With former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani yet to enter a Georgia courtroom and face racketeering charges, his life, finances and reputation are all in tatters and he has only himself to blame for it.
In a column for MSNBC, constitutional law expert Gerry Weber suggested the man once called “America’s mayor” threw it all away for Donald Trump and his actions in Georgia, which resulted in both a civil lawsuit and a criminal indictment, led him to make terrible decisions that are directly responsible for his downfall.
As Weber explained, Giuliani’s loss in a defamation case, which are notoriously hard to prove, can be directly attributed to his destroying evidence — something every lawyer knows is beyond the pale.
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“Despite having been a lawyer for more than 50 years, the judge said Giuliani was destroying evidence in the defamation lawsuit even as he was warned repeatedly about the consequences.” Weber wrote before adding, “Destroying evidence risks the nuclear bomb of consequences in any lawsuit, namely, a default judgment. A default judgment means the defendant’s liability is sealed, and fault is determined. Key to the issuance of the most egregious of sanctions is whether the party who destroyed evidence did so in bad faith.”
Noting that Judge Beryl Howell wrote, “The fact that Giuliani is a sophisticated litigant with a self-professed 50 years of experience in litigation …. only underscores his lackluster preservation efforts,” Weber added, “Default was really the only option.”
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Writing, “Giuliani has only himself to blame,” Weber continued, “And the legal system itself has been sullied, too, by a man who was once a hero to folks of all political stripes but is now a self-admitted fabulist who helped trigger a mob. Defamation cases are hard to win. But not when an experienced and once respected lawyer destroys evidence and hides the truth.”
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