Lawyers for two women defamed by Rudy Giuliani have spent months trying to track down his assets to begin chipping away at the $148 million he owes them in damages.
On Friday, he testified for more than three hours in a federal courtroom in Manhattan as attorneys painstakingly poured over his sworn statements in thick stacks of court filings.
Squinting at a small monitor in front of him, the 80-year-old former New York City mayor repeatedly said he never intentionally withheld information about his assets, didn’t recall seeing certain statements, and never willfully disobeyed court orders to turn over his property.
But he admitted he did not want to give the mother-daughter election workers his grandfather’s 120-year-old gold pocketwatch.
“I felt it could get lost if I turned it over,” Giuliani said from the witness stand.
Friday’s seven-hour hearing will be part of District Judge Lewis Liman’s determination whether Donald Trump’s former attorney should be held in contempt for blowing off requests for evidence in a case stemming from a defamation judgment for his false claims against the women in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Attorneys repeatedly reminded Giuliani that Liman ordered his “unequivocal obligation” to the court’s asset turnover order — or risk facing potentially severe sanctions — but he now claims that he doesn’t know where some of that property is, or if he even had some of it to begin with.
Losing the watch is “the last thing I want,” he said.
He insisted: “I’m not trying to hide it from anyone. I took it upon myself to put it in a safe place. It’s the one thing that means something to me.”
A long list of Giuliani’s assets — including a 1980 Mercedes Benz, his New York penthouse apartment and signed sports memorabilia — was initially included in a bankruptcy filing by Giuliani in his short-lived chapter 11 case after a jury found him liable for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss as he pursued a spurious legal bid to overturn election results in states that Trump lost.
“Mr. Giuliani, as it stands you’re in violation of the court’s order,” Liman told Giuliani at the end of Friday’s hearing.
Giuliani also claimed in his bankruptcy proceedings that he possessed a signed Joe DiMaggio Yankees jersey, which is also pictured in a frame hanging above a mantle in his Manhattan apartment in a real estate listing.
The jersey wasn’t there when attorneys for election workers showed up last October — and neither was most of the furniture in the apartment, which had been cleared out days earlier. Post-It notes reading “take all” were posted on several pieces of furniture throughout the apartment.
Giuliani said it’s “possible” that the jersey was moved out in that time frame.
He disputed the testimony of his best friend, Alan Placa, who told attorneys during a deposition that he distinctly remembered the shirt in Giuliani’s Palm Beach condo.
The retired priest “made a mistake,” according to Giuliani, who insists the shirt was always in New York until it vanished.
“I slept on the couch a lot and it’s the first thing I’d see when I woke up,” he said. “He’s a wonderful priest and monsignor. He just happens to be wrong about this.”
There were “inconsistencies” in the bankruptcy filings, and “some things I didn’t have,” according to Giuliani, who pointed to his divorces and several moves and a need to account for property “quickly.”
He “just can’t find” a signed picture of former New York Yankees legend Reggie Jackson, among the pieces of memorabilia in court documents.
“I get confused about what I have and don’t have,” he said. “I know you find that hard, your honor, but I was blessed with a tremendous amount of Yankees memorabilia … I’m not hiding anything.”
Giuliani has already delivered the Mercedes, more than a dozen watches, and a “single diamond ring,” as well as access to his New York penthouse apartment, “but no keys or ownership documents,” leaving the women “to sort through significant logistical obstacles to a sale, including the presence of his ex-wife’s name on the title,” attorneys wrote in court documents.
He also only delivered “some” of the items in a storage facility he was ordered to open for the women, they argued.
In a series of court filings on Christmas Eve, Giuliani implored Liman to reject a demand for sanctions, and argued he had already turned over “everything” he was ordered.
“I respectfully submit that the items which I was required to turn over, I turned over,” he wrote. “The Court should see that I gave everything that I could give.”
Recently unsealed court filings revealed that Giuliani’s previous attorney, Kenneth Caruso, withdrew from the case because Giuliani allegedly refused to participate in a discovery process — including giving up his electronic devices.
Giuiliani claimes he does not remember Caruso — a longtime friend and legal partner who still appears to be representing him in his appeal of the initial defamation verdict — ever having a conversation with him about getting access to his devices.
He said he learned about Caruso’s notice of withdrawal in the newspaper, despite Caruso’s sworn statement to the court that he had emailed Giuliani about it.
“Is it your testimony today that Mr. Caruso was lying when he said that?” Liman asked. “Are you saying that it is untrue that he sent a copy of the motion to you via email?”
Giuliani also called requests for lists of attorneys and doctors he was talked with “completely irrelevant” and “unnecessarily obtrusive.”
“If there is such a thing as abusive and overbroad, put that in the textbook,” he suggested.
Giuliani also testified that he didn’t believe document requests for all “communications” meant his emails.
Requests for copies of his calendars also couldn’t be fulfilled because he doesn’t maintain any, according to Giuliani’s testimony and a sworn statement in court documents. Giuliani has frequently brought his iPad to the courtroom to flip through his virtual calendar.
He said he instead writes notes on paper for his desk about his upcoming events, then gives them to a secretary, and “she destroys them” after the event because “I don’t need them anymore.”
The night before the hearing, Giuliani’s attorneys requested that he appear at the hearing remotely, citing “medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues” attributable to the former mayor “being at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001.”
Giuliani will continue his testimony virtually on January 6. But later this month, he will be back in the courtroom for a trial to determine whether he has to surrender his multi-million-dollar Palm Beach condo to Freeman and Moss.
Speaking to The Independent outside the courthouse on Friday morning, Giuliani was skeptical he would avoid sanctions.
“Look at the record of this judge. We haven’t won a thing yet,” he said. ”People might question that. But in this case, we haven’t won a single, tiny motion. Does that raise a question about it.”
He wouldn’t comment about his in-court behavior to reporters at a press conference on Friday evening.
“The judge has to decide how I comported myself,” he said, laughing.
