On June 21, 2022, a visibly nervous Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman — both longtime election workers from Fulton County, Georgia — sat in front of the January 6 Committee and shared the story of the many ways their lives had changed since the 2020 presidential election.
In the days, weeks, and months following Donald Trump’s embarrassing loss to now-president Joe Biden, the then-still-president and his right-hand toady Rudy Giuliani went on the attack and just so happened to stumble upon Moss and Freeman in the process. Specifically, what they saw was a couple seconds of video in which Freeman handed her daughter a ginger mint — which Donald and Rudy either believed or decided was a USB drive, and publicly accused the two women of hijacking a presidential election.
As CNN reported, Trump referred to Freeman — who is a 63-year-old grandmother — as a “professional vote scammer” and “hustler.” Giuliani described their moment of candy-sharing as looking like they were sharing “vials of cocaine or heroin.” But their false — and blatantly racist — allegations didn’t end there. Despite being endlessly harassed by MAGA ride-or-dies, Moss and Freeman took the extraordinary step of suing Giuliani for defamation, and it could be his undoing.
As The Daily Beast reports, Giuliani managed to get away with NOT answering many of the January 6th Committee’s questions about his direct communications with Trump by citing attorney-client privilege. But that old chestnut may not work as well when it comes to squaring off against Freeman and Moss, who “are turning their defamation lawsuit against Giuliani into a no-limits, fact-finding mission, according to an undisclosed letter from their attorneys reviewed exclusively by The Daily Beast,” writes political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery.
Despite Giuliani’s previous attempts to evade any questions about his personal correspondences with Trump when dealing with the J6 committee, Moss and Freeman’s lawyer reportedly makes it clear in this letter that since it’s precisely their words that defamed the women, they are entitled to be given greater access to the president’s communications with his then-lawyer.
“They’re trying to get to Trump,” a source familiar with the case told The Daily Beast. And oddly may have a better chance at forcing Giuliani, who was reportedly deposed in New York City on Wednesday, to actually answer their lawyer’s questions. One thing they have on their side? Time.
Whereas the January 6 Committee had hard deadlines in which to complete their work, Moss and Freeman’s legal team can take their time to get the information and answers they need.
“Freeman and Moss have no hard deadline,” writes Pagliery. “Their lawyers can patiently litigate until a judge allows them to pierce that attorney-client privilege. And the judge on the case, who already found evidence of what she called a ‘civil conspiracy’ between Giuliani and Team Trump, could greenlight that peek under the hood if she comes to the same conclusion that a federal judge in California did last year: that a crime potentially occurred.”
(Via The Daily Beast)