You Signed Up For This, Rudy, Time to Pay Up

If there's anything that gets you back into the rhythm of political blogging, it's a tasty uber-sized serving of schadenfreude. For example, watching one of donald trump's most loyal lapdogs in Rudy Giuliani get brutalized in a civil court case for defaming Georgia election officials over trump's "stolen votes" gaslighting (via Miles Park at NPR):

Former Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay a staggering $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he spread lies about following the 2020 election.

The decision on Friday comes at the end of a week-long federal civil trial in Washington, D.C., where an eight-person jury heard from the workers — Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman — about how 2020 election conspiracies spread by Giuliani and former President Donald Trump turned their lives upside down.

"I was afraid for my life," Moss said during her testimony on Tuesday. "I literally felt that someone would attempt to hang me and there was nothing anyone could do about it."

Jurors heard numerous violent and racist voicemails the women received, after Giuliani used his massive platform as a campaign attorney for Trump to spread lies about their actions as election workers in Georgia.

In the time after voting ended in 2020, Giuliani shared video from an absentee ballot counting facility in Fulton County, which he falsely claimed showed the two women cheating and scanning ballots multiple times to benefit Joe Biden.

A hand-count audit in Georgia found votes to have been tallied correctly in the 2020 election, and a years-long investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found the accusations against Moss and Freeman to be "false and unsubstantiated..."

In August, district Judge Beryl Howell found Giuliani liable for defamation, due to his lack of cooperation in the case, and Giuliani conceded as part of the proceedings that his statements about Moss and Freeman were false.

So the trial this week was only held to determine the damages Moss and Freeman were owed...

The penalties broke down to roughly $16 million per woman, and then an additional $20 million each for emotional damages, added to $75 million in punitive damages because Rudy was that huge a jerkass about all this.

Rumor has it Giuliani doesn't have that kind of personal wealth to pay out those damages. Granted, the lengthy appeal process will likely see the punitive damages reduced (and perhaps some of the emotional damages) but the appellate courts are loathe to overturn jury rulings, meaning at some point down the road he owes these women he victimized a shit-ton of money he doesn't have.

In most respects none of us should have any sympathy for Rudy. He intentionally went out of his way to attack these women - and wouldn't you notice how it's women he attacked, not the men who worked as elections officials in Georgia - as part of a massive scheme to overturn a legal election result not just in Georgia but across the United States.

(Remember kids, Giuliani was grandstanding in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia when the state of Pennsylvania confirmed the win for Joe Biden, effectively killing trump's gaslighting about "stolen votes" and subjecting Giuliani to public humiliation)

For all of Rudy's bluster during this trial in front of the cameras, he wasn't able to present honest evidence in the courtroom - or in ANY courtroom - that his (and trump's) lies about the elections results were real. For all the times Rudy said he was going to prove himself, that he was going to prove these women were part of a massive conspiracy, he never presented a shred of proof. And when he promised he was going to go on the stand and testify to his own defense, well of course he chickened out at the last minute and let the matter go to the jury, because even as a bad lawyer he knew the risks of being under oath and cross-examination.

Again, no sympathy for Rudy, because this sonofabitch signed up to be trump's bitch, and this is how everyone who lies and grandstands for that con artist ends up: Broke, facing jail time, and wondering how the hell their lives ended like this.

Giuliani volunteered for this, everyone. He happily went to work for donald trump knowing he was a bad boss with a long history of throwing lackeys under the bus to save his own orange hide. He willingly played the role of trump's Roy Cohn successor, the legal attack dog doing trump's bidding while trump plotted to subvert constitutional norms and overturn legal elections.

And what did it get Rudy? Failures in courtroom after courtroom trying to overturn election results without evidence to prove it. Getting tied up in fake electors schemes that currently has Giuliani facing thirteen racketeering charges in Fulton County Georgia.

That case, by the by, is likely why Rudy refused to testify in his own defense at the defamation trial: Anything he says under oath is admissible elsewhere. And according to reports, DA Fani Willis is not offering Giuliani - a major player in the conspiracy charges - a plea deal. Willis is also telling the state court that her office can take their case to trial within 30 days, depending at least on where things fit in trump's busy criminal trial calendar (this link is updated frequently, so save it to favorites, kiddos) for 2024.

So not only is Giuliani facing financial ruin over whatever years he has remaining, he's facing the reality that he's going to watch all of his wealth taken away from behind prison bars.

No sympathy for Rudy, though. He willingly signed up to work for a liar and a con artist. He willingly chose the path that Roy Cohn took, unloved and broken to the grave.

And he's still a freaking perv because of what we saw in that Borat movie. Gods.

Suffer, Rudy. You honestly earned this fate.