Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was back in a New York courtroom on Friday to testify in what turned out to be an hours-long hearing as his attorneys insisted that the former Trump attorney was not hiding any of his assets from two Fulton County election workers after Giuliani was found to have defamed them following the 2020 election.
Some of those assets include a valuable signed Joe DiMaggio jersey that appeared to go missing after Giuliani said he last saw it around Sept. 11 in his Manhattan apartment.
The judge said Giuliani can finish his testimony Monday by appearing remotely from his Florida residence as he explains why some assets and the paperwork related to them have been hard to locate and forfeit.
When he asked a lawyer for the election workers if the plaintiffs were more interested in recovering assets than finding Giuliani in contempt, attorney Meryl Conant Governski quickly agreed, saying contempt was not “our primary goal.”
Governski, more matter-of-fact than confrontational, elicited from Giuliani how overwhelmed he felt by court orders coming at him in multiple cases across the country at once.
She left the judge, at times, to jump in with a stern statement, like when he told Giuliani flatly: “You’re in violation of a court order at least in regards to that,” referring to the DiMaggio jersey.
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Giuliani said repeatedly that he wasn’t purposefully trying to withhold assets. He portrayed himself as forgetful, disorganized at times and having delegated to others some of the chores regarding his assets and the legal case surrounding them.
He complained that the two-week time frame he was given to respond to some requests “was very short,” compared with how long he was given to provide information in 15 to 20 other court cases he’s involved in.
He said he has turned over all his valuable watches except for a 120-year-old gold watch that his grandfather gave him.
“I was holding it so it didn’t get lost,” he said. “I felt like it could get lost if it was turned over.”
When the judge asked if he understood that the watch was required to be turned over, he said he “wasn’t trying to hide it from anyone” and would give it up “if you can assure me you’ll put it in a safe place.”
Giuliani said the New York Yankees had been very good to him and he at one point had as many as 100 Yankees items, but he gave most everything away, including signed pictures of Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio together and…
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