Rudy Giuliani is playing hide-and-seek with “the vast majority” of belongings he was ordered to hand over to the Georgia mother and daughter he was found liable for defaming, the women’s lawyers said in court filings Tuesday.
Around four weeks ago, Giuliani emptied his multimillion-dollar E. 66th St. apartment, save for “some rugs, a dining room table, some stray pieces of small furniture and inexpensive wall art, and a handful of smaller items, like dishes and stereo equipment,” according to Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman’s legal team.
A Manhattan federal judge two weeks ago ordered Giuliani to turn over control of his stake in the Upper East Side co-op apartment, along with its contents, his cash accounts, sports memorabilia, furniture, jewelry and various other valuables to Freeman and Moss toward satisfying the $148 million judgment a Washington, D.C., federal jury ordered him to pay for falsely accusing the pair of ballot fraud.
The women’s lawyers made the startling discovery on Halloween after trying to gain access to the unit for two hours. The embattled former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer and his counsel “have provided no information regarding when that property was moved, where it was taken, or the conditions under which it is being stored,” Moss and Freeman’s lawyer Aaron Nathan wrote.
Days after Giuliani said he’d comply with the order, inquiries by Freeman and Moss “have been met predominantly with evasion or silence,” Tuesday’s filing states. Giuliani informed them that “he does not actually know” where the apartment’s share certificates or proprietary lease are; he said items had been moved to a storage facility on Long Island — the aptly named “The America First Warehouse” — though without specifying which items.
Shortly after learning about the hide-and-seek game, Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Liman ordered Giuliani to appear before him on Thursday, rejecting Giuliani’s request to push it back so he could record a broadcast from Palm Beach.
In a filing later Tuesday, Nathan flagged to Liman that Giuliani had been photographed in the 1980 Mercedes-Benz once owned by Lauren Bacall — which Giuliani also must give up — at Trump’s poll site the morning of Election Day. The former mayor’s lawyers had told Freeman and Moss that the vehicle was in Florida — though not exactly “where it is garaged.”
“This latest revelation indicates that he either does not understand [his] obligations or, more likely, is knowingly disregarding them,” Nathan wrote.
Giuliani’s spokesman, Ted Goodman, who was with him in Palm Beach, claimed to The News earlier Tuesday that Giuliani was waiting for paperwork from Moss and Freeman’s lawyers to transfer the car “and [we] haven’t heard back.”
“This is yet another attempt to render Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a man who has improved the lives of more people than almost any other living American — penniless and homeless,” Goodman said in a follow-up statement.
Giuliani has similarly come up with excuses for not wiring money owed from his cash accounts, the women’s lawyers said in their initial Tuesday letter. His lawyers claimed to Moss and Freeman that a restraining notice on his Citibank account only allows $3,907.99 to be transferred.
Nathan contested the excuse and said it raised “significant questions about the location of other cash assets” in light of five-figure funds moved out of the same account in July and August.
Judge Liman is still mulling whether to force Giuliani to give up his $3.5 million Palm Beach condo, where Giuliani claims he’s been living, and his Yankees World Series rings, which his son, Andrew, claims Giuliani was gifted and is suing to keep. The former mayor appeared to be wearing at least one of the rings at a virtual hearing last week in his sexual assault lawsuit attended by the Daily News.
Giuliani was ordered to pay the Atlanta election workers the eye-popping sum in December after a judge found him liable for repeatedly and maliciously accusing the two women of corruptly trying to help Joe Biden in the 2020 election. His lies prompted a deluge of racist death threats that forced the mother and daughter into hiding.
“America’s Mayor” filed for bankruptcy in the wake of the judgment, but that filing has since been thrown out, in part, because Giuliani failed to be forthcoming about his finances and disobeyed court orders. After the bankruptcy effort was dismissed, Freeman and Moss brought the ongoing enforcement action.
Also this year, Giuliani was stripped of his law licenses in New York and Washington, D.C., due to his election subversion efforts. He is additionally facing a sky-high stack of lawsuits stemming from a wide range of allegations and two criminal cases in Arizona and Georgia regarding his election fraud claims, in which he’s pleaded not guilty.
