A jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million — covering compensatory and punitive damages, and emotional suffering — for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two poll workers in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2020. He quickly filed for bankruptcy.

In the aftermath of the election, Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, disseminated a video that he claimed showed Freeman and Moss stuffing voting machines with “suitcases” of fake ballots, and passing around “a USB thumb drive” of electronic data, “like vials of heroin or cocaine.” The video had gone viral, Giuliani bragged. The accusation, he told colleagues, “doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand.”

Giuliani’s false claims, according to a communications expert, were seen 35 million times online and in media reports. Freeman and Moss subsequently received thousands of threatening phone messages, emails and texts. A caller promised a hanging from trees close enough to the U.S. Capitol “for people to hear their necks snap.” Another person included a picture of a “monkey beast,” labelled “Ruby Freeman’s father.” Freeman moved out of her house and hesitated to give her name to strangers. Moss quit her job. Racists targeted her teenage son as well.

The “suitcases,” it turned out, were regulation ballot boxes; the “USB thumb drive” was a ginger mint. After a........

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