Rudy Giuliani must pay millions over false election claims | BBC News
BBC News- 611 views
- 15 Dec 2023
Former US President Donald Trump's ex-personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been ordered to pay $148m (£116m) to two Georgia ...
You're live with BBC News, just some breaking news to bring you from the United States. There's been a verdict in the civil trial that Rudy Giuliani was facing for defaming Georgia election workers. The jury has ordered that Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, of course, pay a total of more than $148 million for false accusations against election workers. Ian Primear, can I quickly get your reaction to that? We remember the rumors he was circulating at the time about what election workers were doing. He was suggesting they were passing notes to one another and that ballots were disappearing. We heard at the January sixth inquiry, a mother and daughter who'd been put under enormous pressure because of what he'd said, $148 million. What do you make of that?
Well, it's an eyewatering number, but what we've seen, of course, is the independent judiciary in the United States actually works. It works whether a conservative was the one that they appointed the justice or whether a liberal was. And every case, both that Trump was trying to fight to show that the elections were somehow being mishandled or were fraudulent, as well as every case that has been brought up tabled since about those that tried to obfuscate the outcomes, the companies involved, the media involved, the lawyers involved, every one of them have gone against those that tried to interfere. And this is the latest consequence of that. So again, I'm surprised by the headline number, honestly. It seems it's meant to send a message, not just to reflect actual punitive damages. Sometimes juries do that, right? But there's no question that this is broadly aligned with where the judiciary has been in the U. S.