It’s a bold strategy, Cotton.
The post Rudy Giuliani Defends His Right To Lie To The Court appeared first on Above the Law.
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Rudy Giuliani is trying to get himself held in contempt of court. There is no other explanation for his reckless, bizarre behavior in Judge Lewis Liman’s courtroom.
In the defamation suit brought by Atlanta poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, Giuliani got defaulted thanks to his total failure to cooperate with discovery. Now they’re trying to collect on the judgment, and Rudy’s up to his old tricks. He’s currently got two contempt motions pending against him — one for failure to turn over his property to pay his debts, and one for refusing to comply with discovery.
On top of that, he created a whole new problem for himself Thursday with his response to the court’s order to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned in the discovery matter. Rudy’s bright idea was to blame his former attorneys Ken Caruso and David Labkowski.
“I relied upon my prior counsels, Kenneth Caruso, Esq. and David Labkowski, Esq. to timely respond to the Plaintiffs’ discovery demands with my input as they needed, and to avoid disobeying any of this Court’s orders or discovery demands,” he wrote in his declaration, adding that he “did not intentionally or willfully disobey or violate any orders or demands.”
The problem is that the court knows that to be untrue because on the way out the door Caruso and Labkowski told the court why they were leaving in a heavily redacted motion to withdraw. And so on Friday Judge Liman gave Giuliani 24 hours to explain why he shouldn’t unseal part of Caruso and Labkowski’s declaration, since Rudy effectively invoked the advice of counsel defense and waived the privilege.
Trump’s cartoon ninja lawyer Joseph Cammarata, submitted his own filing last week suggesting that prior counsel got so overwhelmed by the plaintiffs’ motions that they “could not take it anymore, and they had to withdraw.” As that was not a sworn declaration, the court magnanimously disregarded it. Cammarata is still aiming for the stars, though, and on Saturday he responded to Judge Liman’s order with an admonition that the judge had no one but himself to blame for the pickle they were all in.
See, if Judge Liman had just allowed the substitution of counsel without requiring an explanation from Caruso and Labkowski, the lawyers would never have gone on the record and said whatever it was that proved Rudy was lying.
Had the Court signed the routinely filed Consent Order Granting Substitution of Attorney at the bottom which form states “The substitution of attorney is hereby approved and so ORDERED”, then the Court would never have considered the Defendant’s prior counsel Kenneth A. Caruso, Esq. and David Labkowski redacted motions to withdraw as counsel and declaration in support thereof (Dkt. No. 109 and 110), because the motions to withdraw should have been rendered moot once the Consent Order Granting Substitution of Attorney, was filed with the Court on November 15, 2024 as Dkt. No 119, had the Court just signed the bottom of the form that stated “The substitution of attorney is hereby approved and so ORDERED”.
Cammarata insisted that the attorneys’ parting declarations should be treated as moot, and/or Giuliani had the right to withdraw them. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the privilege waiver wasn’t limited to the document itself — by invoking the advice of counsel defense with respect to his discovery violations, Rudy waived privilege as to the issue of whether he really did rely on his lawyers to turn over his stuff.
Cammarata finished by begging the court to delay any unsealing order to give Rudy time to appeal, on the theory that “unsealing the Sealed Documents would not be in anyone’s best interests, except that it would provide more news for the press to write about, which is what has been ongoing with this case nearly each time that either the Plaintiffs or Defendant makes a filing on the dockets of this case in this Court.”
But this is not a New York state court where interlocutory appeals are the norm, and anyway, Judge Liman could think of one or two reasons why prying off the redaction bars might be in someone’s best interest. Because allowing Rudy to defend himself against the contempt charges by blaming his lawyers would constitute a fraud on the court if not outright perjury.
The declarations, if credited, undermine any notion that Defendant relied upon Prior Counsel in connection with discovery. The two state that Defendant informed them that he would not participate in discovery in this action and that he would not identify or provide access to his electronic devices for purposes of discovery. He did so against the advice of counsel.
In fact Giuliani specifically told his lawyers that he did not intend to cooperate with discovery. Here’s the sentence that got unsealed yesterday:
Defendant has informed us that he will not participate in electronic discovery in the Homestead Action. Specifically, he has informed us that he will not identify or provide access to his electronic device(s) for imaging by an electronics-discovery vendor, which we have identified. We have a fundamental disagreement with that position. Defendant’s position also constitutes a failure to cooperate with us in the representation and renders it unreasonably difficult for us to carry out our employment effectively.
WHOOPSIE!
As Judge Liman notes, Giuliani could have backed away from his lie about why his lawyers left. Instead he insisted that it was his right to repeat it, including on the stand at his contempt hearing on January 3, without waiving privilege.
“To permit Defendant to claim that he had instructed his lawyers to comply with all court orders including those requiring electronic production and that it was Prior Counsel who were responsible for the misdeeds that have plagued this case, while sitting on declarations in the court file that belie those claims, would permit him to make a ‘mockery’ of the court and its proceedings,” Judge Liman wrote incredulously, adding that the court “cannot under the law ignore the declarations of Prior Counsel and pretend that they did not exist. And it cannot consider those declarations without making them available to opposing counsel and to the public who have a right to know how the Court reaches its decisions.”
The court’s order leaves four paragraphs still redacted. It also contains this ominous footnote:
The Court found that the redactions of certain paragraphs were justified as containing privileged information. See Dkt. No. 78 at 2. The Court has no occasion at this time to revisit that conclusion or to consider whether, in fact, any privilege might have been vitiated by the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.
In a certain light this might be read as a warning to Giuliani and his lawyer — a suggestion by the court that they ought to think hard before allowing Giuliani to say anything on the stand which might contradicted by whatever remains behind those redaction bars.
Whether these two geniuses are smart enough to read the signs remains to be seen, however.
Freeman v. Giuliani [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
