Giuliani turns over Mercedes, watches to Georgia poll workers he defamed
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(NEW YORK) — After months of legal wrangling, Rudy Giuliani on Friday turned over his luxury sports car, several watches, a ring and financial assets to two Georgia election workers he defamed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, his lawyer wrote Friday.
A federal jury ordered Giuliani last year to pay Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss nearly $150 million for defaming them with false accusations that the mother and daughter committed election fraud while the two were counting ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County on Election Day in 2020.
The attorneys for both sides waged a back in forth in court for months over the delivery of those assets and, last week, attorneys representing Freeman and Moss said Giuliani’s apartment was virtually empty when their receivership entered the property.
The poll workers’ representatives accused Giuliani of “secreting away” his property.
The former New York City mayor was given a Nov. 14 deadline to turn over the shares in his Upper East Side co-op apartment, valuable sports memorabilia, a blue Mercedes-Benz convertible that once belonged to Lauren Bacall, and luxury watches — including one that belonged to Giuliani’s grandfather.
Joseph Cammarata, Giuliani’s attorney, said in a four-page letter to U.S. Judge Lewis Liman, that “watches and a ring were delivered via FedEx” to an address in Atlanta on Friday morning, and that “the Mercedes Benz automobile was delivered as requested” to an address in Florida.
Giuliani’s bank was “advised to turn over all non-exempt funds” to the plaintiffs, as well, according to the filing.
Liman issued a warning that he would file a motion of contempt if Giuliani didn’t comply with the order to transfer the assets to Freeman and Moss.
Earlier on Friday, Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, posted a video on X with several watches arrayed on a table.
“This right here, folks, this is the accumulation of 60 years of hard work,” Goodman said.
Despite giving up those assets, Cammarata argued that his client should not give up other assets.
He wrote a lengthy list of items they deemed “exempt,” including some jewelry of lower value, a refrigerator, a radio receiver and other household furniture. He also said a Joe DiMaggio jersey was part of the “overbroad” turnover list and will fight to keep it.
The attorney argued that the court “should never have allowed the turnover” of the Mercedes Benz, arguing that the car should be appraised and returned to Giuliani if the value does not exceed $5,500.
Cammarata also requested that the court reschedule a trial in this matter currently scheduled for Jan. 16, 2025, until after the inauguration, as Giuliani “plans to be present” at events in Washington that week.
Representatives for Freeman and Moss didn’t immediately comment on the delivery of the assets.
(WASHINGTON) — Russia and Iran are using artificial intelligence to influence the American election, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday.
“Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content,” an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “The IC (intelligence community) considers AI a malign influence, accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool.”
Officials saw AI being used in overseas elections, but it has now made its way to American elections, according to intelligence officials, who says there is evidence Russian manipulated Vice President Kamala Harris’ speeches.
Russia “has generated the most AI content related to the election, and has done so across all four mediums, text, images, audio and video,” an ODNI official said.
“These items include AI generated content of and about prominent U.S. figures whose content is also consistent with Russia’s broader efforts to boost the former president’s candidacy and denigrate the Vice President and the Democratic Party, including through conspiratorial Americans,” according to an ODNI official.
Russian AI content has sought to exploit hot-button issues to further divide Americans, the ODNI said.
“The IC also assesses that Russian influence actors were responsible for altering videos of the vice president’s speeches,” the official said.
Russia’s altering of videos runs the “gamut” from painting her in a personal bad light, and compared to her opponent and they are using both AI and staged videos, the official said.
The country was targeting President Joe Biden’s former campaign, but once he dropped out of the race it had to “adapt” to targeting the vice president’s campaign, the official said.
“Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general, and they have a better understanding of how U.S. elections work and where to target and what state what states to target,” an ODNI official said.
Iran has also used AI in its election influence efforts, including help in writing fake social media posts and news articles to further Iran’s objectives, which are to denigrate the former President Donald Trump’s candidacy, the official said.
Iran is also using AI to sow discord on hot-button issues, an official said.
“One of the benefits of generative AI models is to overcome various language barriers, and so Iran can use the tools to help do that, and so one of the issues that could be attractive or using foreign language for that is immigration,” an ODNI official said. “The reason why Iran is focused on immigration is because they perceive it to be a divisive issue in the United States, and they identify themes, and this is broadly speaking, they identify themes with which they think will create further discord the United States.”
Officials have previously assessed Iran prefers that Vice President Harris win the 2024 election.
China has also been using AI to generate fake news anchors and social media content with pro-China propaganda, they said.
The intelligence community assesses that AI is an “accelerant” to influence operations, but doesn’t yet have the capability to be believable.
Adversaries are also using AI to go back and forth with people in the comments.
As to whether what occurred in 2020 might happen again — where the election might not be called on Election Day — this period is something the IC is “watching” closely and is of “great interest.”
“The various influence actors have fairly steady state influence operations that seek the stoking of division and undermine U.S. democracy,” an ODNI official said.
During the Democratic primaries, the use of an AI generated robocall was used to give misinformation about voting the result was state criminal charges being brought against the individual who sent the recording and an FCC fine.
