Rudy Giuliani Has Lost Everything, Including His Own Lawyers
Added 2024-12-27 10:41:41 +0000 UTCOA1104 - America's Dismayor, and other great stories to help close out 2024 on a positive note!
Rudy Giuliani’s long, greasy slide from the heights of New York power seems to be ending in the same Manhattan federal courthouse in which he made his career as the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY. We take a closer look at the often hilarious lengths America’s former mayor has gone to in the past year to avoid paying the $148 million judgment he earned by casually defaming two hardworking Georgia election volunteers. Also discussed: why the House Ethics Committee decided to release its report on Matt Gaetz, Biden's commutation of 92% of the federal death row, and a legitimately good decision from the Supreme Court that we meant to talk about earlier. Finally, Matt drops a footnote with what he is promising will be the last time that he talks about fonts this year.
Giuliani’s written stipulation to making per se defamatory statements (7/25/23)
Judge Liman’s “turnover” order (10/22/24)
Judge Howell’s default judgment order (8/30/23)
Giuliani’s 55-page response to the plaintiff’s motion for sanctions (12/19/24)
The America First Warehouse (America’s Most Patriotic Venue)
U.S. v. Rahimi (June 21, 2024)
“Preferred Typefaces for Briefs,” Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (12/9/24)
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Comments
Courtlistener link to opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10303307/bryan-range-v-attorney-general-united-states/?type=o&type=o&q=Bryan+Range+v.+Attorney+General&order_by=score+desc
Shad Riley
2024-12-29 18:17:00 +0000 UTCOn the 2nd Amendment subject. The Third Circuit recently released an en banc opinion in Range v. Att'y General. Range pled guilty to a felony in 1995 for food-stamp fraud. This is essentially his only conviction. He is challenging 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) as applied to himself. 922(g)(1) prohibits a person who has been convicted of a crime punishable by a term exceeding 1 year from possessing a firearm or ammunition. The Third Circuit held that the felon in possession law violates his Second Amendment right. They said that felons are among the people protected by the Second Amendment (at 16) and the government did not prove that this Nation's history and traditions support depriving him of his Second Amendment right. (at 24) They seem to require the government to present an exact historical twin rather than a historical analog, as required by Bruen. Interestingly, this case has already been at the U.S. Supreme Court. It was remanded in light of Rahimi. 🤔
Shad Riley
2024-12-29 18:13:35 +0000 UTCI'd offer to file my next Fourth Circuit brief in Garamond in protest if it weren't a terrible idea lol. Guess I'll stick with boring Times New Roman.
Katie Herrmann
2024-12-28 23:40:49 +0000 UTCFeeling thus encouraged: There's an inherent conflict between outward elegance of typographic design (in which the reader is meant to respond to the typeface's "look") and legibility (in which the "look" is a means to an end, and should be as unobtrusive as possible). As a broad family, for example, many sans serif typefaces have greater legibility than typefaces that have serifs--but they often have less "character" as well. A middle ground exists, in that sans serif typefaces can have thicker and thinner strokes, giving them a more human[e] quality--an example would be Franklin Gothic. But it's understandable that an appearance of dignity would be desirable in official documents, and for that, typefaces with serifs are the classics. --The main feature of Garamond that causes it to be considered less legible than, say, Century Schoolbook, is its low "x-height". That's the distance upward from the baseline to the "shoulders" of lower-case characters that don't have ascenders or dots (acegmnopqrsuvwxyz), relative to the full height of upper-case characters. Highly legible typefaces generally have greater x-heights than others. The details that distinguish lower-case characters from one another show up more readily in the greater available vertical space above the baseline. --Another obvious factor that influences legibility is the "weight" of a font. This comes down mainly to the breadth of the thicker strokes in the letters and the thinness of the thin strokes, taken together (i.e. not the ratio between them, but the aggregate). The combination gives each given font a density, or what the experts call its "color". Any given typeface (e.g. Garamond) will often be available in a range of "weights": light, medium (e.g. "book"), heavy (e.g. "boldface"), and varieties in between. It's not fair to judge a typeface's legibility unless an appropriate weight has been chosen for the intended use. --Finally I'd like to put in a word for Baskerville (book face), Clarendon and Minion. Some forms of Bodoni are lovely as well if the contrast between thin and thick strokes is kept within bounds; the super-contrasty versions are fine for advertising and large, outdoor sign lettering, but not for use as a text font. --best regards
David in Brooklyn
2024-12-28 17:43:59 +0000 UTCFirst of all: thank you for taking Christmas off, Thomas, you deserve it!!! I know it's not your personal ethos, but it warmed my heart to see you take a one episode break. Next, a teeny tiny correction with some caveats re: poll workers being volunteers: I'm not sure if GA is different, and this might even be a difference at a county level, but I'm a poll worker in Allegheny County in PA and I am paid $175 for a, like, 15 hour day, so not *actually* volunteer. But in any case, you're right that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are friggin heroes and don't deserve any of the crap Giuliani has put them through.
