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Two days after Rudy Giuliani hailed Donald Trump’s “long-overdue victory,” a New York court ordered the president-elect’s former lawyer to pay for a Mercedes Benz and a luxury watch he owed to two poll workers he defamed. They were given one week to hand over the collection. President Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
“I think he was in Palm Beach. . . . He can hand over the keys and tell (creditors) where the car is,” Judge Louis Lehman told Giuliani’s lawyers, noting that the former New York mayor He mentioned the fact that a journalist filmed him being driven around in a 1980s convertible while voting in Florida.
The 80-year-old man’s appearance in the Mar-a-Lago neighborhood on Tuesday prompted an angry letter from the plaintiff, who accused him of “neglecting his obligation” to turn over the vehicle.
Giuliani was visibly disgruntled when he was forced to appear in court, protesting that those with knowledge of the whereabouts of his assets were being “virtually tortured” by creditors’ demands. “You have no right to help yourself,” Liman responded, threatening to file a contempt suit if Giuliani continued to block collection efforts.
Last year, Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, who were forced from their homes after being falsely accused of 2020 voter fraud. He faces numerous other lawsuits, most stemming from his actions as Trump’s personal lawyer, and he still owes the former mayor millions of dollars in legal fees.
Guiliani’s attempts to file for bankruptcy were rejected earlier this year after he repeatedly failed to disclose the full amount of his assets. Last month, Mr. Lehman ordered him to surrender his Upper East Side apartment, an array of luxury watches, Yankees memorabilia and a blue Mercedes once owned by actor Lauren Bacall.
Lawyers for Mr Freeman and Mr Moss said they had not yet taken ownership of the property and asked the court for assistance. Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Kenneth Caruso, argued that he was not given a replacement address and that his client had “no knowledge of the Ronkonkoma storage facility where some of the luxury items in question were kept.” He tried to claim that he had no control over it.
Mr Caruso was disposed of by a judge after he asked for a watch that his grandfather had bequeathed to Mr Guiliani to be exempted from the order.
When Mr. Caruso said the creditors had been pursuing the watch with a “vengeance,” Mr. Lehman said, “Oh, come on.” The judge said that there was a debtor in front of him, “who runs a brewery and is under-paying his employees to the minimum wage, and they have family heirlooms and other items, and if they owe money, they have to pay the debt.” It must be done,” he said. .
“The law is the law,” Lehman added.
The judge also rejected Caruso’s argument that because the Mercedes was “worth less than $4,000,” it could be exempt from seizure under New York state law.
Speaking outside the courtroom immediately after the hearing, Mr. Giuliani called the original $148 million verdict “ridiculous and patently punitive” and called New York a “Democratic dictatorship.”
