Mayor Giuliani has been held in contempt of court for failing to comply with court orders regarding the $148 million judgement he’s been ordered to pay two Georgia election workers.  A trial to determine if he must turn over his condominium in Florida and four Yankees World Series rings as a down payment on the enormous penalty is scheduled to begin on January 16.

“The defendant willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court,” a Manhattan federal court judge, Lewis Liman, ordered on Monday, as he read his decision from the bench. 

The two-day hearing, which had commenced on Friday, took place in lower Manhattan at the same federal district court for the Southern District which Mr. Giuliani dominated as the powerful U.S. attorney from 1983 to 1989. Now, he was the defendant. On Friday, he attended the hearing in person; on Monday he was able to attend virtually via video conference from his $3.5 million home at Palm Beach, Florida, that he claims is his legal residence and should thus be withheld from being given to the plaintiffs as part of the judgment. 

Mr. Giuliani, 80, who represented Trump as a private attorney during his presidency, led multiple efforts on behalf of Trump to challenge the results of the 2020 election, citing numerous allegations of voter fraud, including in Georgia. Mr. Giuliani has been criminally charged in Georgia — as one of Trump’s co-defendants in Fani Willis’ endangered RICO case — and in Arizona.

In 2023, Mr. Giuliani was found liable for defaming two poll staffers from Georgia, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, when he accused them of seeking to tilt the vote in Joe Biden favor by passing around a USB drive “like vials of heroin or cocaine.” The women, who deny wrongdoing, say a video Mr. Giuliani claimed exposed the fraud was actually the mother giving her daughter a ginger breath mint. The authorities have cleared them of any wrongdoing.

The mother and daughter say they received death threats after Mr. Giuliani’s allegations and sued him for defamation in 2021. 

Mr. Giuliani told a federal court in Washington that he did not dispute that his comments about Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman “carry meaning that is defamatory per se.” He added, though, that his statements were “solely for purposes of this litigation” and were made “without admitting to the truth of the allegations.”

In December of 2023, a jury ordered him pay the women $148 million. 

Mr. Giuliani, who’s thrice divorced and has had financial difficulties for years, says he doesn’t have close to that amount and has resisted paying the women anything while he appeals. In court filings, the attorneys for the poll workers wrote that so far, Mr. Giuliani has not turned over “a single dollar from his nonexempt cash accounts.” They also say he has failed to turn over a jersey signed by the baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. He testified on Monday that he does not know the jersey’s whereabouts. 

Mr. Guiliani did hand over his Manhattan apartment, but without the necessary paperwork, and his prized Mercedes, which used to belong to the actress Lauren Bacall, but without the car’s title. Mr. Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Cammarata, told the judge on Monday that the car title was still held up at the DMV because they needed to remove his client’s ex-wife’s name from it.    

“It’s not non-compliance, it’s cutting through a lot of red tape,” Mr. Cammarata argued.

Judge Liman was not convinced. “It’s not hard,” he barked back.

The upcoming trial will seek to determine if the women can also collect his condominium in Florida and the four Yankees World Series rings, which were given to him by the team’s late owner, George Steinbrenner. Mr. Giuliani claims he gave the rings to his son, Andrew, in 2018, a gift the younger Giuliani has corroborated.

Mr. Guiliani “blew past” a December 20 deadline, the judge said, to provide the court with documents proving that the condominium in Florida is in fact his primary residence, as he claims, and not, as the plaintiffs allege, his vacation home. The documents he failed to hand over include a list of his doctors, and other service providers, as well as emails and text messages, regarding his “travel, and whether Florida was his homestead,” the judge found.    

Legal disputes over whether wealthy New Yorkers can claim Florida residency are not uncommon in the courts, due to Florida’s low taxes and laws that prevent creditors from seizing a primary residence. New Yorkers seeking to prove they have really moved to Florida — rather than just having a condo in Palm Beach or Miami — often must present detailed travel records along with documentation to show that their core service providers, such as doctors, are in the Sunshine State.

During his testimony, Mr. Guiliani blamed the attorneys for the poll workers, saying they had set “traps” in their requests for the documentation, a claim that the judge described as “preposterous” and “not an excuse for violating court orders.”      

Nonetheless, the judge did not issue any penalties against Mr. Giuliani, despite holding him in contempt of court. Instead, he said, he expected that documents would prove during the upcoming trial that none of Mr. Giuliani’s service providers, including his doctors, were located in Florida and that he did not in fact reside there.   

“It’s tragic to watch as our justice system has been turned into a total mockery, where we have charades instead of actual hearings and trials,” a statement released by Mr. Giuliani’s publicist read. “Unfortunately, it’s getting worse and worse because so few members of the legal community are willing to speak up or do anything about the weaponization of our justice system, and that needs to change.”

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers have said they believe his items will be returned to him when they win the case on appeal. Huge judgements levied by a lower court in lawsuits like the one brought against the former mayor are often reduced substantially or thrown out entirely on appeal.

Aaron Nathan, one of the attorneys for the election workers, did not comment after Monday’s ruling.