WASHINGTON — A former election worker in Georgia who sued Rudy Giuliani over false claims he spread about her and her daughter in 2020 wept on the witness stand Wednesday as she described fleeing her home after experiencing racist threats and strangers knocking on her door pounded.
Ruby Freeman's online boutique was flooded with threatening messages, including several mentioning lynching, after Giuliani tweeted a video of herself working as a temporary election worker counting votes while he pushed Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud, Freeman said to the jury members. Freeman, 64, said she had to leave her home in January 2021 after people came with megaphones and the FBI told her she wasn't safe.
“I thought they were going to hang me with their ropes in my street,” Freeman testified about the threats on the third day of the trial in Washington's federal courthouse. She added: “I was scared. I didn't know if they were coming to kill me.”
Attorneys for Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, dropped their case after Freeman's testimony. Giuliani is expected to testify in his defense, although U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell has barred him from attempting to argue his debunked claims.
Freeman eventually had to sell her home, she told jurors. She said she lived out of her car for a while because the relentless drumbeat of harassment made friends and church members afraid to be associated with her. Now she stays cooped up indoors and avoids introducing herself to neighbors for fear her name will be recognized, she said.
“It's so scary, every time I go somewhere, when I have to use my name,” she said, gasping through tears to get the words out. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was myself, I could introduce myself. Now I don't actually have a name.”
The testimony came a day after her daughter, Moss, took the witness stand herself and described the nightmares, panic attacks and depression caused by a barrage of threatening and racist messages that turned her life upside down and forced her to quit the job. what she loves to refuse.
They spoke as part of a trial to determine how much Giuliani will have to pay the two women for spreading conspiracy theories that they manipulated the state's 2020 election results. A judge has already ruled that he is liable for defamation, and Giuliani has acknowledged in court that he made public comments falsely claiming that Freeman and Moss committed fraud during the counting of ballots.
An expert for the plaintiffs testified Wednesday that Giuliani's defamatory statements, which were also spread by Trump and his campaign, were viewed up to 56 million times by people sympathetic to them. Professor Ashlee Humphreys of Northwestern University, who also testified in the defamation case brought against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, said emotionally damaging statements have been seen hundreds of millions of times.
The cost of restoring their reputation alone could be as much as $47 million, Humphreys says. They are also seeking emotional and punitive damages in the tens of millions of dollars.
Giuliani's attorney questioned Humphreys about her methodology and tried to raise questions about how much responsibility the former mayor should personally bear for spreading conspiracy theories.
Giuliani has continued to make baseless accusations against the women, insisting outside the federal courthouse on Monday that his claims about the women were true.
As the defamation trial unfolds, Giuliani is also preparing to defend himself against criminal charges in a separate case in Georgia. He has denied guilt in the charges accusing him and others of plotting to overturn Donald Trump's 2020 election loss in the state, and denied any wrongdoing.
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Richer reported from Boston.