Rudy Giuliani’s shaky relationship with Newsmax continued in the latter part of 2024 as he dealt with the fallout from his being ordered to pay millions of dollars to two Georgia election workers for falsely accusing them of committing election fraud. The status of his TV show on its streaming channel was unclear — other outlets canceled his show — though it still had him on its regular TV channel to opine about things occasionally. However, it has also discontinued its promotion of a legal defense fund for Giuliani; the link to it now goes to a promotion for Newsmax magazine. Creditors, meanwhile, were eyeing Giuliani’s income from Newsmax as he tried (and failed) to get out of the $150 million judgment against him for falsely defaming two Georgia election workers.
Newsmax did have Giuliani on a few times during the election season to promote Trump and denounce the opposition:
Giuliani to Newsmax: Tim Walz’s China Ties, Socialist Views Problematic
Rudy Giuliani to Newsmax: Would Dems Side With Terrorists on Another 9/11?
Giuliani to Newsmax: Would-Be Shooter Had to Study Trump International
Rudy Giuliani to Newsmax: Questions Remain on First Trump Assassination Try
Giuliani to Newsmax: Trump Will Keep His Promises (though it appears Trump broke his promise to pay Giuliani $2 million for his work after the 2020 election)
Newsmax also noted that Giuliani would be among “invited guest speakers” at a Trump-related fundraiser for “people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol.”
On top of that, Newsmax made a couple of attempts at defending Giuliani. A paywalled Oct. 25 article by Sandy Fitzgerald carried the headline “Rudy Giuliani: A Victim of Lawfare, Not Law?” It’s unclear why Fitzgerald would think that given how Giuliani’s false defamation of two Georgia election workers was indisputably proven in court.
Michael Dorstewitz took his own stab at defending Giuliani in his Oct. 28 column, starting things off by muddying the waters:
Last week a federal judge ordered former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — “America’s Mayor” — to hand over the bulk of his property to two Georgia election tabulators to partially satisfy a nearly $150 million judgment in a defamation lawsuit.
To put this in perspective, the owner and manager of the ship that caused the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year agreed to pay $102 million in cleanup costs.
The lawsuit against Giuliani was based on statements that the longtime Trump supporter made after viewing surveillance footage taken from an Atlanta-area vote tabulating center.
The footage appears to depict news media and independent poll watchers being ushered out of the counting room in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena.
After all but two workers have left, they appear to pull suitcases of ballots out from a table, and run them through tabulating machines.
And as Florida-based attorney and Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told Newsmax, it wasn’t just Georgia where discrepancies were discovered after the 2020 presidential election.
Dorstewitz is essentially defending Giuliani’s laziness in repeating claims he refused to verify the contents of the video. And given that the Georgia story turned out to be false, shouldn’t Giuliani have been more careful about advancing other claims of election fraud that were also likely bogus? Instead, he chose to play the victim card on Giuliani’s behalf:
Accordingly, Giuliani may have had every right to believe something wasn’t quite kosher in Georgia — and when the surveillance footage became public, the clanging from his BS detectors must have been deafening.
“We just got [the footage] at 1 a.m., a big team watched it, and we were shocked at what we saw,” Jack Pick, a volunteer attorney in Georgia who presented the evidence to the state Senate afterwards, told Newsmax TV at the time.
In December, after the trial judge found Giuliani responsible for making defamatory statements against the Georgia poll workers, the eight-person jury awarded each plaintiff $20 million for defamation and $16 million for emotional distress.
The jury also awarded $75 million in punitive damages to be split between them.
They had initially asked for damages between $15 million and $43 million.
[…]
O’Connell thought it was a bit much for watching a video and coming to the same conclusion many others had.
He told Newsmax that “Given Giuliani’s financial situation, the actions taken seem excessively punitive and politically motivated, intended as a warning to others and potentially suppressing free speech.”
Both Dorstewitz and O’Connell – who was apparently quoted in the paywalled article — are absolving Giuliani from responsibility of fact-checking his claims before going public with them. The election workers were harassed and threatened because of Giuliani’s lies, as were their family members.
The warning here is against anyone who insists on telling lies even after they have been disproven. There is no right to spread lies, so “free speech” is not being “suppressed” here. It’s not “excessively punitive” to hold a liar to account, and who continued to spread those lies long after the original defamation judgment against him.
Dorstewitz closed by playing the victim card:
Giuliani is now appealing the judgment, but it’s not just him.
Nearly everyone associated with former President Trump seems to have a target on his back.
That includes Roger Stone, and Trump adviser Peter Navarro.
They’re even going after billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
And of course, the former president himself has been hit with a rash of lawsuits and indictments — all to prevent his return to the White House.
But in eight more days the nation will have a chance to make everything right again.
Stone and Navarro were “targeted” because they committed crimes. Apparently, Dorstewitz thinks people should be able to get away with crimes if they’re done for the benefit of Trump.
The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy hyped a possible comeback by Giuliani in a Nov. 4 article:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reportedly has not ruled out another possible run for his old office.
