As the threat of civil contempt hangs over their client’s head, attorneys for Rudy Giuliani told a judge they want to stop representing him in a case involving a $148 million debt Giuliani owes to two election workers he defamed in 2020.

Lawyers Kenneth Caruso and David Labowsky entered their withdrawal request on Wednesday, just ahead of a Friday deadline for Giuliani to surrender a number of valuable assets in order to chip away at the debt he now owes to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

The mother and daughter duo saw their lives completely upended after Giuliani smeared them publicly, insisting that they tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump while working at the polls in Georgia. The women sued Giuliani for defamation in 2021 and at trial they testified about the damage he did. The said they were forced to go into hiding and had received death threats, including vows to lynch them; Freeman was forced to move from her longtime home and give up on her small business out of concern for her safety; Moss’ son struggled in school as his mother’s name was dragged through the mud.

Giuliani’s attorneys’ reasons for wanting to bail on him are not entirely clear, based on the heavily-redacted court filing. However, there are some clues.

Caruso cites a professional conduct rule that allows lawyers to withdraw from a case if the client “insists upon taking action with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement” or if the client “insists upon presenting a claim or defense that is not warranted under existing law.”

The same rule also notes that an attorney can quit if a client is being “unreasonably difficult,” or is making it impossible for the lawyer to “carry out employment” effectively.

A spokesperson for Giuliani issued a statement Thursday saying that the lawyers’ requests to quit came as a surprise.

Caruso and Labowsky did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Court records show that the attorneys initially wanted to keep the request under seal but the judge refused, instructing them instead to redact sensitive information.

During a court hearing in Florida on Nov. 7, Judge Lewis Liman bristled at Giuliani and his attorneys when learning that Giuliani had once again failed to surrender his assets, including luxury watches, sports paraphernalia like a signed Joe DiMaggio jersey and the keys and title to a vintage Mercedes convertible. (Giuliani had taken the car for a very public joy ride in Florida on Election Day.)

Liman warned the disgraced former New York City mayor that if he didn’t surrender the goods he owed to Freeman and Moss by Nov. 15, he or his attorneys could be held in civil contempt. The penalties for civil contempt range from fines to possible jail time.

Giuliani has tried to wriggle out of paying Freeman and Moss essentially from the moment the judgment against him came down.

He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but the case was dismissed in July after a failure to meet basic filing requirements. As a result, Freeman, Moss and other creditors could finally start collecting.

A judge ordered Giuliani to turn over his luxury New York apartment plus an array of valuables inside, including furniture, in October. The property is currently valued at $5.1 million, according to The New York Times.

To their surprise, when Moss and Freeman went to assess the apartment and its contents last month, they found the high-rise unit mostly empty.

Their lawyers say it’s been a game of cat-and-mouse. Giuliani, they allege, has been hiding belongings in a storage facility in Richmond Hill, New York. That storage unit likely also contains goods transferred from another storage unit, they claim. Giuliani owed the storage facility $100,000 as of Oct. 24, according to a letter filed by one of the poll workers’ attorneys on Nov. 13.

Giuliani’s lawyers tried to argue during the hearing last week that certain assets did not need to be surrendered, The New York Times reported. They claimed the Mercedes was exempt because it was valued at less than $4,000, though experts peg its worth at closer to $15,000. Giuliani, meanwhile, claims he cannot afford to buy food, according to The Independent.

Evoking the ubiquitous claims of political weaponization made by Trump, Giuliani has characterized the rulings as persecution. Weeks ago, when Giuliani was first ordered to surrender his belongings, spokesman Ted Goodman rattled off a litany of grievances while lamenting that Giuliani shouldn’t have been forced to relinquish property as he appealed.

“They are attempting to bully and intimidate him into silence through the weaponization of our justice system and through obvious lawfare,” Goodman told CBS.