Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.

Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a contempt hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said the former New York City mayor had failed to properly comply with requests for evidence over the last few months.

Liman said Giuliani “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court” when he “blew past” a Dec. 20 deadline to turn over evidence that would help the judge decide at a trial later this month whether Giuliani can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium as his residence or must turn it over because it is deemed a vacation home.

Because Giuliani failed to reveal the full names of his doctors, a complete list of them, or of his other professional services providers, the judge said he will conclude at trial that none of them were in Florida or had been changed after Jan. 1, 2024. That was the date Giuliani says he established Palm Beach as his permanent residence.

Liman also excluded Giuliani from offering testimony about emails or text messages to establish that his homestead was in Florida.

The judge said Giuliani produced only a dozen and a half “cherry picked” documents and no phone records, emails or texts related to his homestead. He said he can also make inferences during the trial about “gaps” in evidence that resulted from Giuliani’s failure to turn over materials.

Liman said he would withhold judgment on other possible sanctions.

On Friday, Giuliani testified for about three hours in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom, but the judge permitted him to finish testifying remotely on Monday for over two hours from his Palm Beach condominium. By the time the judge issued his oral ruling, Giuliani was no longer present at all.

Joseph Cammarata, Giuliani’s attorney, noted in an email afterward that the election workers were not in the courtroom either and he called the outcome “no surprise.”

“This case is about lawfare and the weaponization of the legal system in New York City,” he said.

Cammarata said the state criminal case against President-elect Donald Trump and the civil litigation against Giuliani were “very similar. It’s the left wing Democrats trying to use liberal Judges in New York to win when they should lose on the merits.”

At the start of the hearing, Giuliani appeared before an American flag backdrop, which he said he uses for a program he conducts over the internet, but the judge told him to change it to a plain background. He also at one point held up his grandfather’s heirloom pocket watch and said he was ready to relinquish.

Giuliani conceded that he sometimes did not turn over everything requested in the case because he believed what was being sought was overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by lawyers for the plaintiffs.

He also said he sometimes had trouble turning over information regarding his assets because of numerous criminal and civil court cases requiring him to produce factual information.

Liman labeled one of Giuliani’s claims “preposterous” and said that being suspicious of the intent of lawyers for the election workers was “not an excuse for violating court orders.”

Giuliani, 80, said the demands made it “impossible to function in an official way” about 30% to 40% of the time.

After the ruling, the former mayor issued a statement through his publicist saying it was “tragic to watch as our justice system has been turned into a total mockery, where we have charades instead of actual hearings and trials.”

The election workers’ lawyers say Giuliani has displayed a “consistent pattern of willful defiance” of Liman’s October order to give up assets after he was found liable in 2023 for defaming their clients by falsely accusing them of tampering with ballots during the 2020 presidential election.

Workers at seven Amazon facilities went on strike Thursday, an effort by the Teamsters to pressure the e-commerce company for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.

The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized strikes in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Sunday deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect an impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.

At one warehouse, located in New York City’s Staten Island borough, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees - including many delivery drivers - have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.

The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at one Amazon warehouse in San Francisco, California, and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City; Atlanta, Georgia, and Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join,” the union said.

“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.

The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.

Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.

The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions while election workers are sorting through thousands of provisional ballots.

McCormick’s campaign called it a “massive setback” for Casey.

The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that Republicans say several Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless challenged.

In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a lack of legal clarity had surrounded the ballots, putting county officials in a position where they were “damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”

It comes amid a gust of fresh litigation in recent days filed by both campaigns, contesting the decisions of about a dozen counties over whether or not to count thousands of provisional ballots.

Casey’s campaign says the provisional ballots shouldn’t be rejected for garden-variety errors, like a polling place worker forgetting to sign it. Republicans say the law is clear that the ballots must be discarded.

The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.

As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.

Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands.

Republicans last week asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett's conviction on allegations that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself in downtown Chicago in 2019 and lied to police.