I am now 'Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything' years old
2024-12-28 02:33:58 +0000 UTCHahaha… loving you.
Status Quo Level Thing
2024-12-28 00:55:02 +0000 UTCI love Garamond! But I need to use Times New Roman for work.
Emma Joy Jampole
2024-12-27 22:58:30 +0000 UTCalso: merry xmas and happy new year to you guys and the wider OA/DOD gang. thanks for making this year bearable. hope you get a teensy bit of rest.
get in the way!
2024-12-27 22:55:56 +0000 UTCmatt! as a prepress wonk and bookish type, damn. my heart goes out to you. garamond discouraged in the 4th AND courier new in the 1st? blech. what a loss. 💔
get in the way!
2024-12-27 22:15:13 +0000 UTC1000% correct. The motion to try to avoid discovery wasn't utterly frivolous, but once denied there was no excuse for his refusal to comply with discovery. He dug his own grave with his contempt of the court proceedings.
Gmork
2024-12-27 19:45:32 +0000 UTCthat does make some sense, and obviously I'm at a disadvantage here practice-wise. But I think the reason that this really got to me was all of the whining he was doing about how the judge didn't give him a chance to make his case. It's all just so far beyond disingenuous and bad for everyone when litigants lie this flagrantly about the court's actions in their cases. But this was a helpful perspective, so thanks!
Matt Cameron
2024-12-27 19:42:19 +0000 UTCobviously I'm all for accessibility and as many fonts as is practically possible should try to account for how different kinds of brains process visual information--but I am having exactly the same reaction to this information as I would if you told me that there are health benefits to drinking your own urine
Matt Cameron
2024-12-27 18:12:26 +0000 UTCI'm probably giving Gulliani too much credit, and you're absolutely right about there no getting around discovery re damages. But making the best case for Gulliani (for some reason), i compare it to what we do in insurance coverage cases. The insured files a complaint saying they were sued and we denied the claim. We agree to all the facts and urge skipping discovery and jumping to the legal ruling bc there are no disputed factual allegations that discovery would shed any light on. Here, Gulliani seems to concede as a matter of fact that he said the things, they were false, he was malicious, and basically every factual allegation needed to prove liability. The only question is whether there was legal protection for those shared facts, so factual discovery wouldn't prove anything he wasn't already stimulating to on the facts. Again, can't evade discovery on damages, but he probably wanted to bifurcate that issue until he received a ruling on the legal protection for his speech, which would render discovery on damages moot if he won. Not saying it was a good motion or strategy and certainly not one I'd approve if I were the judge. But not quite as clownly as a lot of other stuff Gulliani and his ilk throw at the wall.
Gmork
2024-12-27 18:10:22 +0000 UTCthat's a good elucidation of at least part of the sneaky approach that Howell was going after Giuliani for in her default order. Maybe I'm just over(or possibly under)thinking this but I just don't see how a civil defendant could ever actually get away with acknowledging that the statements constituted defamation per se *and* that they have not conceded that they were not 1A protected speech. I'm not a 1A lawyer but those really seem like mutually exclusive options! Also I think the real problem here is that the business records that he was withholding were also important for the damages phase, which is why she set another round of deadlines for discovery at the end of the default order
Matt Cameron
2024-12-27 17:57:39 +0000 UTCA sincere originalist second amendment analysis would be pretty fucking short. "Is there a tradition of striking down state and local gun regulations on second amendment grounds? There is not."
Gmork
2024-12-27 15:54:49 +0000 UTCIf we really wanted to go legible re: fonts, Comic Sans is apparently one of the better ones for dyslexia
Wishing every Clarence Thomas a very God rest his soul
2024-12-27 15:51:17 +0000 UTCI hate to do this, but I'm going to steelman Rudy's stipulation. "I admit all the plaintiffs factual allegations as to defamation, so there's no need for discovery. Based on those stipulated facts, the appellate court will agree my statements were protected as a legal matter, but there's no need for discovery bc I've already admitted the facts that they would use discovery to try to prove."
Gmork
2024-12-27 15:23:55 +0000 UTCAs a former typesetter -- first by hand (California job case) and later on computers -- I have no objection at all to the font talk. I'm just saying.
David in Brooklyn
2024-12-27 14:39:22 +0000 UTC
