Chick-fil-A applicant called “traitor” in interview after Rudy Giuliani accused her of voter fraud

A woman who used to work in Georgia elections left her job after being targeted by Rudy Giuliani as a “traitor.” But then her attempt to get a menial job at a Chick-fil-A turned into a nightmare when the interviewer harassed her with allegations about her election work.

Shaye Moss used to be the election supervisor in Fulton County, Georgia. She worked in that role when President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020. She and her former coworker, Ruby Freeman, are suing Giuliani for defamation, saying that he falsely and publicly accused them of tampering with votes. At the time, Giuliani claimed he had a video that showed Moss and Freeman passing a USB drive like “vials of cocaine or heroin.” In reality, the video showed them sharing mints.

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Earlier this year, Giuliani was charged, along with other Trump supporters, under state racketeering laws for their alleged conspiracy to “change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” Giuliani’s false statements about election fraud were listed in the indictment.

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Moss’s and Freeman’s trial started yesterday, and Moss took the witness stand today. She said that about a month after the election, Giuliani started to spread “all these crazy lies… publicly, everywhere.” She said her boss told her that they were getting “nasty, hateful, violent” messages for her, accusing her of election fraud.

“I am shown these videos, these lies, everything that’s been going on that I had no clue about,” Moss said on the stand about a meeting with her supervisor. “I was confused, I was immediately fearful.”

She also got phone messages. “Have a nice life. What’s left of it,” one of them said.

She said she was afraid, so she changed her hair, dyeing it blonde so that she wouldn’t be recognizable in public. She tried to continue to work, but two years later she was passed over for a promotion at the job that she loved. She had worked up to from the mail room and felt that being passed over for the promotion was “a slap in the face.”

Moss said that she thought she would never get promoted because of the conspiracy theories around her and the bad publicity that they could bring to the county, so she quit. And she tried to find work at a Chick-fil-A instead.

“I was dressed up. I had my notebook with my resume. I was excited, I was ready,” she said. She said that the interview “went great.”

“I had made up my mind that, oh well, I’ll have to start at the bottom.”

But then the interviewer at Chick-fil-A turned his laptop around and showed her a picture of herself with the word “TRAITOR” written across it.

“Tell me about this. Is this you? Is this true?” he said, according to Moss.

“The more he was talking, the more I just tuned it out,” she said. “I was so shocked, I was so embarrassed… I just had to leave. I just left.”

Moss, who is Black, said that she has had nightmares in the time since she was made the center of the conspiracy theory, nightmares involving “nooses, with pitchforks and signs,” and her son hanging. She said she gained 70 pounds from stress eating and doesn’t go out anymore. She said her son has been failing in school from the stress, and her grandmother started repeatedly receiving pizzas sent under fake, racist names from strangers on the internet.

“I feel like it’s my fault,” she said. “Maybe if I was satisfied being in the mail room… then maybe it would not have happened.”

The judge in the case has already ruled against Giuliani because he failed to provide information in response to subpoenas. He conceded that he made the defamatory statements but claimed that they were protected free speech.

Now, the trial is about determining damages. Moss and Freeman are asking for between $15 million and $43 million.

ABC News says that Giuliani “showed little emotion” during Moss’s testimony. His lawyer has accused her and Freeman of “trying to end Mr. Giuliani.”

“Of course, I don’t regret it,” Giuliani told reporters outside of the courtroom yesterday.