• Ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani risks being held in contempt in federal court in Manhattan.
• Two GA election workers said he repeatedly ignored court orders in their federal defamation case.
• If he's found in contempt, Trump could not issue a pardon or commute his sentence.

Rudy Giuliani took the witness stand in federal court in New York on Friday, battling a potential contempt-of-court finding sought by two Georgia election workers — and Donald Trump can't come to his rescue if he loses.

If a judge decides Giuliani has flouted court orders by failing to turn over assets and evidence in the three-year-old defamation case, he could fine Giuliani or send him to jail until he complies.

The federal pardon and commutation powers Trump regains on his return to the White House next month do not extend to civil contempt sentences.

According to experts in constitutional law and federal pardons, Giuliani would not be able to rely on his former client to save him from jail or fines.

"Generally criminal contempt is within the power of the president, but civil contempt is not," said Margaret Love, a lawyer who served as the Justice Department pardon attorney in the 1990s.

Giuliani was combative on the stand on Friday, at a daylong contempt-of-court hearing overseen by US District Judge Lewis Liman in a courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

The hearing, which will continue next week, is part of a suite of civil cases brought by mother-daughter Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.

"This is monstrously overbroad," Giuliani complained of Moss-Freeman asset-document requests during questioning at one point on Friday. "It's abusive and overbroad."

A federal judge in Washington, DC, found in 2023 that Giuliani defamed the pair — and subjected them to a barrage of racist death threats — by repeatedly and falsely accusing them of voter fraud, including by lying that they had tallied suitcases full of illegal ballots for Joe Biden.

In December 2023, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss $148 million. In recent weeks, the two plaintiffs have sought to have him held in contempt in DC and in Manhattan to force him to comply with judges' demands that he cease defaming them and turn over assets and evidence as ordered.

The contempt hearing is scheduled to continue Monday morning.

Giuliani's defense has focused on his recent switch of lawyers from Kenneth Caruso, an experienced New York-based attorney he has known for nearly 50 years, to Joseph Cammarata, best known for representing a woman who accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.

Giuliani swapped lawyers sometime in November. Giuliani said that changing attorneys had made it a challenge to meet deadlines — an excuse that the pair's lawyers did not accept.

Cammarata said in court Friday that his client has completed "substantial compliance" with his obligations and should not be held in contempt.

He said that Giuliani, who is 80 years old, has struggled to deal with an avalanche of legal proceedings against him, including criminal investigations. Prosecutors in Arizona and Georgia have brought cases against Giuliani over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.

"Mayor Giuliani, as this court knows, has multiple litigations going on in multiple states, both civil and criminal in nature," Cammarata said.

Giuliani took the stand — struggling up a step by the podium — after the court's lunch break. At the beginning of the break, he complained to Jane Rosenberg, a courtroom artist, about how she depicted him in one of her pastel drawings.

"You made me look like my dog," he told her, Rosenberg said.

Giuliani was cross-examined by Meryl Conant Governski, an attorney representing Freeman and Moss, about two sworn declarations he had submitted to the court saying that he's abided by all of the judge's orders and provided proper responses to information requests and interrogatories.

He said that the turnaround time required for discovery requests was "unusually short" even though his previous attorney, Caruso, had agreed to the 14-day response deadlines.

In the morning, Cammarata cross-examined Aaron Nathan, an attorney representing Freeman and Moss, over how he determined whether the former New York mayor had failed to account for his property. Many of the questions concerned Giuliani's framed Joe DiMaggio jersey that once hung over the fireplace in his Manhattan apartment.

When Nathan gained access to the apartment in October and searched the residence, it was gone.

"This jersey has been at the forefront of the case," Cammarata said in one heated moment. "There have been accusations that my client absconded with the jersey. And that is not the case."

Cammarata, in winding and plodding cross-examination, pointed out that the photo of the jersey in the apartment was taken in the summer of 2023, and time had passed before Nathan went into the apartment and saw the location himself.

"Your honor, if I may, I want to take his testimony about the passage of time," Cammarata objected after the judge cut off his questioning on the subject.

The day before Friday's hearing, Giuliani asked for permission to attend virtually, due to "medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues discovered last year," as his lawyer, explained it in a letter to the judge.

The breathing problems are "attributable to Defendant Rudolph W. Giuliani being at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001," Cammarata wrote.

Giuliani attended in person after the judge warned he'd otherwise be barred from testifying on his own behalf.

Should Giuliani be found in contempt, "the executive pardon power would not extend to a civil contempt sentence," even in a federal court, said former federal prosecutor Ephraim Savitt.

That's because Giuliani's jailing wouldn't be a punishment for a past infraction — instead, it would be a remedial sentence, meant to force his compliance with the judge's orders.

"Civil contempt sentences are essentially open-ended," meaning Giuliani could only be freed once he had complied, said Savitt.

"It's a means of coercing a party to take some action, to compel compliance," said Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School.

"So long as Giuliani has the keys to his own cell, and can be freed by simply complying with the judge's order, then there is no crime to be pardoned or punishment to be reprieved," he added.

