Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is set to be the first witness at a trial over whether he can keep his Florida condominium and three World Series rings or must turn them over to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment awarded to two Georgia election workers.
The trial, heard without a jury, begins Thursday morning at a federal court in Manhattan. Giuliani, 80, will testify before the same judge who last week found him in contempt for failing to turn over information on some of his assets to lawyers for the women. As punishment, Judge Lewis J. Liman banned Giuliani from introducing some evidence.
Giuliani, who served for a time as personal attorney to President-elect Donald Trump during his first term, also was found in contempt last week in Washington, D.C. The judge there found that Giuliani continued to slander the election workers by repeating false claims that they counted votes corruptly in the 2020 presidential contest.
The latest proceeding will not be to relitigate whether Giuliani defamed the women or the amount of the judgment against him, both of which are issues that have been decided, but rather to determine whether he will get to keep certain valuable assets instead of turning them over.
Among them is his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida, which he can hang onto if he can prove it is his homestead. The former mayor says he established residence there in January 2024, but lawyers for the election workers say he continued to operate as if his New York apartment was his residence until it was surrendered in the fall as part of the judgement.
