Georgia.”
Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss have faced a torrent of abuse from the MAGA right after Giuliani and President Donald Trump alleged without any basis that a video showed the pair carrying out a scheme to mess with Georgia’s vote.
Giuliani attempted to have the defamation suit dismissed, but U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell for the District of Columbia allowed the case to proceed to the discovery phase last year.
In her ruling, Howell found that Giuliani had used Freeman as part of a “strategic plan” to sow doubt in the election, which allegedly included the former mayor lying about Freeman having been arrested in connection with the vote-tampering charges. Howell wrote that the lawsuit’s claims “at least plausibly suggest that Giuliani fabricated Freeman’s arrest and criminal record out of whole cloth.”
Giuliani said in the Freeman defamation lawsuit that he has “endured substantial
fees and costs in connection with multiple litigations and investigations,” which led him into “arrearage” with TrustPoint.
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