A federal judge in Washington, D.C., denied Rudy Giuliani’s request for an extension to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for allegedly repeating the same lies about the 2020 election that led to a $148 million defamation judgement against the former New York City mayor.
Giuliani filed a one-page letter to U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell on Wednesday requesting a 30-day extension to respond to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss’ motion for contempt filed on November 20.
Giuliani filed the request on Wednesday, despite Howell’s order to respond by Monday, December 2.
Giuliani stated in his already-late letter that he was currently representing himself and needed more time to find an attorney, particularly in light of the contempt allegations against him.
Giuliani blamed his inability to hire counsel on Howell’s behavior on the bench—a clearly ill-advised gambit to gain court favor.
The mayor of New York wrote, “I have spoken to four attorneys, and each has declined to handle this matter because they believe Your Honour is unreasonable and biased about [Donald] Trump-related matters and ‘ideological rather than logical.’
“One described it as ‘a foregone conclusion’ and ‘a no-win proposition.'” Among other reasons, many people believe that your handling of the J6 (Jan. 6) cases was excessively harsh.
According to the letter, Giuliani claimed that several attorneys agreed to represent him in his numerous other legal cases, “but not this one.” He also claimed that the Thanksgiving holiday had “exacerbated” his search for an attorney.
Freeman and Moss claimed in their contempt motion on November 20 that Giuliani’s defamatory campaign against them persisted even after they received the astronomical judgement and Giuliani declared bankruptcy.
To control Giuliani’s behavior and avoid further legal action, he eventually agreed to a permanent injunction prohibiting him from making any further claims or statements indicating that the plaintiffs had “engaged in wrongdoing in connection with the 2020 presidential election.”
However, Giuliani has been “brazenly violating that consent injunction,” according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, citing comments he made on his podcast last month in which he reiterated that Moss and Freeman were “quadruple counting votes” and passing along powerful drives used to “fix” voting machines.
The motion claims that Giuliani’s statements about Moss and Freeman “merely regurgitate the exact same lies that Giuliani has been spreading for years” and that he explicitly agreed not to repeat them.
The evidence that he violated the court’s injunction is “not just clear and convincing; it is overwhelming,” the plaintiff’s attorney wrote.
If Howell denied the 30-day extension request (as she later did), Giuliani requested three more weeks to prepare his own response and “properly set out before the Court that the purported comments mentioned in the Plaintiffs’ motion for contempt were to defend myself against their comments and only relate to the judicial proceedings and not to comments about the Plaintiffs.”
The letter comes just a few weeks after two of Giuliani’s attorneys in a related case in New York resigned without informing the former US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Howell denied Giuliani’s request quickly, citing a failure to follow the court’s procedural rules, with which even pro se defendants without legal training must comply. Giuliani, she stated, had “previously been a practicing attorney with a history of significant government legal positions.”
Howell had previously warned Giuliani that failure to respond to Freeman and Moss’ motion for contempt would be interpreted as “conceding that motion.”
Howell, after rejecting Giuliani’s request for an extension, issued a new order on Wednesday, allowing Giuliani until Friday at 2 p.m. to provide justification for not granting the contempt request “as conceded.” Howell has scheduled the former personal attorney for Donald Trump’s appearance in person on December 12.