• In December, two Georgia election workers won a $148M defamation judgment against Rudy Giuliani.
• Thanksgiving is the one-month anniversary of Giuliani's deadline to turn over assets.
• Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have received a car and apartment without the paperwork to sell either.

Last month, a federal judge in Manhattan gave Rudy Giuliani a deadline: he had until October 28 to turn over millions of dollars in real estate, sports memorabilia, cash, and jewelry to the mother-daughter Georgia election workers he defamed after the 2020 election.

It's now exactly one month later — Thanksgiving — and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, still have little to thank him for.

Their lawyers say that, to date, the only thing they've collected free and clear are a handful of Guiliani's watches.

Yes, Giuliani has turned over his Mercedes and he has vacated his New York City apartment — but he has yet to provide Freeman and Moss with the vehicle title and co-op shares they need to turn these two assets into actual cash.

Other Giuliani assets are simply AWOL, including a signed Joe DiMaggio jersey that has apparently vanished among decades of his belongings inside a storage facility in Ronkonkoma, New York.

"If they can't find it, they can't find it," Giuliani, 80, told Business Insider of Joltin' Joe's jersey on Tuesday, after a court hearing on the case. "It's in the warehouse, as far as I know."

The one-time lawyer to Donald Trump meanwhile faces contempt-of-court fines and possibly a jail term for continuing to falsely accuse Freeman and Moss of election rigging on his nightly "America's Mayor" livestreams.

Giuliani — who said Tuesday he still "consults" with the president elect — also continues to call himself a victim.

"I don't have a car, I don't have a credit card, I don't have cash," he complained to the judge in court on Tuesday. "I don't have a penny that isn't tied up by them," he said of Freeman and Moss.

Here, according to court testimony and filings, is the latest on what Giuliani has failed to turn over.

A $5.6M Manhattan apartment

Giuliani's most valuable single asset is a three-bedroom, 10th-floor, corner co-op apartment he owned outright — without a mortgage — on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

He was ordered to turn the property's proprietary lease and co-op share copies to Freeman and Moss by October 28 — along with such valuable furnishings as the signed DiMaggio jersey and signed photos of Yankees Stadium and Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson that used to hang on the apartment walls.

Giuliani's lawyers have since said he has lost his copy of the shares and lease, which are still in the name of "Judith and Rudolph Giuliani." Giuliani divorced Judith Nathan, his third wife, in 2019, but never removed her name from the paperwork when he bought out her share of the co-op, his lawyers said.

Without the updated shares and lease, the apartment cannot be sold.

As for the furnishings, Giuliani's lawyers say these were moved to a patriotic event space and storage warehouse in the Long Island hamlet of Ronkonkoma, New York.

The Freeman-Moss attorneys said Friday that they have been unable to find any of Giuliani's artwork and sports memorabilia for the apartment. If these are indeed in the warehouse, as they put it in court papers two weeks ago, they are "commingled with other property of questionable value," including Giuliani's old drapes, blankets, "Christmas supplies," and a "small cigar box."

"We've sort of run out of patience," attorney Aaron Nathan said in court Tuesday, adding his team searched the warehouse, and the sports memorabilia is still unaccounted for. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Giuliani to separate these items from his other belongings inside the warehouse.

A $3.5M Palm Beach condo

Giuliani has claimed his $3.5 million Palm Beach condo, which he also owns outright, is his primary residence and so exempted under Florida law from civil seizure.

A January 16 trial — before federal Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan — will determine if Giuliani can keep the property.

The trial will also determine if Freeman and Moss will get three Yankees World Series rings — valued at around $50,000 each — that Giuliani says are not his to turn over because he gave them to his son, Andrew, in 2018.

"I told you when I got these that they would be yours someday," the younger Giuliani recalled his father telling him, according to a sworn court filing from last month.

Freeman and Moss have subpoenaed the elder Giuliani's tax accountants, Mazars, USA, to see if he declared gifting the rings to his son.

$2M from Donald Trump's campaign

Giuliani declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy soon after a federal jury in Washington, DC, set his $148 judgment last December — his penalty for the racist death threats and other harassment Freeman and Moss suffered after what the judge said were his "extreme and outrageous" defamation.

A bankruptcy judge dismissed the bankruptcy case within six months, citing Giuliani's "failure to provide even basic disclosure" of his assets.

But Giuliani did disclose that his largest debt was $2 million he said the 2020 Trump campaign owed him for his work before and after the election.

It will now be up to Freeman and Moss to pursue the campaign for that money, through still more litigation if necessary.

Lauren Bacall's 1980 Mercedes

Earlier this month, after weeks of what the Freeman-Moss attorneys called "foot-dragging," Giuliani drove 1980 blue Mercedes convertible, once owned by actor Lauren Bacall, to a Florida storage unit.

Problem was, there is no title. Giuliani says he can't find it. On Tuesday, his lawyer said that the title has been lost, and that his client's efforts to get a replacement title have so far failed.

"The car keys without the title is really meaningless, US Court Judge Liman told Giuliani's attorney Joseph Cammarata.

"Your client is a competent person. He was the United States attorney for this district," added Liman. "He knows he can apply for a title for the car."

Giuliani served as US attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.

Giuliani and his lawyer promised the judge Tuesday they would "immediately" secure a replacement title to the car.