Slick roads, canceled flights and snowball fights were part of the D.C. area’s first major snowstorm in three years Monday, with flurries forecasted to keep falling well after dark.
NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.
Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a contempt hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said the former New York City mayor had failed to properly comply with requests for evidence over the last few months.
Liman said Giuliani “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court” when he “blew past” a Dec. 20 deadline to turn over evidence that would help the judge decide at a trial later this month whether Giuliani can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium as his residence or must turn it over because it is deemed a vacation home.
As punishment for the contempt finding, the judge said he will decide at the trial whether some of the missing evidence would show that Giuliani continued doing business in New York rather than Florida after Jan. 1, 2024. That’s when the former mayor said he had established the Florida property as his permanent home.
Liman said he would withhold judgment on other possible sanctions.
On Friday, Giuliani testified for about three hours in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom, but the judge permitted him to finish testifying remotely on Monday from his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida.
At the start of the hearing Monday, Giuliani had an American flag backdrop, which he said he uses for a program he conducts over the internet, but the judge told him to change it to a plain background.
Giuliani conceded that he sometimes did not turn over everything requested in the case because he believed what was being sought was overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by lawyers for the plaintiffs.
He also said he sometimes had trouble turning over information regarding his assets because of numerous criminal and civil court cases requiring him to produce factual information.
Giuliani, 80, said the demands made it “impossible to function in an official way” about 30% to 40% of the time.
The election workers’ lawyers say Giuliani has displayed a “consistent pattern of willful defiance” of Liman’s October order to give up assets after he was found liable in 2023 for defaming their clients by falsely accusing them of tampering with ballots during the 2020 presidential election.
They said in court papers that Giuliani has turned over a Mercedes-Benz and his New York apartment, but not the paperwork necessary to monetize the assets. And they said he has failed to surrender watches and sports memorabilia , including a Joe DiMaggio jersey, and has not turned over “a single dollar from his nonexempt cash accounts.”
Giuliani said Monday that he was investigating what happened to the DiMaggio jersey and that he currently doesn’t know where it is or who has it.
Aaron Nathan, a lawyer for the election workers, asked Liman to decide the meaning of Giuliani withholding information — such as a list of his doctors over the last four years — that would make it more likely the court would conclude that the Palm Beach property was not his primary residence and therefore not protected from seizure.
Joseph Cammarata, Giuliani’s attorney, said reaching such a conclusion would be like a civil “death penalty” and would cause Giuliani to lose the Florida property even before the trial scheduled start in 10 days. That’s when the judge is supposed to hear testimony and view evidence before deciding what should be done with the condominium and World Series rings.
Giuliani has insisted that the Palm Beach property is his personal residence now and should be shielded from the judgment.
His lawyers have predicted that he will eventually win custody of the items on appeal.
It’s Jan. 6, and the government’s war on the innocent citizen rolls on.
It’s Jan. 6, and the government’s war on the innocent citizen rolls on.
Weeks after President-elect Donald Trump called the U.S. acquisition of Greenland an “absolute necessity,” his son, Donald Trump Jr., is planning to visit the island.