- Ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani risks being held in contempt in federal court in Manhattan.
- Two GA election workers said he repeatedly ignored court orders in their federal defamation case.
- If he’s found in contempt, Trump could not issue a pardon or commute his sentence.
Rudy Giuliani took the witness stand in federal court in New York on Friday, battling a potential contempt-of-court finding sought by two Georgia election workers — and Donald Trump can’t come to his rescue if he loses.
If a judge decides Giuliani has flouted court orders by failing to turn over assets and evidence in the three-year-old defamation case, he could fine Giuliani or send him to jail until he complies.
The federal pardon and commutation powers Trump regains on his return to the White House next month do not extend to civil contempt sentences.
According to experts in constitutional law and federal pardons, Giuliani would not be able to rely on his former client to save him from jail or fines.
“Generally criminal contempt is within the power of the president, but civil contempt is not,” said Margaret Love, a lawyer who served as the Justice Department pardon attorney in the 1990s.
Giuliani was combative on the stand on Friday, at a daylong contempt-of-court hearing overseen by US District Judge Lewis Liman in a courthouse in downtown Manhattan.
The hearing, which will continue next week, is part of a suite of civil cases brought by mother-daughter Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.
“This is monstrously overbroad,” Giuliani complained of Moss-Freeman asset-document requests during questioning at one point on Friday. “It’s abusive and overbroad.”
A federal judge in Washington, DC, found in 2023 that Giuliani defamed the pair — and subjected them to a barrage of racist death threats — by repeatedly and falsely accusing them of voter fraud, including by lying that they had tallied suitcases full of illegal ballots for Joe Biden.
In December 2023, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss $148 million. In recent weeks, the two plaintiffs have sought to have him held in contempt in DC and in Manhattan to force him to comply with judges’ demands that he cease defaming them and turn over assets and evidence as ordered.
The contempt hearing is scheduled to continue Monday morning.
Giuliani’s defense has focused on his recent switch of lawyers from Kenneth Caruso, an experienced New York-based attorney he has known for nearly 50 years, to Joseph Cammarata, best known for representing a woman who accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.
Giuliani swapped lawyers sometime in November. Giuliani said that changing attorneys had made it a challenge to meet deadlines — an excuse that the pair’s lawyers did not accept.
Cammarata said in court Friday that his client has completed “substantial compliance” with his obligations and should not be held in contempt.
He said that Giuliani, who is 80 years old, has struggled to deal with an avalanche of legal proceedings against him, including criminal investigations. Prosecutors in Arizona and Georgia have brought cases against Giuliani over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.
“Mayor Giuliani, as this court knows, has multiple litigations going on in multiple states, both civil and criminal in nature,” Cammarata said.
Giuliani took the stand — struggling up a step by the podium — after the court’s lunch break. At the beginning of the break, he complained to Jane Rosenberg, a courtroom artist, about how she depicted him in one of her pastel drawings.
“You made me look like my dog,” he told her, Rosenberg said.
Giuliani was cross-examined by Meryl Conant Governski, an attorney representing Freeman and Moss, about two sworn declarations he had submitted to the court saying that he’s abided by all of the judge’s orders and provided proper responses to information requests and interrogatories.
He said that the turnaround time required for discovery requests was “unusually short” even though his previous attorney, Caruso, had agreed to the 14-day response deadlines.
In the morning, Cammarata cross-examined Aaron Nathan, an attorney representing Freeman and Moss, over how he determined whether the former New York mayor had failed to account for his property. Many of the questions concerned Giuliani’s framed Joe DiMaggio jersey that once hung over the fireplace in his Manhattan apartment.
When Nathan gained access to the apartment in October and searched the residence, it was gone.
“This jersey has been at the forefront of the case,” Cammarata said in one heated moment. “There have been accusations that my client absconded with the jersey. And that is not the case.”
Cammarata, in winding and plodding cross-examination, pointed out that the photo of the jersey in the apartment was taken in the summer of 2023, and time had passed before Nathan went into the apartment and saw the location himself.
“Your honor, if I may, I want to take his testimony about the passage of time,” Cammarata objected after the judge cut off his questioning on the subject.
The day before Friday’s hearing, Giuliani asked for permission to attend virtually, due to “medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues discovered last year,” as his lawyer, explained it in a letter to the judge.
The breathing problems are “attributable to Defendant Rudolph W. Giuliani being at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001,” Cammarata wrote.
Giuliani attended in person after the judge warned he’d otherwise be barred from testifying on his own behalf.
Should Giuliani be found in contempt, “the executive pardon power would not extend to a civil contempt sentence,” even in a federal court, said former federal prosecutor Ephraim Savitt.
That’s because Giuliani’s jailing wouldn’t be a punishment for a past infraction — instead, it would be a remedial sentence, meant to force his compliance with the judge’s orders.
“Civil contempt sentences are essentially open-ended,” meaning Giuliani could only be freed once he had complied, said Savitt.
“It’s a means of coercing a party to take some action, to compel compliance,” said Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School.
“So long as Giuliani has the keys to his own cell, and can be freed by simply complying with the judge’s order, then there is no crime to be pardoned or punishment to be reprieved,” he added.