Giuliani, 80, served as mayor from 1994-2001, earning an international reputation for his work following the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center.
“I’m not going to say never, ever, ever,” he told the New York Post from Palm Beach, Florida.
“I’m not running for mayor,” he added. “But then there are a lot of people who want me to run for mayor. But it’s unlikely.”
McCarthy made no mention of the massive legal judgment against Giuliani, or the fact that Newsmax is one of his few remaining sources of income.
Giuliani was also given space to opine about the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a Dec. 6 TV appearance.
On the other hand, Newsmax has largely ignored Giuliani’s continuing legal travails. It did, however, publish a Nov. 16 wire article noting that Giuliani had agreed to turn over some assets to the women he defamed.
Resolution at last
Giuliani continued to make the occasional talking-head appearance on Newsmax proper. In a Jan. 1 appearance, he played politics with the terror attack in New Orleans: “Of course, the [Biden] administration would be very, very loathe to say ‘Islamic extremist terrorism’ since we’ve been prohibited from doing that since [former President Barack] Obama — a terrible mistake, because it’s terrible and difficult to defeat your enemy if you don’t name them. Like, if we had never named the Nazis, it might have been difficult to defeat them. But, hopefully, that’s going to change.”
Meanwhile, his legal troubles were coming to a head again — which Newsmax finally took notice of. A Jan. 3 article by Luc Cohen reported on an upcoming hearing over whether told Giuliani “in civil contempt for refusing to turn over property as payment toward a $148 million defamation award.” After Giuliani was, in fact, held in contempt, a Jan. 7 article by the apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy let Giuliani’s lawyer whine about his client being held accountable (again):
The attorney for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused the Biden administration’s Justice Department and the Democrat-led city’s legal system of teaming up to commit “lawfare” against his client.
Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.
“Today my client @RudyGiuliani was unjustly held in Contempt of Court. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, did not get what they wanted on behalf of their clients, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss,” lawyer Joe Cammarata posted Monday night on X.
“They wanted Mayor Giuliani not to be able to defend himself at the trial on January 16, 2025, but the Judge did not grant that relief, as it would have been the death penalty in this case. You did not see the Plaintiffs in Court probably because this case is not about them. This case is about lawfare and the weaponization of the legal system in New York City.”
Neither McCarthy nor Cammarata noted that (as opposed to a more fair and balanced media organization) Giuliani smeared the judge, Beryl Howell, as a Soviet and Nazi, or that Howell pointed out that Giuliani “engaged in the worst kind of defamation,” or that Howell ordered Giuliani to submit a sworn statement that there was no fraud in the 2020 election. Instead, he was given yet another chance to repeat his lies in a Jan. 7 Newsmax TV appearance:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said the fix was in during his contempt hearing in New York earlier this week, telling Newsmax on Tuesday that the judge wrote his opinion long before Giuliani testified.
Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.
Judge Lewis J. Liman issued his contempt-of-court ruling after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said the former mayor had failed to properly comply with requests for evidence over the last few months.
“I testified for six hours, had to come back on Monday to testify. The judge took a recess and read his 20-page or so opinion about 10 minutes later. What does that tell you? He wrote it before I testified,” Giuliani said on “The Chris Salcedo Show.”
Giuliani appears not to know that spewing lies about a judge on TV tends to make her less favorable to your case.
When the litigation was abruptly settled a week or so later, Newsmax offered only a brief, perfunctory report:
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has settled litigation with two Georgia election workers he accused of helping steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
In a statement on the X social media platform, Giuliani said:
I have reached a resolution of the litigation with the Plaintiffs that will result in a satisfaction of the Plaintiffs’ judgment. This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the Parties. I am satisfied with and have no grievances relating to the result we have reached. I have been able to retain my New York coop and Florida Condominium and all of my personal belongings. No one deserves to be subjected to threats, harassment, or intimidation. This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. This whole episode was unfortunate. I and the Plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.
Of course, the only person who has been exposed as committing wrongdoing or acting in a defamatory manner is Giuliani — but Newsmax isn’t going to tell its readers that. Indeed, Newsmax has done absolutely nothing on the settlement, even though there are lingering questions, such as where the money came from for Giuliani to make this confidential settlement (like, say, Donald Trump). He clearly needed the money given that he begged for some from Newsmax host Greg Kelly during a 2023 TV appearance: “You got any money you can loan me, Greg?”
A Feb. 25 wire article appears to be Newsmax’s final word on the issue, which states that “Rudolph Giuliani has ‘fully satisfied’ a $148 million judgment won by two Georgia election workers who said he defamed them by falsely claiming they helped steal the 2020 U.S. presidential election from Donald Trump, a Monday court filing shows.” Terms were not disclosed, but it appears that Giuliani “would keep his apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida, and his personal belongings. He promised not to defame the plaintiffs again.” Again, Newsmax failed to look further into the story.
Meanwhile, Giuliani continues to remain on the Newsmax payroll as a streaming host and talking head (money the court could have taken if litigation had continued), so Newsmax is never going to subject him to anything remotely resembling journalistic scrutiny.