Rudy Giuliani rolls as much as Florida polling place in Mercedes he should give up to defamed election employees

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Rudy Giuliani pulled up to the Florida polling station where Donald Trump cast his ballot on Election Day in the Mercedes-Benz he has been ordered to turn over to a pair of election workers he defamed.

The cash-strapped former New York City mayor — who told a bankruptcy court earlier this year that he does not have a driver’s license — sat in the passenger seat of the 1980 SL500 once owned by Lauren Bacall as reporters and cameras swarmed around him on Tuesday.

Hours earlier, a federal judge in New York ordered Trump’s now-disbarred former attorney to appear in person for a hearing on Thursday, after the election workers who have been trying to collect on a $150 million defamation verdict accused him of hiding his property from them.

Giuliani’s attorney told the court that he has a scheduling conflict: a “contractual obligation” to appear on conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s website Frank Speech.

The car is on a long list of Giuliani’s property — including a Manhattan penthouse, 26 watches, and money he claims he is owed by Trump’s campaign — that a judge ordered him to transfer as part of a judgment from a defamation case brought by the two election workers, who were subject to a wave of abuse and harassment after Giuliani’s false claims that they interfered in 2020 election results.

A jury found Giuliani guilty of defamation last year, and he promptly filed bankruptcy.

That bankruptcy case was dismissed earlier this year, unfreezing a mountain of litigation against Trump’s former attorney.

Last month, Giuliani was ordered to prepare a list of property to be placed into receivership, including the car, his New York apartment, cash from his checking accounts, a signed New York Yankees shirt and other sports memorabilia, a diamond ring, a television, “various items of furniture,” and “any additional property” as determined by the court.

Attorneys for the mother-daughter pair of election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss told the court that Giuliani’s lawyers communicated that they were not “ready” to hand over the apartment.

Giuliani’s team “could not even answer basic questions about the location of the receivership property, including the co-op shares and any particular items of physical property, or the amount of the cash accounts subject to turnover,” according to attorneys for the women.

On Monday night, Judge Lewis Liman ordered that a planned telephone conference will instead be in person, and that Giuliani is required to appear.

Giuliani’s attorney Kenneth Caruso told that court that Giuliani has a “contractual commitment” to appear on a live broadcast on Frank Speech, and “he needs to be in his condo in Palm Beach, where he has his broadcasting equipment.”

Those broadcasts “currently provide Mr. Giuliani’s only source of earned income,” Caruso said. “We respectfully suggest that a loss of income, and an expense for travel to New York, should be avoided, if possible.”

Giuliani’s spokesperson Ted Goodman accused attorneys for the defamed election workers of “simply attempting to further bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless.”

“Mayor Giuliani has made available his property and possessions as ordered,” he said in a statement shared with The Independent. “A few items were put into storage over the course of the past year, and anything else removed was related to his two livestream programs that stream each and every weeknight across his social media platforms.”

Source: independent.co.uk