Giuliani Latest to Pay Price for Trump Support

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement for any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)

Last week a federal judge ordered former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — "America’s Mayor" — to hand over the bulk of his property to two Georgia election tabulators to partially satisfy a nearly $150 million judgment in a defamation lawsuit.

To put this in perspective, the owner and manager of the ship that caused the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year agreed to pay $102 million in cleanup costs.

The lawsuit against Giuliani was based on statements that the longtime Trump supporter made after viewing surveillance footage taken from an Atlanta-area vote tabulating center.

The footage appears to depict news media and independent poll watchers being ushered out of the counting room in Atlanta's State Farm Arena.

After all but two workers have left, they appear to pull suitcases of ballots out from a table, and run them through tabulating machines.

And as Florida-based attorney and Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told Newsmax, it wasn’t just Georgia where discrepancies were discovered after the 2020 presidential election.

"This did not happen in isolation," said O’Connell, who’s also a regular Newsmax TV contributor, "it unfolded within a highly charged political climate where election integrity was a central issue."

And indeed it was. To mention just a few apparent issues:

• In Nevada, tens of thousands of voters voted multiple times
• In Arizona more than 100,000 votes may have been improperly cast
• In Wisconsin more than 200,000 allegedly disqualified votes were cast
• In Michigan, Republican poll watchers were denied access for proper ballot monitoring
• In Pennsylvania, more than 200,000 votes were allegedly cast than there were voters

Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia — they all have one thing in common. They’re battleground states that ultimately determine who the next president will be.

Accordingly, Giuliani may have had every right to believe something wasn’t quite kosher in Georgia — and when the surveillance footage became public, the clanging from his BS detectors must have been deafening.

"We just got [the footage] at 1 a.m., a big team watched it, and we were shocked at what we saw," Jack Pick, a volunteer attorney in Georgia who presented the evidence to the state Senate afterwards, told Newsmax TV at the time.

In December, after the trial judge found Giuliani responsible for making defamatory statements against the Georgia poll workers, the eight-person jury awarded each plaintiff $20 million for defamation and $16 million for emotional distress.

The jury also awarded $75 million in punitive damages to be split between them.

They had initially asked for damages between $15 million and $43 million.

Shortly after the jury announced its damages, the former Trump lawyer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He was ordered to turn over the bulk of his property, including his:

• Manhattan co-op apartment;
• 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL500;
• furniture;
• signed photos of Yankees legends Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio;
• 26 watches; and,
• nonexempt cash in his checking accounts.

Giuliani hopes he can retain his Florida condo by declaring it his homestead.

O’Connell thought it was a bit much for watching a video and coming to the same conclusion many others had.

He told Newsmax that "Given Giuliani's financial situation, the actions taken seem excessively punitive and politically motivated, intended as a warning to others and potentially suppressing free speech."

Giuliani is now appealing the judgment, but it’s not just him.

Nearly everyone associated with former President Trump seems to have a target on his back.

That includes Roger Stone, and Trump adviser Peter Navarro.

They’re even going after billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

And of course, the former president himself has been hit with a rash of lawsuits and indictments — all to prevent his return to the White House.

But in eight more days the nation will have a chance to make everything right again.

Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.