A foreign adversary engaging in that tactic would be a “top concern” for intelligence officials, an official said.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The race for the White House is heading into the final stretch with most polls showing Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck-and-neck in key states with just about two weeks to go.
Harris, Cheney to make the case to disaffected Republican voters
Harris is stumping with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The two will hold a moderated conversation in each of the “blue wall” states.
Cheney endorsed Harris in early September, warning Trump posed a threat to democracy after what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our capitol to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” Cheney said at her first joint appearance with Harris earlier this month.
“I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, that is depravity, and we must never become numb to it,” she continued. “Any person who would do these things can never be trusted with power again. We must defeat Donald Trump on Nov. 5.”
Trump to survey hurricane damage before rally in North Carolina
At noon, Trump will survey devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina.
He’ll later hold a 3 p.m. rally in Greenville before a 6:30 p.m. meeting with faith leaders in Concord.
Trump has criticized the Biden-Harris response to the storm, and spread misinformation about the federal government’s recovery efforts and assistance. Such misinformation, Biden and other officials have said, is harming those who need assistance and resulting in threats against FEMA workers.
Polls show close race between Harris, Trump
The latest polling averages from 538 show the two candidates running even in key swing states Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump, meanwhile, has a slight lead over Harris in Georgia and Arizona.
Overall, 538’s national polling average shows Harris ahead by just 1.8%.
Photo Credit: Prince Williams/WireImage/James Devaney/GC Images
(WASHINGTON) — The race for the White House remained essentially a dead heat on Friday — with 11 days to go until Election Day.
Kamala Harris was headed to Texas to highlight abortion access and Donald Trump was set to appear on Joe Rogan’s highly-popular podcast.
More than 31 million have voted as of Friday morning
As of Friday morning, more than 31 million Americans had voted early, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
Of the total early votes numbering 31,402,309, in-person early votes accounted for 13,687,197 ballots and mail-in ballots numbered 17,715,831.
This means that more than 16 million people have voted since Monday.
-ABC News’ Emily Chang
Harris to hit Trump for not releasing medical records at Texas rally on abortion rights
Harris will go after Trump in her speech in Houston, Texas, on Friday night that will focus on reproductive rights.
“The Attorney General of Texas is suing the United States Government so that Texas prosecutors can get their hands on the private medical records of women who leave the state to get care,” Harris will say, according to released excerpts of her speech.
“So, see what is happening: Donald Trump won’t let anyone see his medical records. But these guys want to get their hands on yours? Simply put: They are out of their minds,” she will say.
The vice president will reiterate her campaign pledge to push Congress to pass a bill restoring Roe v. Wade if elected.
“We are fighting for an America where, no matter who you are, or where you live, you can make that decision based on what is right for you and your family,” Harris will say.
ABC News’ Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Fritz Farrow and Will McDuffie
Harris rips Trump over his ‘garbage can’ comments
Speaking to reporters before her event later today in Houston, Harris said she wanted to address Trump’s comment that America has become a “garbage can” and “dumping ground” for migrants from around the world.
“You know, it’s just another example of how he really belittles our country,” Harris said. “This is someone who is a former president of the United States, who has a bully pulpit, and this is how he uses it, to tell the rest of the world that somehow the United States of America is trash.”
“And I think, again, the president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are and invest in the best of who we are, not someone like Donald Trump, who is constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are,” the vice president added.
Trump’s comments are the latest example of his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
-ABC News’ Will McDuffie
Walz says it’s time to ‘execute’ at fundraiser
In what could have been his final financial event of the campaign, Tim Walz, at a fundraiser in Pennsylvania, said it was now time to use all that money to focus on the ground game.
“Now it’s time to execute … Never in my lifetime, would I have believed that the choice would be so stark,” he said.
The Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee entered the final three weeks of the election with a clear cash advantage over the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, latest FEC records show.
As of Oct. 16, the Harris campaign, the DNC and their joint fundraising committees reported having nearly $270 million in cash on hand compared to $202 million the Trump campaign, the RNC and their joint fundraising committees had in the bank, the new filings show.
The Trump campaign committee, in particular, had $36 million in the bank as of Oct. 16 compared to the Harris campaign committee having $119 million in cash on hand.
-ABC News’ Isabella Murray and Soorin Kim
Trump repeats threat to jail election officials
Trump on Friday reposted his earlier message promising, before any evidence of fraud, to prosecute and deliver long prison sentences for election workers and others who he deems to have cheated during November’s election.
“Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Election officials had called such a threat “dangerous” given the heightened threat environment.
“It makes me concerned that this will set other people off. I think the one thing that we’ve seen before is that words have consequences and meaning,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told ABC News last month.
“And while we are concerned, we are also prepared. Elections officials across the country have been working with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to monitor and track threats, to make sure we’re keeping our voters safe and make sure we’re keeping our elections officials safe,” Fontes said.
Harris says she hasn’t voted yet but it’s on ‘priority list’
Harris, taking reporter questions on Friday, was asked if she’s cast her ballot yet.
Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, voted with his wife and son in Minnesota earlier this week.
