Judge Holds Rudy Giuliani In Contempt Of Court

NEW YORK—Four years on from January 6, Rudy Giuliani has the distinction of being one of a handful of coup plotters to face a measure of accountability. In the latest example, a Manhattan federal judge held Giuliani in contempt of court on Monday after he spent months ignoring court orders in cases brought by two Georgia 2020 election workers he was found liable of defaming.

“The only conclusion the court can draw — and the one it does draw — is that the defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman for the Southern District of New York told Giuliani attorney Joseph Cammarata at a Monday hearing.

Liman said that he was withholding judgment on what sanctions to impose on Giuliani, apart from making adverse inferences against him in an upcoming trial over whether he can claim an exemption that could shield his multi-million dollar Florida condo from being seized to satisfy the election workers’ judgment.

Giuliani was hit with the finding at the end of an often-bizarre and frequently contentious two-day hearing examining whether the former NYC mayor should be held in contempt for flouting discovery orders over the Florida condo and for failing to turn over items to satisfy the judgement, including a Joe DiMaggio jersey, a Mercedes, and his grandfather’s pocketwatch.

Throughout the hearing, Liman grew increasingly irritated as Giuliani and Cammarata offered constantly shifting explanations for why they had not answered questions over whether Giuliani’s primary residence was in Florida, which would have qualified him for a homestead exemption that could allow him to keep the $3.5 million condo. Liman complained that both sides were slow in asking questions and in managing documents, but appeared to reserve ire for Giuliani, apart from a few moments in which the two reminisced about New York Yankees players.

In a statement after the ruling, Giuliani and his spokesman Ted Goodman tried to make the case about the firm representing the Georgia plaintiffs, saying that it was part of a “politically motivated vendetta.” In his closing argument, Cammarata largely avoided making an overtly political argument, though he found ways to mention 9/11, Hunter Biden, and Giuliani’s former status as mayor while suggesting that an adverse ruling would be a “death penalty.”

But as the hearing, which began on Friday, stretched on, Liman decided to put off a decision on the turnover matter, ruling instead on the Florida condo issues.

For Giuliani, the ruling is the latest in years of attempts to hold him accountable for his quarterbacking of Trump’s 2020 coup attempt. As the events of Jan. 6, 2025 demonstrate, those attempts have largely failed: Trump himself largely beat off a federal case over the insurrection after the Supreme Court held that the vast majority of a president’s official acts are immune from prosecution. After winning the November 2024 election by a larger margin than he won 2016, Trump is now poised to pardon the rioters who assaulted the Capitol at his call on Jan. 6, 2021.

But civil cases and, oddly, attorney bar discipline have so far had more of an effect. Giuliani himself remarked on Monday at the hearing that the two bar discipline matters against him were frequently “more active than the cases.” At one point during the hearing, Cammarata tried to impress upon the judge that Giuliani was encumbered by so many different cases that he could not possibly hope to meet discovery deadlines. Giuliani seemingly lost count of the cases in which he was a defendant, remarking at one point that his list was non-exhaustive: “I might remember another case.”

The argument may have had the opposite effect of what Giuliani and his lawyer intended: if anything, it seemed that Giuliani had been accused of defaming so many different people and entities that he couldn’t keep them straight.

And, as Liman noted in his ruling, there is a potential end-date to the Georgia poll wokers’ attempts to collect on the $148 million judgment, issued in D.C. in December 2023: Giuliani has a one year ban on refiling for bankruptcy, after his last case ended amid similar attempts to dodge his legal obligations. Filing again could create a new shield around his assets.

At the same time, the contempt ruling is in some ways a shot launched very loudly and closely across the bow. Liman made a point of declining to issue a specific sanction against Giuliani. On Friday, he made a coy observation: he might not have to hold Giuliani in contempt in the turnover matter at all. “Who knows, maybe in the interim some of the material that is missing is returned,” Liman noted.

Giuliani and his attorney made a show on Monday of having received that message, trying to point towards a few items that the plaintiffs are seeking to satisfy their judgment before the court. Take Giuliani’s grandfather’s pocketwatch, a valuable heirloom that, per a court order, should have been turned over last year.

On Friday, Liman asked Giuliani whether he understood that it was required to be handed over. “I did,” Giuliani replied matter-of-factly. “I didn’t want it to be lost.”

He added later, under his breath: “If there’s one thing that means something to me.”

On Monday, Giuliani attempted to strike a different chord. At one point, speaking via Zoom with a TV background that was initially playing a video of an endlessly waving American flag before the judge asked him to turn it off, Giuliani lifted the pocketwatch, saying he had found it.

In another example, Cammarata said that the title documents for Giuliani’s Mercedes – which he had claimed on Friday were irretrievable – had turned up over the weekend. When Liman asked if the title had been handed over to the plaintiffs, Cammarata stopped: they were en route; Giuliani’s ex-wife was on the title. It would take more time. The judge grinned.