Shaye Moss thought she had gotten a promotion when her boss stopped her in her office on December 4, 2020. However, when she stepped into his office, she saw that something was wrong; She realized that she was the only one smiling.
This would be the day when everything in his life would turn “upside down.”
Over two hours Tuesday, Moss, a former Atlanta election official, gave a haunting testimony describing how her world was turned upside down after that fateful day when she became aware that Rudy Giuliani had accused her of fraudulently counting mail-in ballots.
Wearing a black jacket with shiny, long acrylic nails, Moss’ hand shook as she was sworn in as a witness. He told how he was afraid that his son would come home from school and find him and his grandmother hanging from a tree in the garden. How he alienated everyone close to him because he didn’t want their reputation to be damaged. How does he have anxiety attacks? That sometimes he would have to pull over because he thought someone was following him.
He also described how he became a “pariah” at the election office and walked out of the mailroom, leaving the job he loved. She described how she felt like the “worst mother in the world” when her son failed all his classes in ninth grade after he started receiving harassing messages. That he never goes out alone and has become a “hermit crab”. She is forced to be the last customer of the nail salon or hair salon because she wants to be alone and does not want anyone to be there.
A therapist diagnosed him with acutely distressing major depressive disorder last year.
“This is my sad life,” Moss told the jury in emotional testimony Tuesday. “I feel like I’m in a dark place and all that surrounds me are conspiracies and lies.”
Giuliani explained all this, sitting quietly across from Moss in the small courtroom in Washington. The two face each other for the first time.
Moss’ testimony is at the center of a week-long hearing in which she and her mother, Ruby Freeman, seek up to $43 million in damages from Giuliani. US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so the only question left for the jury is how much the financial penalty should be. The trial entered its second day on Tuesday.
But the testimony of Moss, who repeatedly broke down in tears at the podium, makes clear the human cost on election workers of conspiracy theories—lies spread by Giuliani—stemming from Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Moss asked: “How can someone with this much power go public and talk about something they have no idea about?”
He described his worst nightmare. He opens his front door and finds a mob with nooses in front of him, ready to kill him. “The people in power are the mayors,” he said. “They can do this because of who they are. “I am nobody,” he said.
“I have constant anxious sweats,” he said. “I never go out. I will never be caught alone. “I’m like a hermit crab,” he said. “I was scared. Extremely scared. I’m always scared.”
Moss said he didn’t even know what the word “betrayal” meant when he received the first Facebook message accusing him in early December 2020. He thought it was an old word from the time of “Paul Revere.”
His son was using his old phone at the time because it might have been an internet hotspot. His classes were being held online, and Moss couldn’t afford the internet. He started receiving so many calls and messages that he was about to be kicked out of the class held on the Zoom platform.
They listened to the messages together the night he learned about Giuliani’s false statements. “I had to tell him racism was real, it came out,” he said. He would later learn that his son, a very good student, had failed all his classes.
Still, he returned to work to prepare for Georgia’s runoff elections in January 2021. “It hurts so much for people to feel that way when I have to break my back to make sure their vote counts,” she said. Although he is 39 years old, he said he hopes to retire from the election office.
The episode also transformed Moss. Before 2020, his life “lit up. “It was great,” he said. He was a cheerful being and outgoing socially. And he had a family at work, and employees were required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, before the election. Sometimes they even had their eyebrows done in the bathroom.
But after Giuliani’s comments emerged, he said people would leave the break room when Giuliani walked in. He hoped that his temporary position leading the absentee section would be made permanent, but that position was given to someone else. Moss was still responsible for training them and formalizing standard operating procedure.
“I felt like I had been slapped in the face. I felt like I was being judged for lying and my job was taken away from me,” he said.
He thought it might be a good idea to interview elsewhere and withdraw from the election. But when he went for an interview at a local Chick-fil-A, the interviewer found an article accusing him of fraud. He was so embarrassed and scared that he walked out of the interview.
During cross-examination Tuesday afternoon, Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley, tried to refute the idea that Moss is entitled to tens of millions of dollars in damages. He pressed her to explain why it would cost millions to repair her reputation.
“I personally cannot repair my reputation right now because your client is still lying to me and further damaging my reputation,” he said. “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers who are still there do not have to experience this situation. I hope that by shooting someone in the pocket, we will send a message to someone who has his entire career in his pocket.”
As part of his questioning, he asked Moss to explain why he wasn’t looking for work.
“I haven’t looked for another job because I suffer from major depressive disorder and have a lot of anxiety. “I won’t go to a job where I can’t be the best version of myself,” he said. He got emotional as he shared that he was on medication and said it was something he didn’t like to discuss publicly.
Sibley also sought to get Moss to acknowledge that the harm he suffered was a direct result of statements made by Giuliani and not by others, including the Gateway Pundit, which he and Freeman also sued for defamation.
“They are no different. They were all on the same hate train together. Mr. Giuliani was driving the bus, rounding up these people, and they were spreading lies,” Moss said.
Before the jury entered the courtroom on Tuesday, Howell asked Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley, if the former New York mayor was simply “playing for the cameras” as he made comments that he would prove Monday evening outside the Washington, D.C. courthouse. Everything he said about Moss and Freeman was true.
“When I testify you will get the full story and it will be absolutely clear that what I said was true and what happened to them; it was unfortunate if other people overreacted, but everything I said about them was true,” he said. . Asked if he regretted what he said, Giuliani said, “Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth.”
Giuliani has legally acknowledged in the past that he slandered Freeman and Moss, who are both black. His lawyer said Tuesday he wasn’t sure what Giuliani was doing.
“I’m not sure. He’s 80 years old. This took a toll on him,” Sibley said. Howell then pressed Sibley on whether Giuliani had the mental capacity to follow instructions at the hearing. “The answer is of course yes, I believe you can follow instructions,” Sibley said. “Mr. Giuliani has health issues that make attending a multi-day hearing stressful.”
Giuliani’s allegations against Freeman and Moss have been repeatedly debunked and officially cleared of any wrongdoing.
Moss also said he saw Giuliani’s comments when he returned to his hotel Monday evening. “He spread lies about us last night,” he said.
Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, told the court Monday that the damages sought by the plaintiffs would amount to a legal “death sentence” for his client, who serves as Trump’s personal lawyer.
“If you give them what they want, that will be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” he said.