Giuliani attacked for trying to dodge paying women he defamed: 'Have his cake and eat it'

Attorneys for Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman filed a vehement objection to Rudy Giuliani's request for a delay in paying his $148 million defamation penalty Thursday.

Donald Trump's former campaign attorney was ordered to pay the staggering sum in damages to the mother-daughter pair of Georgia election workers, whom he falsely accused of manipulating ballots in 2020, but their attorneys called out Giuliani's apparent attempts to evade the court order after filing for bankruptcy.

"Thus, it is the height of irony that the first substantive relief sought by Mr. Giuliani in his chapter 11 case — to be heard on an expedited basis no less — is a motion to lift the automatic stay so that he can pursue an appeal in the Freeman Litigation," the pair's attorneys wrote.

"Through this motion, Mr. Giuliani is looking to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to appeal the Freeman Litigation, not post a bond, and use the automatic stay to bar Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss from enforcing their judgment."

"As a matter of law, there is no basis for granting the relief Mr. Giuliani seeks," they added. "Mr. Giuliani cannot simultaneously use the automatic stay as a shield to hold off creditors and as a sword to gut their legal rights. If Mr. Giuliani truly wanted to appeal the Freeman Litigation, all he needed to do was not file for chapter 11 protection. Mr. Giuliani’s sudden desire to participate in the Litigation, conditioned on a half-way lift of the automatic stay, calls the good faith of his chapter 11 filing into question."

The women's attorneys noted that Giuliani appeared to have limited resources to satisfy his court-ordered obligation to pay damages, so they questioned why he would incur new legal fees seeking to delay the process.

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"Mr. Giuliani’s unrealistic expectations for his appeal aside, the most he could achieve even in a successful appeal would be to return the Freeman Litigation back to a posture in which Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss simply hold unliquidated, rather than liquidated, claims," the attorney wrote.

"Permitting Mr. Giuliani to pursue such a futile strategy would be detrimental to Ms. Freeman, Ms. Moss, and all general unsecured creditors. In addition to seeing the distributable value in Mr. Giuliani’s estate devoured by legal fees, granting the Stay Relief Motion would ensure that little to no progress is made in this chapter 11 case for months (if not years) as Mr. Giuliani pursues his appeals."