In intense testimony on Wednesday, Georgia volunteer election worker Ruby Freeman revisited how she sought help from the police twice, thinking people inspired by Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign may try to kill her.
“Just ringing, ringing, ringing. Just ringing non-stop,” she said of her phone on December 4, 2020, after Rudy Giuliani spoke about her publicly, wrongly accusing her of changing votes in the presidential election a month earlier.
Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, are suing Giuliani over defamatory statements he made about them following the 2020 election. Her testimony came Wednesday in a trial that will determine how much the former Trump attorney must pay in damages.
The case in Washington, DC, stands to become notable among defamation court actions given the women’s request for millions of dollars in damages and because of the high-profile of Giuliani, who is ordered by the judge to be in court each day. The case also has refocused attention on the human impact of disinformation spread by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election as the former president awaits his own criminal trial in the same courthouse.
Freeman said that within hours of the first video of Giuliani spouting lies about them, “I just started getting phone calls, text messages, emails, the phones just going crazy.”
When she went to the police station to report some of the calls, her phone rang so much that the police lieutenant began answering it during her interview to make a police report.
One of Freeman’s 911 calls was also played for the jury in court on Wednesday.
“They’re banging on the door,” she told the police.
Hearing the voicemails again in court on Wednesday, Freeman said her initial reaction was that they were “horrible,” “racist” and “scary.”
The courtroom was still after…
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