Rudy Giuliani testifies at contempt-of-court hearing in defamation case

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani testified in a New York courtroom Friday for a hearing on whether he should be found in contempt of court for ignoring court orders, including for failing to surrender a signed jersey from the late Yankees Hall of Famer.

The valuable jersey was supposed to be turned over two months ago to help satisfy Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss’ $146 million defamation judgment against Giuliani.

Giuliani said the last time he’d seen the jersey was in September in his New York apartment. “Since it’s missing, I can’t tell you when it would have been moved,” he told their lawyer in his roughly three hours on the stand Friday.

Attorneys for the former Georgia election workers want U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman to find Giuliani in civil contempt for not turning over the jersey and other items he’s repeatedly been ordered surrender.

The hearing will continue Monday, with Giuliani answering questions from his own lawyer remotely.

Giuliani had sought to testify remotely on Friday as well. His attorney asked the judge in a letter Thursday if his client could appear remotely because he is “having medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues discovered last year,” attributable to his presence at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Liman indicated he was skeptical of the eleventh-hour request, noting that Giuliani “does not assert he is unable to travel,” that he submitted “no medical evidence” and that he didn’t follow proper procedure for such a request.

“He has presented no evidence why for this hearing, where the Court has been asked to hold him in contempt, where his credibility has been called into question, and where Plaintiffs have asked for an opportunity to cross-examine him in person, he should be permitted to deny Plaintiffs that opportunity and to appear remotely,” Liman wrote.

He didn’t order Giuliani to attend the hearing, but warned him he couldn’t use his recent sworn declarations and deposition transcript as part of his defense at the hearing if he doesn’t.

Giuliani’s attorney Joseph Cammarata told NBC News on Thursday night that his client would be attending, and Giuliani was on time for the hearing. He entered the courtroom with a slight limp.

Attorneys for Freeman and Moss had urged the judge to take action against Giuliani after he missed numerous deadlines to turn over his assets and financial information.

“Enough is enough,” they wrote in a court filing urging Liman to slap Giuliani with “appropriate sanctions” to get him to comply with the orders. Their filing didn’t specify what those sanctions should be; the judge could fine or even jail Giuliani if he finds him in contempt.

Giuliani testified that he’s been trying to comply with the judge’s orders and blamed delays on his previous lawyer. Asked why he didn’t comply with a court order to turn over information about medical professionals and attorneys that he’d spoken to, Giuliani said he hadn’t because he considered the request “abusive and overbroad.”

He was also challenged about his claim of ignorance on the whereabouts of the jersey, which Freeman and Moss’ attorneys have called “not credible.”

One reason for the skepticism is testimony from one of Giuliani’s oldest friends, Monsignor Alan Placa.

Placa “testified under oath during his recent deposition that he had not traveled to New York in seven years but that he had personally seen the framed, signed Joe DiMaggio shirt within the last two years, and specifically ‘at the apartment — actually, it was here in Florida,’” their filing said.

“That’s certainly where I saw it,” Placa added, according to a transcript of his deposition. “I’d never seen a Joe DiMaggio shirt before or since.”

Giuliani said Placa “is 100% wrong about this.”

“That has never been in Palm Beach,” he added.

The election workers’ attorneys maintain the failure to hand over the memorabilia is part of “a consistent pattern of willful defiance of the Court’s Turnover Orders.”

That includes failing to turn over the proprietary lease and co-op shares to his estimated $6 million Manhattan apartment, cash in his bank account and the paperwork for the 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible he belatedly surrendered in November.

“While true that Mr. Giuliani delivered the Mercedes, he has yet to turn over the title document for the car, and does not claim otherwise,” their filing said.

While Giuliani has turned over 18 luxury watches, he hasn’t surrendered eight others he said he owned in a bankruptcy filing last year, including one that he said had belonged to his grandfather that he was expressly ordered to turn over.

Giuliani suggested to reporters in early November that he doesn’t believe he has to turn over that watch, despite the judge’s ruling.

“Every bit of property that they want is available if they’re entitled to it. Now the law says they’re not entitled to a lot of it. For example, they want my grandfather’s watch; it’s 150 years old. That’s a bit of an heirloom — usually you don’t get those unless you’re involved in a political persecution,” he said.

In court Friday, Giuliani said he had yet to turn it over for fear it could get lost or damaged. It’s “one thing that means something to me,” he said.

Giuliani was also accused of failing to turn over other Yankees memorabilia, including a signed picture of another Hall of Famer, Reggie Jackson, the lawyers said. Giuliani said in a court filing that he doesn’t have such a photo. “There is no Reggie Jackson picture; the picture was Derek Jeter,” and it has been turned over, his filing said.

The election workers’ attorneys said Giuliani’s claim is “belied by his own Bankruptcy Schedule,” which listed the photo as an asset, and the fact that his former lawyer told the judge the Jackson picture was being kept in a storage facility.

On the witness stand, he said he might have had a Jackson photo in the past, but no longer did. “I’m not hiding any Yankee memorabilia,” he said, adding, “I assure you.”

As for the Manhattan co-op, Giuliani’s attorney acknowledged in a Dec. 24 court filing that Giuliani “has not delivered the shares ‘evidencing Defendant’s interest in’ his New York Apartment or the related ‘proprietary lease’ but states that he ‘did not possess’ them,” the workers’ lawyers said.

The attorneys said that’s contrary to what Giuliani said three days later at a deposition, “where he confirmed that he has a ‘box’ in Florida with ‘sensitive’ and ‘important papers’ that includes the proprietary lease and ‘probably’ the co-op shares although he hasn’t ‘looked’ in the box in probably ‘six months’ — confirming both that, in his mind, he has withheld documents he was required to deliver and did not even attempt to collect them to be turned over.”

The contempt proceeding is one of two Giuliani is facing relating to Freeman and Moss.

He has another next week in federal court in Washington, D.C., where U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell will hear arguments that he should be sanctioned for continuing to defame Freeman and Moss on his streaming show, despite a court-ordered agreement that he wouldn’t do so. They’re seeking an unspecified amount in financial penalties at the Jan. 10 hearing.

Giuliani maintains that his comments on his show weren’t defamatory and that it “is my First Amendment right to talk about the case and my defense.”

Howell is the judge who found Giuliani liable for defaming Freeman and Moss in 2023 after he repeatedly snubbed court orders to turn over required evidence to the pair, who had sued him over his claims about them amid his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results on Trump’s behalf.

They said the false accusations forced them out of their jobs and led to a torrent of racist death threats.

A jury later awarded them $148 million in damages, which the judge reduced to $146 million. Giuliani is appealing the verdict.

Giuliani has been stripped of his law license in New York and Washington, D.C., and he also faces criminal charges in two states relating to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He has pleaded not guilty in both.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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