Smollett's appeal argued that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges. The state's highest court heard arguments in September.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs and tossed a noose around his neck, leading to a massive search for suspects by Chicago police detectives and kicking up an international uproar. Smollett was on the television drama "Empire," which filmed in Chicago, and prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio's response to hate mail he received.

A jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. Smollett has maintained his innocence.

His attorneys have argued that the case was over when the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped an initial 16 counts of disorderly conduct after Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond. intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett's conviction on allegations that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself in downtown Chicago in 2019 and lied to police.

Smollett's appeal argued that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges. The state's highest court heard arguments in September.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs and tossed a noose around his neck, leading to a massive search for suspects by Chicago police detectives and kicking up an international uproar. Smollett was on the television drama "Empire," which filmed in Chicago, and prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio's response to hate mail he received.

RELATED STORY | Sean 'Diddy' Combs lawyers claim seizure of writings from cell is 'outrageous government conduct'

A jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. Smollett has maintained his innocence.

His attorneys have argued that the case was over when the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped an initial 16 counts of disorderly conduct after Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond.

The Arizona Supreme Court has declined to hear Republican Kari Lake’s latest appeal over her defeat in the 2022 governor’s race, marking yet another loss in her attempt to overturn the race’s outcome.

The court made its refusal to take up the former TV anchor’s appeal public on Thursday without explaining its decision.

Lake, now locked in a U.S. Senate race against Democrat Ruben Gallego, had lost the governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by over 17,000 votes.

The courts had previously rejected Lake’s claims that problems with ballot printers at some Maricopa County polling places on Election Day in 2022 were the result of intentional misconduct and that Maricopa County didn’t verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law. A judge also turned down Lake’s request to examine the ballot envelopes of 1.3 million early voters. In all, Lake had three trials related to the 2022 election.

Despite her earlier losses in court and a ruling affirming Hobbs’ victory, Lake had asked the Arizona Supreme Court to review her case, claiming she had new evidence to support her claims. Lawyers for Maricopa County told the court that Lake failed to present any new evidence that would change the courts’ findings.

Lake is among the most vocal of Republican candidates promoting lies that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election over President Joe Biden, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign for governor. While most other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races, Lake did not.

The Lake campaign didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the Supreme Court’s latest decision.

A federal appeals court judge has ruled to keep Sean “Diddy” Combs locked up while he makes a third bid for bail in his sex trafficking case, which is slated to go to trial in May.

In a decision filed Friday, Circuit Judge William J. Nardini denied the hip-hop mogul’s immediate release from jail while a three-judge panel weighs his bail request.

Combs’ lawyers appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 30 after two judges rejected his release.

Combs, 54, has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest on charges that he used his “power and prestige” as a music star to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “Freak Offs.”

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges alleging he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

At a bail hearing three weeks ago, a judge rejected the defense’s $50 million bail proposal that would’ve allowed the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer to be placed under house arrest at his Florida mansion with GPS monitoring and strict limits on visitors.

Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr., who has since recused himself from the case, said that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that Combs is a danger to the community. He said “no condition or set of conditions” could guard against the risk of Combs obstructing the investigation or threatening or harming witnesses.

In their appeal, Combs’ lawyers argued that the judge had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric” and ordered Combs detained for “purely speculative reasons.”

“Indeed, hardly a risk of flight, he is a 54-year-old father of seven, a U.S. citizen, an extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, and philanthropist, and one of the most recognizable people on earth,” the lawyers wrote.

Combs’ lawyers have not asked the new trial judge, Arun Subramanian, to consider releasing him on bail. At a hearing Thursday, as Combs sat alongside his lawyers in a beige jail jumpsuit, Subramanian suggested he would at least be open to taking up the issue.

After setting a May 5 trial date, Subramanian briefly questioned Combs’ lawyers about his treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which has been plagued by violence and dysfunction for years.