Georgia Election Workers’ Attorney Reacts To Rudy Giuliani Filing For Bankruptcy: ‘Not Surprising’

On “Forbes Newsroom,” Mike Gottlieb, the attorney representing two Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation, reacted to Rudy Giuliani filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The filing came on Thursday, just one day after a judge ruled that the former New York City Mayor must start paying the $148 million he owes to Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, the two women he defamed by accusing them of election fraud.

Gottlieb told “Forbes Newsroom” he was “not surprised” by Giuliani’s move, as the 2008 Republican presidential candidate’s attorney hinted at suffering financial woes during the trial. Giuliani’s lawyer reportedly claimed that a high payout would be the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.”

Gottlieb told Forbes that he and his team had been “planning for” Giuliani’s bankruptcy filing by “making sure that the judgment we obtained for our clients would be a judgment where the debt would not be dischargeable – in other words, a debt that can’t just be wiped out by the filing of a bankruptcy claim.”

But will Moss and Freeman see this $148 million – or even part of it? “They will definitely see a fraction of it,” Gottlieb says, while adding that there is something “far more important” than the millions. “The judgment is vindication for our clients – and it also sends a message… If you’re somebody with a large platform, a large audience, somebody like Mr. Giuliani has been, and you go out and you target two ordinary Americans, civil servants and defame them and make them the face of fraud or crime in order to win an election or score political points … there is a real cost to that.”

Gottlieb called the moment the jury read the verdict the most powerful moment of the trial. “I think that that verdict was a message about the worth, the value, of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss’s reputations. It was a signal that their lives, their reputations, are worth just as much as a celebrity or a billionaire’s life or reputation is.”

Watch the full conversation on Forbes Newsroom above.