Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump, has settled a long-running defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over lies he told about the result of the 2020 presidential election.
Details of the settlement, revealed in federal court in Washington DC in a filing late on Friday, are confidential. The Colorado-based voting machine manufacturer sued Giuliani for $1.3bn in 2021, citing more than 50 instances in which he made false or defamatory statements insisting the election was rigged against Trump, with the integrity of Dominion’s machinery at the heart of the conspiracy theory.
Representatives for Giuliani and Dominion confirmed the resolution on Saturday but declined further comment when approached by CBS News. “The parties have agreed to a confidential settlement to this matter,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a short statement.
It is Dominion’s third payout in defamation lawsuits about the election resolved before reaching trial. The company reached a $787.5m settlement in 2023 with Fox, the network that amplified numerous voices pushing the election lies, including the star’s then-star host Tucker Carlson, the rightwing personality who was later fired.
The conservative outlet Newsmax in August agreed to pay $67m after a superior court judge in Delaware ruled it had defamed Dominion. Newsmax admitted no wrongdoing and said it stood by its reporting in a terse statement – but chose to settle before a jury got to decide the amount of damages in the $1.6bn lawsuit.
Related: Dominion is not done fighting 2020 election lies. A look at its other cases
All three lawsuits related to evidence-free claims pushed by conservatives in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Joe Biden’s victory over Trump was rigged – and that Dominion’s machines were easily manipulated to provide false results.
As Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani was a leading purveyor of the lies, appearing on television and radio shows as well as podcasts to amplify them.
“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, and to stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process,” the complaint against him stated.
Giuliani remained defiant at the time, stating he would countersue and insisting he was “exercising my right of free speech and defending my client”. But his involvement ultimately proved costly, professionally and personally.
In July 2024, he was permanently disbarred from practicing law in the state of New York after earlier having his license suspended for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Three months later, he was disbarred in Washington DC after failing to respond to a demand to explain his actions.
This past November, he lost his temper in a New York court room and shouted: “I can’t pay my bills” at a judge in a hearing to explore why he had not complied with orders to surrender assets to pay a $148m settlement to two Georgia election workers he defamed.
His outburst came weeks after he showed up to vote in Florida in the 2024 presidential election that resulted in a second presidency for Trump. Giuliani at the time was in a Mercedes-Benz the court had ordered him to hand over to the poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
