Giuliani Invokes Nazi Defense As He Fights Defamation Lawsuit

In a recent deposition for the defamation lawsuit filed against him by two election workers in Georgia, Rudy Giuliani attempted to invoke a similar defense to what the Nazis used during the Nuremberg Trials. Giuliani claimed that he was simply repeating what he had been told by others when the alleged defamation took place, which is reminiscent of the "just following orders" excuse the Nazis used to avoid accountability. It didn't work then, and it won't work now, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Rudy Giuliani has a lot of legal problems going on right now. Not only is he likely to lose his legal license in the uh, Washington DC but he's also got a defamation lawsuit that he is fighting in the state of Georgia. Uh, he is already going to be sanctioned for failing to produce the evidence required in that case. But that case, which I've talked about at length, uh, was filed by two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. And what happened was that these two women were ruthlessly attacked by Rudy Giuliani, by by Donald Trump, by conservative media outlets. They said that these two women, a mother and daughter duo, they are somehow the Masterminds behind the Georgia election theft. That of course, didn't actually happen, but these two women had also sued a conservative media outlet, which settled last year for an undisclosed amount of money.

The one against Rudy Giuliani due doesn't wanna settle, but it was revealed within the last couple days that during a recent deposition in that defamation lawsuit, Rudy Giuliani actually tried to invoke his version of the Nuremberg Defense. Now you remember that, right? You've learned about it through history where you had all the former Nazis on trial for war crimes, the Nuremberg Trials, and they went up there and they said, we were just following orders. We were just following orders. Well, Giuliani, during his deposition, which by the way is under Oath, tried to use his own version of it, and he said that of the lies he was telling about Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, he was just repeating what he had been told. He was just saying what those much smarter than him told him to say, including when he suggested that Ms. Freeman had in fact served time in prison for election for fraud, which was completely fabricated. It's not a thing that happened. Let me read you this exchange from this defamation. You had a lawyer for Freeman and Moss asked Giuliani point blank, you didn't think it was important to, to do that, run a background check before you accused them of having a criminal background. And Giuliani replied, quote, I just repeated what I was told.

I was just following orders, right, Rudy? I mean, that's what you really wanted to say. You wanted to invoke that Nazi defense, but you had to put your own little spin on it. I was just repeating what I had been told. Now, here's the thing. In a defamation lawsuit, what Rudy Giuliani's defense here, what he's trying to do is basically say that, listen, I said these things because the other outlets said these things, so they're the ones technically liable for the defamation. If, if it's reported out there and I go out and repeat it, then I'm not the originator of these claims. I'm just somebody who's also

Saying them based on the false reporting of others that I had no way of knowing was false. But that is why that lawyer specifically asked, you didn't look it up like your lawyer. You know, you can get into the databases. I mean, most states, it's public record anyway. And if this woman did in fact have a criminal record, a very quick search of those databases would've revealed whether or not that was true. I mean, we're talking about a matter of less than five minutes for Rudy Giuliani to look up and verify if these claims were true before he went out there and repeated them. But he didn't do it. He didn't do it because he didn't wanna do it. He didn't do it because he knew that that might blow up his entire talking point. And if he didn't have a talking point, then he is got nothing to say, right?

This case is pretty much a slam dunk for Freeman and Moss. They're going to win this, and I think Giuliani at this point needs to understand that. I don't think he does get it. I don't think he understands the severity of this, but he is not going to prevail in this no matter how many Nazi defenses he tries to use. You can't say you were just following orders or you were just repeating what you had been told. It is on you, the individual to vet the information. And as a lawyer, as a former prosecutor, you know the tools at your disposal, you just made the choice not to use them.