Shocking verdict against Rudy Giuliani serves as a warning shot for Donald Trump

On Friday, a jury in Washington, D.C., spoke for fairness,  the rule of law and everyone who is ready to stand up to the cruelty and deception of the MAGA crew. 

After a weeklong trial, the jury ruled that Rudy Giuliani has to pay up. The former mayor of New York now owes $148 million for the damage his lies caused two Georgia women, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. In the weeks after the 2020 election, he had widely broadcast false accusations that the two election workers had stolen ballots under the table in Atlanta’s election center and changed them from Trump votes to Biden votes. 

No, Rudy Giuliani can’t pay anything close to a $148 million judgment. That isn’t the point. 

Juries have long been thought of as the conscience of the community, and the jury in the Giuliani case sent a powerful message to two courageous women, to America and to Trump. The Giuliani jury did its civic duty just like Freeman and Moss had done theirs. 

Before saying more about the significance of what it did, let’s recall the background. In making his defamatory accusations of election theft against the two women, Giuliani said they engaged in “surreptitious illegal activity and acting suspiciously, like drug dealers passing out dope.” That dog whistle was loud enough to be heard by every white supremacist in the country.

It was part of a whole Trump campaign media barrage unleashing MAGA supporters against two powerless people. Giuliani and company stirred up a frenzy to try to intimidate them and anyone else who would stand in their way. They treated Freeman and Moss’s lives like trash destined for landfill. 

The damage was swift. Racist threats to their lives chased mother and daughter from their homes, their work and any semblance of a peaceful life.

Moss testified that she received “a lot of threats, wishing death upon me ... I’ve gained about 60 pounds. ... I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in ... every way. All because of lies. For me doing my job.”

Trump himself even called out Freeman in his infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. The then-president described the election worker  as “a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler.” More dog whistling.

Holding onto power was all that mattered. Collateral human damage be damned.

But even with their lives upended and with more to come, two women of immeasurable bravery did not back down. They defied the cruelty that has long been a hallmark of Trump and his minions to pursue justice. 

They brought court actions saying, in effect, We will not surrender our right to a home, to safety and to privacy without a fight. We will not leave self-interested cruelty unanswered in the hope that it might relent without resistance. 

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That’s raising one’s voice instead of a white flag. Freeman and Moss acted like what psychologist Catherine Sanderson calls “moral rebels” — people “who have the courage to stand up and say that something is wrong even though it will cost them.”

There’s a lesson here for everyone. 

On Friday, the jury in Washington heard Freeman and Moss’ call for justice. Jurors, by their verdict, told them, “You are not alone.” This courthouse, their judgment, said loud and clear that this is where accountability for Trumpist bullies like Giuliani will be delivered. 

The jury threw not just the book at him, but the entire library, including the shelves and the card catalog: awards of $16-plus million to each woman for the damage Giuliani had caused their reputations, $20 million to each for emotional distress, and $75 million in punitive damages. 

Those numbers say it all: The verdict was more about punishing Giuliani than about compensating his victims. As law professor David Owen explains: “Punitive damages serve a strong educative function…. [P]unitive damages proclaim the importance that the law attaches to the plaintiff's particular invaded right, and the corresponding condemnation that society attaches to its flagrant invasion by the kind of conduct engaged in by the defendant."

Here, the punishment warns others: “Don’t try what Rudy did.” 

As Moss told the nation after the verdict: "Our greatest wish is that no one, no election worker or voter or school board member ever experience anything like what we went through. You are all important."

The essence of Trumpism is projecting domination of the powerless by the powerful. We’ve seen it in Trump for years.  

We witnessed it early in 2015 when Trump, on video, mocked a disabled reporter by flailing his arms in spastic motions and moaning. 

Remember in 2016 when Trump told his MAGA campaign rally crowd to “knock the crap” out of protesters?

Just this May, a New York jury found him liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a department dressing room in the mid-1990s. That’s projecting domination in the most vicious way. Fortunately, 25 years after the assault, Carroll used her voice and the courts to restore her own power.

In September, there was Trump’s unforgettable social media threat, plainly aimed at witnesses, prosecutors and judges: “If you go after me, I am coming after you.” Just this month, that statement was central — repeated twice — in a higher court opinion sustaining a gag order against Trump.

As those last two examples and Friday’s verdict show, the rule of law offers the best answer to those who seek to exercise unconstrained power over others. In a law-bound society, courts apply the same standards to powerful people like Giuliani as they apply to those without resources or influence. No one is above those standards or beyond the reach of law’s ability to defy bullies.

Consider that foundational principle and appreciate what bad news the verdict is for Donald Trump. He faces a 2024 trial before another D.C. jury on his indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. No wonder he hides from accountability by seeking to delay it.

Cardinal de Richelieu, chief minister to French King Louis XIII in the 17th century, said that “[n]othing so upholds the laws, as the punishment of persons whose rank is as great as their crime.” 

In the civil law context, we’ve just seen that truth in action. May we see it again in the months again, applied to the man accused of the greatest crimes against the country in its history.