By Devan Cole, Holmes Lybrand and Katelyn Polantz | CNN
Rudy Giuliani didn’t see two former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss as “human beings” when he spread conspiracy theories about them after the 2020 election, their attorney told a Washington, DC, jury Thursday during closing arguments in the defamation damages trial.
“He thought they were ordinary and expendable. He didn’t see them as human beings,” the attorney, Mike Gottlieb, told the eight-person jury.
“It’s dangerous for them to be Ruby Freeman or Shaye Moss because of Giuliani and his co-conspirators,” Gottlieb said.
Freeman and Moss are seeking $24 million apiece in reputational damages, as well as punitive and emotional damages in the case.
Gottlieb also said that there was a time in Giuliani’s life when, as mayor of New York, he understood and appreciated that civil servants were decent people.
“He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants over to a digital mob,” Gottlieb said.
Giuliani spent nearly the entirety of Gottlieb’s closing argument apparently not paying attention. Instead, for more than an hour he was intently reading news stories on a touch-screen laptop he had propped on the defense table in front of him, squinting and highlighting large portions of what he was reading with a stylus.
Closing arguments began Thursday morning after Giuliani opted not to testify or put on any case in his defense.
The case has refocused attention on the human impact of disinformation spread by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election as the former president awaits his own criminal trial in the same courthouse.
Giuliani has already been found liable for defamation and owes Freeman and Moss over $230,000 after failing to respond to parts of their lawsuit.
‘Patient deep-pockets’
During his own closing arguments, Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, claimed Freeman and Moss saw his client as having “deep pockets.”
“I’m not…
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