Harris said she hasn’t voted but “it’s on my priority list for these next few days.”
Trump to call into Virginia rally after voter purge program halted Trump is attempting to place doubt about voter rolls in Virginia after a judge ordered voters purged from election rolls as a result of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s directive to be reinstated.
A federal judge said on Friday Youngkin’s program violated the National Voting Rights Act of 1993.
“This is a totally unacceptable travesty, and Governor Youngkin is absolutely right to appeal this ILLEGAL ORDER, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hopefully fix it! Only U.S. Citizens should be allowed to vote. Keep fighting, Glenn – AND REPUBLICANS IN VIRGINIA, KEEP VOTING EARLY!” Trump posted on his social media platform.
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump is set to rally with Youngkin on Saturday. Trump said he plans to call into the rally to highlight the issue.
“I will be calling in to Glenn’s Rally with Lara Trump tomorrow morning to talk about this crazy Ruling, and announce my final stop in Virginia before Election Day.”
-ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
Pennsylvania county says it stopped thousands of voter registration fraud incidents
Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County Board of Elections said that approximately 2,500 suspected fraudulent voter registration applications were dropped off at the election office in two batches around the deadline to register.
The deadline to register in the swing state was Oct. 21.
The board said “concerns were raised” during the normal review process and law enforcement was alerted.
Notably, the board says in its statement that the fraud was “identified and contained” and lauded this incident as one that shows that the election “system is secure.”
“Our system worked,” the board declared. “We will continue to operate with the highest levels of veracity, integrity, and transparency so that Lancaster County voters can be confident in our election.”
-ABC News’ Olivia Rubin
The Washington Post won’t endorse a presidential candidate
The Washington Post announced Friday it will not issue an endorsement in this year’s election — a first for the legacy newspaper in more than three decades.
“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” publisher William Lewis wrote in a note explaining the decision.
The Post follows the Los Angeles Times in not backing a candidate.
Both newspapers had endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020 against Trump.
McConnell, Johnson rebuke Harris for calling Trump ‘fascist’
In a rare joint statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly condemned Harris calling Trump a “fascist” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
The two Republican leaders say Harris’ remarks have “only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus. Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over. The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility.”
McConnell and Johnson say they have been briefed on the “ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump.”
Harris quickly seized on John Kelly’s comments to The New York Times this week that he believed Trump fit the description of a fascist. Kelly served as Trump’s chief of staff and is a retired general.
Trump has claimed for months that Harris is a “fascist” or “communist” or “Marxist.”
-ABC News’ Lauren Peller
Virginia judge strikes down voter purge that impacted 1,600 people
A federal judge issued a partial ruling finding that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order to conduct a daily voter purge process violated the National Voting Rights Act of 1993.
A total of 1,600 voters removed from the rolls since August must be added back within the next five days.
The judge said the process left no room for individualized inquiry, which violated the act’s requirement that “when in the 90-day provisional, it must be done on an individualized basis.”
-ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson
Trump zeroes in on ‘blue wall’ states
Trump will embark on a rigorous schedule making his final pitch to voters. The former president is focusing on the “blue wall” states this weekend and early next week, specifically targeting Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
After stops in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump will culminate his weekend campaigning with a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, in which the former president has coined as a “celebration of the whole thing” with his nine years of campaigning coming to close.
-ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh, Lalee Ibssa and Soorin Kim
Americans accused of noncitizen voter fraud face doxxing
Eliud Bonilla, a Brooklyn-born NASA engineer born to Puerto Rican parents, was abruptly purged from the voter rolls as a “noncitizen.”
Bonilla later voted without issue, but the nuisance soon became a nightmare after a conservative watchdog group published his personal information online after obtaining a list of the state’s suspected noncitizen voters.
“I became worried because of safety,” he told ABC News, “because, unfortunately, we’ve seen too many examples in this country when one person wants to right a perceived wrong and goes through with an act of violence.”
Bonilla’s story highlights a real-world impact of aggressive efforts to purge state voter rolls of thousands of potential noncitizens who have illegally registered. Many of the names end up being newly naturalized citizens, victims of an inadvertent paperwork mistake or the result of a clerical error, experts say. Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
Read more about Bonilla’s story and a fact check of noncitizen voting claims here.
Half of Americans see Trump as fascist, Harris viewed as pandering: POLL
A new poll from ABC News and Ipsos found half of Americans (49%) see Trump as a fascist, or “a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.”
A majority of voters (65%) also said Trump often says things that are not true.
But Harris also faces perception headwinds, though far fewer Americans (22%) said they viewed her as a fascist.
Fifty-seven percent of registered voters said Harris is making proposals “that just are intended to get people to vote for her,” not that she intends to carry out. Just more than half (52%) said the same about Trump.
Trump to appear on Joe Rogan podcast in play for young male voters
Former President Donald Trump sits down with podcast host Joe Rogan for the first time Friday, appearing on the highly popular “The Joe Rogan Experience,” as he reaches out to an audience of mostly young males as potential voters.
The podcast, which boasts approximately 15.7 million followers, a Spotify representative confirmed to ABC News, is greater than the population of any of the seven election battleground states.
