Michael J. Gottlieb

Discovery and Liability

Freeman and Moss were Fulton County election workers who sued over false accusations that they had manipulated ballots and participated in election fraud after the 2020 presidential election. The accusations had upended two private lives; the litigation, brought with co-counsel including the nonprofit Protect Democracy, was built to restore them.

Gottlieb helped develop the sanctions record after repeated failures to produce required discovery. Giuliani's initial production consisted of 193 documents. The later production was largely a single page of communications, indecipherable data, and a sliver of financial records; the financial production consisted of 2018 federal and New York tax returns and a 2019 divorce-settlement agreement. Gottlieb's filings connected those deficiencies to the evidence needed to establish publication, reach, and punitive damages.

Gottlieb signed the plaintiffs' sanctions reply and submitted the declaration detailing the limited financial production. The filing tied the legal argument to a sworn account of the records that had actually arrived.

The requested discovery went to the center of the case. Communications could show how the accusations were developed and circulated; electronic-account data could establish preservation and publication history; audience information could measure reach; and financial records bore on punitive damages.

In August 2023, the federal court found that Giuliani had willfully failed to preserve and produce relevant evidence and had substantially prejudiced Freeman and Moss. It entered default judgment under Rules 37(e)(2)(C) and 37(b)(2)(A)(vi) on the defamation, intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress, and civil-conspiracy claims and allowed the plaintiffs to seek punitive damages. The order fixed the actionable statements as false and defamatory and moved the case to a jury trial on damages.

The Damages Trial

At the four-day trial in December 2023, Freeman and Moss presented the reputational, personal, and emotional consequences of the defamatory campaign — the death threats, the harassment, the retreat from public life that had followed the false accusations. The jury awarded Freeman $16,171,000 for defamation and Moss $16,998,000; awarded each woman $20,000,000 for intentional infliction of emotional distress; and awarded $75,000,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $148,169,000.

The separate categories measured different legal injuries: defamation damages addressed reputation, emotional-distress damages addressed personal consequences, and punitive damages addressed punishment and deterrence. The trial record translated the public accusations and their effects into those distinct measures.

Gottlieb remained counsel through post-trial proceedings and enforcement, carrying the clients' position from the sanctions ruling through the jury result and into the remedies that followed.

Final Judgment and Declaratory Relief

Three days after the verdict, the court entered final judgment carrying $146,206,113 in principal plus continuing interest. That order converted the jury's findings into an obligation enforceable through post-judgment proceedings.

The judgment also declared the actionable statements false and defamatory, made with actual malice, published without privilege, and harmful. It fixed the findings supporting liability for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy in an authoritative legal record — the formal, public vindication his clients had sought from the start.

Permanent Injunction

Freeman and Moss also sought relief preventing repetition of the accusations. In May 2024, Giuliani consented to a permanent injunction barring him from again accusing either woman of wrongdoing related to the 2020 election.

The injunction supplied a prospective remedy distinct from the damages judgment. Freeman and Moss could return to federal court to enforce it if the prohibited accusations were repeated.

During the bankruptcy proceeding, Freeman, Moss, Giuliani, and the creditors' committee obtained an agreed order lifting the automatic stay so the Washington court could enter and enforce the injunction. The order preserved that nonmonetary protection while financial enforcement continued in the separate forum — a piece of procedural choreography that kept both remedies alive at once.

Bankruptcy, Appeal, and Satisfaction

Giuliani's Chapter 11 case created a separate forum for enforcement. Gottlieb's team secured dismissal of the bankruptcy case, continued protecting the judgment and injunction, and preserved the ability to maintain the nonmonetary relief.

Gottlieb also signed the appellate brief defending the sanctions ruling, damages trial, and judgment in the D.C. Circuit. The December 2024 brief carried the complete sanctions and damages record to the appellate court and asked it to affirm the judgment.

The matter concluded with a settlement announced in January 2025 and a satisfaction of judgment filed in federal court on February 24, 2025, confirming the judgment fully satisfied. The permanent injunction remained in force after the financial obligation was resolved.

Public-Interest and Crisis Litigation

Gottlieb is a Willkie litigation partner, a member of the firm's Executive Committee, chair of its Crisis Management Group, co-chair of its Media & First Amendment practice, and a member of its Appeals & Strategic Motions practice.

His public-interest representations have also included matters arising from the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and false claims surrounding the death of Seth Rich. Those cases required defamation law, evidence preservation, emergency litigation judgment, and remedies directed at false public narratives affecting identifiable people — a practice Gottlieb has developed into a recognized discipline.

Public Service and Background

Gottlieb previously served as associate counsel to President Barack Obama, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California, a Senate Judiciary Committee staff member, and deputy director of an international civil-military rule-of-law and anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan — experience in building legal institutions under pressure that later informed his courtroom work defending individuals against coordinated falsehoods.

He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Stephen Reinhardt and earned his law degree from Harvard Law School after graduating from Northwestern University.