The price tag for lying is high.

Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for former President Donald Trump and onetime mayor of New York City, is the latest to discover this economic reality.

A federal jury in a defamation trial handed down a $148 million verdict for Giuliani to pay.

The verdict was jaw-dropping. The attorneys for the plaintiffs—two Georgia election workers Giuliani falsely accused of misconduct in the 2020 presidential election—asked for $48 million.

The jury added the extra $100 million on its own. The bulk of that came in punitive damages.

The jury wanted to deliver a strong message.

That message?

They, like millions of other Americans, have grown tired of leaders who treat the truth as if it were toilet paper, particularly when their prevarications put people’s lives in danger.

Two Georgia election workers—Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss — sued Giuliani because he falsely accused them of engaging in a fake ballot processing scheme during the 2020 presidential election.

Giuliani never had any evidence such a scheme existed. He admitted as much under oath.

Because of his lies, the two women found themselves subjected to constant harassment by Trump’s most unstable supporters. The mother and daughter had their lives threatened, again and again and again. They had to move from their homes and secure new ones under different names, just to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from harm.

The reckless unfairness of this never seemed to occur to Giuliani. He acted during the days following the 2020 presidential election as if the only thing that mattered was that he and Donald Trump got what they wanted—a continuing hold on political power—whether they’d earned it or not.

The fact that their feckless behavior and rhetoric would damage lives, some irreparably, and end still others’ time on this earth didn’t appear to trouble them at all. The only imperative they honored was the base desire to satisfy their own selfish whims.

They both had a natural disaster’s oblivious appetite for tragedy and destruction.

Following the verdict, Giuliani followed the Trump playbook. He vowed to fight on with an appeal and claimed that he, not the two women who had their lives blown apart by his lies, was the real victim.

The one thing he didn’t do was the one that might have set aside the verdict.

That might have put an end to all his troubles.

He didn’t try to make a case that all the awful things he said about the two women were true.

This was a revealing omission.

Truth is an absolute defense against defamation. If Giuliani could have demonstrated his serial fibbing was grounded not in fevered fantasy but in something resembling fact, he would have walked out of that courtroom a winner.

And a much wealthier man.

But he couldn’t do that, so, instead, he opted — Trump-style — to whine that it was horribly, horribly unfair for anyone to try to hold him responsible for what he says or does.

After all, it’s not that — at the tender age of 79 — he’s old or mature enough to know right from wrong.

In court, Giuliani’s lawyer asked the jury to show pity on the former mayor. The attorney said that, if the jury honored the plaintiffs’ request for $48 million in damages, it would be equivalent to a financial “death penalty” for Giuliani.

That likely is true.

The best estimates are that Giuliani had a net worth of $50 million at his peak.

That, though, was before an expensive third divorce and a series of other legal setbacks that already have occurred, with others still to come. Giuliani hasn’t been paying his attorneys or the other judgments rendered against him.

Doubtless, he’ll do his best to duck covering his tab here, too.

If his appeal fails, he may try to shield his assets through bankruptcy proceedings and other evasive legal maneuvers. That’s what Alex Jones — founder of InfoWars and another serial prevaricator — did when the Sandy Hook families sued him for lying nonstop about the murders of their children.

The courts dropped $1.5 billion worth of judgments upon him.

He’s done his best to evade paying — and accountability for his actions—ever since.

That’s the way these guys operate.

They fight like crazy to save their money.

And sell their souls in the process.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].