Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani unleashed a long-winded rant against a New York judge on Tuesday, telling reporters that the jurist, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, is an “activist Democrat.”
“Have you figured out what side he’s on?” Giuliani told reporters Tuesday, referring to U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman. “Are you too dumb to see what side he’s on?”
“I’ve been a lawyer for 55 years,” Giuliani added, according to Politico. “I can figure out what side he’s on.”
Trump nominated Liman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in May 2018. He was confirmed by the Senate in December 2019 by a vote of 64-29.
Giuliani, also a former Trump attorney, added that Liman “doesn’t give a damn about the truth. He just gives a damn about being popular.”
Seth Wenig/AP
His rant against Liman arrived after the two men were embroiled in a heated back and forth at a pretrial hearing in New York related to a $148 million defamation lawsuit that two former Georgia election workers filed against Giuliani.
Liman asked Giuliani in court why he hadn’t handed over the title to his Mercedes-Benz convertible to the two election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, as ordered by the court.
Giuliani said he had requested a duplicate title for the car but that it hadn’t been issued yet. “The implication I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect,” he said. “The implication you make is against me and every implication against me is wrong.”
“I don’t have a car,” Giuliani said, according to Politico. “I don’t have a credit card. They have put a stop order on, for example, my Social Security account,” he added, referring to Freeman and Moss.
But Liman cut Giuliani off, telling him, “I permitted Mr. Giuliani to speak. Next time, I will not permit him to speak and the court will have to take action.”
Giuliani has been consumed by legal troubles since the 2020 election. In July, he was disbarred in New York over efforts to overthrow the election results that year and deliver Trump the White House.
The former mayor made “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020,” the New York appeals court wrote in its ruling. Two months later, Giuliani was disbarred in Washington, D.C.
Giuliani also faces criminal cases in Georgia and Arizona over election subversion efforts, and he was also hit with defamation lawsuits from voting technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.
Newsweek reached out to a Giuliani spokesperson for comment on Tuesday.