Rudy Giuliani better dust off his ginormous golf shorts and rest up — because there might be a lot more Cameo videos in his future. On Monday, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia rejected Giuliani’s request to see a defamation lawsuit brought against him by two Georgia election workers dismissed.
The original lawsuit was filed in 2021 by election workers Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who told their story in harrowing detail to the January 6th Committee (and the millions of people watching the hearings) about how they have been targeted, harassed, and threatened by Trump supporters. Freeman, 62, was even forced to move out of the home she had lived in for 20 years as scores of Trump supporters sought her out there — including Kanye West’s publicist, who reportedly told Freeman that if she did not confess to voter fraud within 48 hours, she would be arrested and sent to jail.
But as David Wickert writes for The AJC:
The judge cited numerous false claims Giuliani made about the election workers in the weeks after the election. Among other things, Giuliani accused them of “ballot stuffing,” “cheating” and “stealing the votes.”
Howell determined that a reasonable jury may conclude that Giuliani, Trump and others created a plan to sow doubt in the outcome of the 2020 election by launching a misinformation campaign, which included accusing Freeman, Moss and others of participating in election fraud schemes.
In her ruling, Howell talked about the “increasingly outlandish paranoia from those claiming the election was being ‘stolen’” and stated that Giuliani “propagated and pushed that false narrative.”
Which means that the door is now open for other election workers who became the target of rabid MAGAs to finally get their day in court. Provided Giuliani actually shows up.