A Pennsylvania election official is suing former president Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani and other Trump associates for allegedly defaming him during the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to the point that he says he suffered two heart attacks.

The lawsuit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on Monday, claims James Savage, the voting machine warehouse custodian in Delaware County, suffered physical and emotional distress due to “deliberate, malicious, and defamatory statements and insinuations” made by Trump, Giuliani and their associates after they falsely accused him of uploading 50,000 votes for Joe Biden.

Savage claims his character has been “assassinated at a national level” and that he survived two heart attacks that he says were due to the false claims from Trump and his associates in hearings, news conferences and on Fox News. Savage regularly faced death threats and workplace intimidation by Trump supporters, according to the lawsuit.

Other defendants listed include former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, GOP poll watchers Gregory Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes, former Kansas attorney general Phillip Kline, and the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit conservative law firm based in Chicago. The lawsuit was first reported by Law360.

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday. Giuliani, Ellis and others named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Conor Corcoran, an attorney for Savage, told The Washington Post that his client is seeking a jury trial on charges of defamation, civil conspiracy and false light invasion of privacy, as well as monetary damages up to $50,000. He said Savage’s well-being was collateral damage as part of Trump’s efforts to question the legitimacy of Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania, which clinched him the presidency.

“The consequences of what happened here were dire and deadly,” Corcoran said.

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, although Trump and some other Republicans continue to make that false claim.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of litigation and legal rulings related to the former president, including from Dominion Voting Systems, which supplies many U.S. precincts, and Capitol Police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that led to five deaths and injuries to hundreds of people.

A gun-control nonprofit founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D, filed a federal lawsuit against the National Rifle Association this week, alleging the group orchestrated an illegal, secret donation scheme involving millions of dollars that violated campaign finance laws and benefited Trump and other Republicans. The lawsuit alleges as much as $35 million in “unlawful” and “unreported in-kind campaign contributions” went toward a scheme that goes back as early as 2014, with $25 million allegedly going toward Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A Florida federal judge recently ruled that Trump’s status as a former president does not exclude him from following Twitter’s terms of service, in what was another setback in his quest to get back on the social media platform after being banned this year following the Jan. 6 riot.

The results in Pennsylvania still weigh on Trump nearly a year after his defeat. Although the lawsuits claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania and elsewhere were defeated in court, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are planning to formally launch hearings as part of an investigation into the 2020 vote in the state. The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Trump last week in which he made a number of false claims about the results in Pennsylvania.

In his role as warehouse supervisor, Savage, 57, of Upper Chichester, Pa., “managed the storage, security, programming, testing, and delivery of all voting equipment in Delaware County,” according to the 60-page lawsuit. He did not have any ability to tabulate or disrupt votes, Corcoran said.

The lawsuit notes that while Trump, Giuliani and others largely referred to Savage not by his name but by his title – “the voting machine warehouse supervisor” – “anyone who heard or saw these defamatory statements or insinuations would have known that they were referring to Mr. Savage, because he was the only Chief Custodian/Voting Machine Warehouse Supervisor position in Delaware County.”

“It was obvious there was only one person who was being accused of election fraud by all of the Defendants,” the lawsuit says.

On Nov. 25, 2020, Giuliani, then an attorney for Trump, and Ellis appeared at a hearing before the Pennsylvania State Senate Majority Policy Committee in Gettysburg, Pa. At the hearing, Stenstrom and Hoopes claimed that Savage illegally “stuffed” tens of thousands of ballots in favor of Biden by uploading USB cards to the voting machines in his custody. Hoopes described Savage as a “Bernie Sanders delegate who was also solely responsible for every scanner, machine, v-card, and all machines with absolutely zero experience in this area,” according to the lawsuit. Stenstrom said at the November 2020 hearing that he saw this action with the USB cards happen “over 24 times.”

“We have multiple other witnesses who saw it, including Democrat poll watchers,” he said at the time. Corcoran told The Post that GOP colleagues of Savage’s have said there was “no way Jim could have done this.”

Trump, who called into the hearing, repeated the 50,000-vote claim, without evidence. Giuliani went on to also repeat the false statements made at the Gettysburg hearing, the suit says. Giuliani lost his law license in New York state due, in part, to his false assertions in Pennsylvania, as well as his inability to “provide a scintilla of evidence for any of the varying and wildly inconsistent numbers of dead people he factually represented voted in Philadelphia during the 2020 presidential election.”

But the claims surrounding Savage’s role in the election continued. Stenstrom repeated the claim at a news conference in Arlington, Va., on Dec. 1, 2020, according to the lawsuit. He mentioned it again during an appearance that same week on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, as well as in an affidavit from Stenstrom in a lawsuit filed by Trump seeking to overturn election results.

Around this time, Corcoran said Savage and his family faced death threats from Trump supporters. He also made two trips to the hospital for heart attacks that, the attorney says, were a result of the stress and abuse he faced from Trump, Giuliani and the president’s supporters.

“All Defendants herein knew that such fraud was impossible,” the lawsuit says.

As the election results were set to be certified in Washington, the threats came to his workplace in Delaware County at the start of this year, according to his attorney.

“Less than a week before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, the plaintiff was accosted at his work by two men without credentials asserting that they wanted to search his work and were there on behalf of ‘the voters,’ ” according to the lawsuit. As a result, Savage “rightfully feared and continues to fear for the safety of himself and his family,” the lawsuit says.

Corcoran described Savage as a “lifelong, blue-collar Philadelphia union man” respected by his peers. Despite the health scares, the attorney said Savage is back on his feet and worked this week’s election.

“He’s a dedicated public servant, and this did not dissuade him from doing his rounds,” Corcoran said. “He’s not going to let these people get in his way.”

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