On the morning of Halloween last week, lawyers for two former Georgia election workers walked into Rudolph W. Giuliani’s Upper East Side apartment. They were there to get an estimate on what it would cost to move the former mayor’s belongings. Not much, it turned out.
Mr. Giuliani had taken his most valuable possessions elsewhere, further delaying an effort by the two workers to collect on the $148 million judgment imposed on him for defaming them after the 2020 election. The apartment, at 45 East 66th Street, is Mr. Giuliani’s single biggest asset. He tried to sell it last year for $6.5 million. But it is just one of a catalog of his possessions that a court ordered him to turn over to the election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, by last week.
When the lawyers walked into the 10th-floor apartment last week, they found rugs, a dining table, a few small pieces of furniture and inexpensive wall art, they told the judge overseeing the case in a filing on Monday night.
Gone were the art, furniture and sports memorabilia designated to go to the women in compensation for Mr. Giuliani having falsely portrayed them as seeking to cheat Donald J. Trump as they counted the ballots in Georgia four years ago.
That wasn’t all.
The lawyers found that Mr. Giuliani had failed to sort out the paperwork necessary to transfer ownership of the apartment to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss. And other possessions of Mr. Giuliani’s that he has been ordered to surrender, including his vintage Mercedes-Benz convertible and his collection of expensive watches, had also been moved, apparently to Florida, where he has a condo.
On Tuesday, Mr. Giuliani was seen pulling up to a polling place in Florida in a convertible matching the description of the one he owns.
In response to Mr. Giuliani’s delays in turning over his assets by the previously imposed deadline of Oct. 29, Judge Lewis J. Liman of Federal District Court in Manhattan scheduled an in-person hearing for Thursday and is requiring that Mr. Giuliani be present. Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers asked the judge on Tuesday to allow Mr. Giuliani to call in to the hearing because, they said, he was scheduled to appear on live broadcasts on Thursday and Friday. The judge denied the request.
The lawyers for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss said they had learned that Mr. Giuliani had moved most of his possessions out of the Manhattan apartment four weeks before they got access to it.
A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, Ted Goodman, said in an email that Mr. Giuliani has made his assets and possessions available to the women, with the exception of a few that are in storage. He said the lawyers for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were “attempting to bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless.”
While it is not very common, there are instances when a defendant does not cooperate with court orders, said Kathleen S. McLeroy, a lawyer with Carlton Fields who specializes in these issues.
“There are people that think that they can continue to do whatever they want to do,” Ms. McLeroy said. “And unfortunately, a creditor has to be somewhat patient.”
In December, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., determined Mr. Giuliani owed the women $148 million for the damage he did to their reputations when he falsely accused Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss of ballot fraud while they were counting votes in the hotly contested Fulton County, Ga., around this time four years ago.
At the time, Mr. Giuliani was working as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and was helping to lead the effort to overturn the election.
On Dec. 3, 2020, Mr. Giuliani and the Trump campaign released an edited video of grainy footage of people counting ballots. The people were Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss. Mr. Giuliani posted the video on social media, where it was circulated for millions to see. He said they had hidden illegal ballots in suitcases.
A day later, everything changed, Ms. Moss testified last December.
Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman, who are Black, started receiving violent, racist threats against them.
One of the messages read, “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”
“I was afraid for my life,” Ms. Moss testified. “I literally felt like someone is going to come and attempt to hang me, and there is nothing that anyone will be able to do about it.”
Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss first sued Mr. Giuliani for defamation in December 2021.
For months, Mr. Giuliani routinely ignored court orders regarding his finances and his businesses. He was so unresponsive that the judge overseeing the case in Federal District Court in Washington ruled that Mr. Giuliani was liable for defaming the women, sending the case to a jury to decide the amount he should pay.
After the jury determined he owed Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss $148 million, Mr. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, which protected him from his creditors immediately seizing his assets. But he was similarly uncooperative during the bankruptcy process, leading the federal bankruptcy judge to dismiss his case some eight months later.
Mr. Giuliani faces additional lawsuits and criminal charges in two states. A former employee is also suing him for sexual harassment. He has lost his law license in New York and Washington, D.C., because of his efforts to help Mr. Trump overthrow the 2020 election results.
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