Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has filed a defamation lawsuit against President Joe Biden over his remarks made during the final 2020 presidential debate.
Giuliani’s 16-page lawsuit was filed in New Hampshire on Wednesday.
The lawsuit cites two specific comments made by Biden during the presidential debate on October 22, 2020.
The first comment came after Biden was asked about foreign election interference.
“Well I won’t get — I shouldn’t — well, I will,” Biden said. “His [Trump’s] buddy, Rudy Giuliani. He’s being used as a Russian pawn. He is being fed information that is Russian — that is not true.”
The lawsuit says that this comment “falsely claimed and depicted the Plaintiff to our nation as a liar.”
Next, Trump had mentioned Hunter Biden’s laptop, prompting Biden to demand time to respond.
“Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan,” Biden demanded. “They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
Giuliani had obtained Biden’s son’s laptop contents after it was abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware.
Biden referenced a letter from 50 highly partisan former intelligence officials who claimed, without evidence, that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
“Defendant Biden knew that the preceding statement about the laptop and asserting that the Plaintiff lied about the content of the laptop were untrue and Defendant Biden knew it to be untrue,” Giuliani’s lawsuit states, according to a report from The Hill.
Biden’s campaign and several fundraising committees are also named in the lawsuit. The complaint alleges two counts of defamation, one count of libel and one count of false light invasion of privacy.
The former mayor is asking for damages and for Biden to publicly state that his comments were false.
“For over fifty years, the Plaintiff has provided public and professional service for and on behalf of the American people that only can be regarded as historic,” the lawsuit states.
Giuliani is facing several civil suits and is one of the Trump associates who has been charged alongside the former president over alleged “election interference” in Georgia. He has pleaded not guilty.
