Rudy Giuliani lawyers seek to quit defamation claim case over ‘fundamental disagreement’

Lawyers representing Rudy Giuliani in a lawsuit related to a massive defamation judgment against him are seeking to quit the case in New York federal court, citing significant disagreements with the former Trump campaign attorney over how to handle the matter.

The move came a week after the case’s judge threatened to hold him in contempt of court if he failed to surrender personal property to satisfy some of the $146 million judgment in favor of two Georgia election workers he defamed after the 2020 election while representing current President-elect Donald Trump.

Giuliani’s lawyer, Kenneth Caruso, in a filing Wednesday night wrote that he and co-counsel David Labkowski had three grounds for seeking to withdraw from the case in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Those grounds included “the client insists upon taking action with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement,” and “the client insists upon presenting a claim or defense that is not warranted under existing law.”

This third ground cited in the filing was “the client fails to cooperate in the representation or otherwise renders the representation unreasonably difficult for the lawyer to carry out employment effectively.”

Four paragraphs of the motion are blacked out in the publicly available copy of the document.

Caruso earlier had asked Judge Lewis Liman to keep the entire motion sealed, citing the need to avoid disclosing confidential information or material that is “likely to be embarrassing or detrimental to the client if disclosed.”

Liman rejected a full sealing but allowed Caruso to file a public copy that redacted paragraphs that contained confidential information related to his legal work for Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and top federal prosecutor.

Giuliani’s spokesman, Ted Goodman, in a statement to CNBC, said, “Mayor Giuliani has not been informed by Mr. Caruso of this action.”

“Surely Mr. Caruso would talk to the mayor, or at the very least inform him of such a decision,” Goodman said.

Giuliani represented Trump on the heels of the 2020 election, when the then-president was seeking to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden.

Giuliani during that time falsely claimed that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss committed ballot fraud at a Georgia vote-counting site. The women, who are mother and daughter, later sued Giuliani, alleging defamation.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., in August 2023 issued a default judgment against Giuliani in the case after he repeatedly failed to comply with orders requiring him to turn over evidence to the women’s attorneys.

A trial jury in December awarded the women $146 million in damages from Giuliani for defaming them.

The women’s lawyer has complained that Giuliani has stonewalled his efforts to obtain an array of personal items that Giuliani has been ordered to surrender to satisfy at least a fraction of the judgment.

Those items include luxury watches, baseball memorabilia and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz.