New York former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s attorney tried to distance his client from the major violent threats faced by Georgia election employees he deceitfully accused of fraud, stating St. Lois-based Gateway Pundit was more responsible.
Attorney Joseph Sibley argues that Giuliani had a small role to play in the fraudulent elections. Gateway Pundit has been called “Patient Zero” and is spreading rumors and creating stressful situations. Giuliani has been ordered to pay $148 million in damages for killing the reputation of election workers.
The attorney tried to distance Giuliani from threats
Former Mayor Rudy’s attorney, Joseph Sibley, tried to distance his client from the threats faced by the election workers.
Sibley stated that Rudy was a minor player in the fraud of elections that led to a load of threats against Wandrea Moss and Rudy Freeman.
Moss said that her life has been a turnaround by the continuous threats and false allegations.
Gateway Pundit was highlighted for creating false theories and rumors
Attorney Sibley pushed that Gateway Pundit as patient zero in creating fake rumors and creating situations that cause heavy distress to election workers. The right-wing website is getting sued for emotional distress and defamation in St. Louis Circuit Court.
The website also released many stories about Moss and Freeman, which contributed to the spread of false theories, which resulted in stress and defamation.
The court ordered Giuliani to pay heavy damages
The jury in the court ordered Rudy to pay more than $148 million as a fine in damages for killing the reputation of Moss and Freeman and creating an emotionally stressful situation for them. This decision was made after Rudy was found to have defamed the workers.
The saga is closely monitored in Missouri, where Freeman and Moss are using Gateway Pundit. Founded by brothers Joe Hoft and Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit was among the first, if not the first, person to identify Freeman as an election worker accused by allies of Trump of ballot fraud in Georgia.
The site also released headlines like “Crooked Operative…..Ballots in Georgia are Identified” and “How about some arrests?”
Long going case
Last year, Moss testified that all this has turned her life upside down. Over the last twenty years, The Gateway Pundit has slowly turned into a major media ecosystem, using its reach and media to spread conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland shooting to Former President Obama’s birth certificate, to name a few.
The Hosts are represented by Marc Randazza, a law firm in Vegas. In the last past, they have represented many far-right personalities like Andrew Anglin of the neo-nazi website and Alex Jones of Infowars.
The Hofts argues that the stories published by Gateway Pundit related to Moss and Freeman were opinion-based statements on disclosed convos or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that will not be interpreted by any reasonable reader as a fact.
Weeks after Trump lost his second term bid, Rudy was allowed to testify in Zoom to a Missouri House committee, where he talked about disproven talks about hacked voting machines and shady mail-in ballots. He especially told lawmakers that election officials in Georgia covertly counted illegal ballots to secure Joe Biden’s presidency, according to a video released by Gateway Pundit.
Three years later, after the Zoom testimony, Rudy conceded in a measured court filing that his thoughts about election workers in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election were false.
Because of fake fraud claims by Rudy and others, Moss and Freeman were bombarded with threats consisting of racial slurs and abuse. This week, Freeman told the court jury that she was continuously getting messages, phone calls, and letters filled with countless threats and harmful remarks. She was forced to migrate for two months for her safety and well-being.
