Election worker Ruby Freeman sobs over death threats at Rudy Giuliani defamation trial

WASHINGTON – Ruby Freeman, a 2020 Georgia election worker, told a federal jury through sobs Wednesday she was assailed with racist taunts and death threats after she was falsely accused of election fraud by Donald Trump and his campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Freeman, 64, said she had to leave her home in January 2021, after people came there with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe. Her online boutique was flooded with threatening messages, including several that mentioned lynching, after Giuliani tweeted a video of her counting votes as a temporary election worker, she said.

“I took it as though they were going to hang me with their ropes on my street,” said Freeman, who sued Giuliani for defamation. “I was scared. I didn’t know if they were coming to kill me."

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in July that Giuliani had defamed Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, when he accused them in December 2020 of stealing votes and flooding the system with illegal ballots in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on election night. The trial will determine how much Giuliani owes the women, who have asked for up to $43 million.

But the former mayor of New York may not be good for it.

Despite a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser hosted by former President Donald Trump and a $6.5 million apartment listing, Giuliani has still had trouble paying his lawyers in the numerous civil and criminal trials piling up against him, including charges of felony election racketeering in Georgia.

Giuliani's lawyer, Joseph Sibley, argued Monday that the amount of money the women want in damages is the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.”

What did Giuliani say about Freeman?

Giuliani accused the election workers “under false pretenses” of excluding observers during the vote count, of introducing “suitcases” of illegal ballots, counting the same ballots multiple times and surreptitiously passing around flash drives, the lawsuit said.

At a meeting with Georgia lawmakers on Dec. 10, 2020, Giuliani said they had stolen votes in plain sight and that 12,000 to 14,000 ballots had been illegally counted. Biden won the state by 11,779 votes.

Giuliani told lawmakers Freeman and Moss were "quite obviously, surreptitiously, passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine."

But Freeman and Moss testified at a U.S. House hearing that they were passing ginger mints.

State investigators found Giuliani’s allegations were baseless. Officials found ballots weren’t counted multiple times, as he had charged, and the suitcases of ballots were routine storage containers. A hand recount of ballots confirmed Biden’s victory, the first in Georgia by a Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 30 years.

On Jan. 6, 2021 ? the day of the Capitol riot ? a crowd on foot and in vehicles surrounded Freeman's house, the lawsuit said. She was forced to flee her home for two months, at the recommendation of the FBI, and she shuttered her online business. She later sold the house where she had lived 20 years.

“It’s so scary, any time I go somewhere, if I have to use my name,” Freeman said, gasping through tears to get her words out. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me, I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name, really.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ruby Freeman sobs over death threats in Rudy Giuliani trial