Georgia poll worker says she ‘doesn’t have a name’ after Rudy Giuliani accused her of election fraud

WASHINGTON (CN) — Ruby Freeman, one of two Georgia election workers accused of committing election fraud by Rudy Giuliani during the 2020 election, testified on Wednesday that her name was effectively destroyed after she was targeted. 

Giuliani had accused Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, of bringing suitcases full of fraudulent ballots into the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia to swing the election in favor of President Joe Biden, publicly lambasting the two by name over 30 times. 

Freeman described, through tears, how she began receiving countless threatening and racist messages over email, text and phone. One email, from someone calling themselves “Grand Wizard” — a reference to the Ku Klux Klan — warned her to turn herself in “or you will swing from the trees."

She said that she no longer uses her name while introducing herself to neighbors and has had to take down an online store that used her name. 

“I don’t have a name, really,” Freeman said. “That’s all you have in life, is your name.” 

Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley IV of Camara Sibley, declined to cross-exam Freeman. 

While questioning Moss on Tuesday, he tried to distance his client from the racist death threats she and her mother received following Giuliani’s claims.

Freeman’s testimony came on the third day of Giuliani’s defamation trial, where an eight-person jury must determine whether Giuliani must pay the plaintiffs up to $43 million for his defamatory statements.

The damages are the only issue left for the jury to decide, as U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell already ruled Giuliani had defamed Freeman and Moss and entered a default judgment against him after he refused to comply with court orders to turn over documents. 

Meryl Governski of Wilkie Farr, one of Freeman’s attorneys, focused part of her questions on the widely reported phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump referenced Freeman multiple times while trying to convince him to “find 11,780 votes” to hand him the state's electoral votes. 

Governski asked how Freeman felt to have “the most powerful man in the world,” talk about her that way. 

“Really? The president, talking about me?” Freeman said of her response. “How mean, how evil? I was devastated … I’m a real person and I didn’t do anything.”

Freeman added that it felt to her as if Trump and his team had been planning before the election to claim it was being stolen from him and justify his efforts to maintain his grip on power. To her, she was made "the culprit" to fill in the blanks of this plan.

The plaintiffs rested their case Wednesday after Freeman concluded her testimony. Giuliani is the only expected witness for the defense and will take the stand on Thursday, which suggests the jury may come to a decision Thursday afternoon or on Friday. 

Before Freeman took the stand, an expert witness testified that the damage to the plaintiffs’ reputations caused by Giuliani’s claims would cost up to $44.7 million to repair.

Ashlee Humphreys, a professor of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, said that the former New York City mayor’s statements in part made the Freeman and Moss “widely associated with claims of election fraud.” 

She pointed to a study she had conducted analyzing the scope, reach and impact of Giuliani’s statements, finding over 91 instances of defamatory and emotionally harming statements between Giuliani, Donald Trump and the Trump campaign. 

Across news articles, social media, television broadcasts and podcasts, Humphreys estimated a total of 249 million “receptive” impressions — she defined receptive as audience members likely to accept Giuliani’s claims, but did not specify whether that number was limited to American users. 

Humphreys suggested that to repair some of the damage, it could be effective to require Giuliani, as a “trusted source” for his audience, to publicly retract his statements and admit he wrongly accused Freeman and Moss. 

However, Giuliani would have to make these statements repeatedly in order to convince his followers that Freeman and Moss are innocent, considering how many people still believe the election was stolen and how entrenched those beliefs still are, she said.

Moss testified in the case on Tuesday and described how she lived in fear she would be recognized in public and attacked. She said that the day after Giuliani targeted her, she went to her stylist and asked her to make her “unrecognizable.” 

Humphreys also testified as an expert witness in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump for denying her allegations of sexual assault ever happened and calling her claims a “hoax and a lie” on his Truth Social platform. 

In that case, she estimated that the cost to repair the damage caused by Trump’s statements was nearly $2.7 million. 

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