NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.

Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a contempt hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said the former New York City mayor had failed to properly comply with requests for evidence over the past few months.

Liman said Giuliani “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court” when he “blew past” a Dec. 20 deadline to turn over evidence that would help the judge decide at a trial this month whether Giuliani can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium as his residence or must turn it over because it is deemed a vacation home.

As punishment for the contempt finding, the judge said he will decide at the trial whether some of the missing evidence would show that Giuliani continued doing business in New York rather than Florida after Jan. 1, 2024. That’s when the former mayor said he had established the Florida property as his permanent home. Liman said he would withhold judgment on other possible sanctions.

On Friday, Giuliani testified for about three hours in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom, but the judge permitted him to finish testifying Monday from the Palm Beach condo.

Giuliani conceded that he sometimes did not turn over everything requested in the case because he believed what was being sought was overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by lawyers for the plaintiffs.

He also said he sometimes had trouble turning over information on his assets because of many criminal and civil court cases requiring him to produce factual information. Giuliani, 80, said the demands made it “impossible to function in an official way” 30% to 40% of the time.

The election workers’ lawyers say Giuliani has displayed a “consistent pattern of willful defiance” of Liman’s October order to give up assets after he was found liable in 2023 for defaming their clients by falsely accusing them of tampering with ballots during the 2020 election.

They said in court papers that Giuliani has turned over a Mercedes-Benz and his New York apartment, but not the paperwork necessary to monetize the assets.

Archivist at issue: President-elect Donald Trump is promising to replace the head of the National Archives, thrusting the agency back into the spotlight after his mishandling of sensitive documents led to a federal indictment.

The agency piqued Trump’s ire after it alerted the Department of Justice about potential problems with Trump’s handling of classified documents in early 2022. That set in motion an investigation that led to an FBI search of Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, which culminated in him becoming the first former president charged with federal crimes.

The archivist, Colleen Shogan, the first woman in the role, wasn’t in the post at that time. David Ferriero, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, announced in January 2022 that he’d retire that April.

Shogan was nominated by President Joe Biden in August 2022, just days before the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. But she was not confirmed until May 2023, after a monthslong partisan battle over the agency’s role in the documents investigation.

Russia-Ukraine war: Five months after storming across the border into the Kursk region of southern Russia, Ukrainian forces were making a renewed push Monday deeper into Russia, even as they appear to have lost a strategic town in eastern Ukraine.

In Kursk, Russian and Ukrainian officials reported heavy fighting Sunday night. Combat video geolocated by military analysts indicated Ukraine was trying to break through Russian defenses in at least three directions.

It is the first significant attempt by Ukrainian troops to advance in Kursk since the original incursion in August. Since then, Russia has regained about half of the territory it lost.

At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed Monday that its forces had seized control of Kurakhove, an important but shattered industrial town, further closing in on Ukrainian forces in the southern Donbas region after more than two months of bombardments and heavy fighting. The Ukrainian force defending Kurakhove dismissed the claim.

Woman to lead Vatican office: Pope Francis named the first woman to head a major Vatican office, appointing an Italian nun, Sister Simona Brambilla, on Monday to become prefect of the department responsible for all the Catholic Church’s religious orders.

The appointment marks a major step in Francis’ aim to give women more leadership roles. It means that a woman is now responsible for the women who do much of the church’s work — the world’s 600,000 Catholic nuns — as well as the 129,000 Catholic priests who belong to religious orders.

Brambilla, 59, is from the Consolata Missionaries religious order and was the No. 2 in the religious orders department since 2023.

Austria’s far right: The leader of Austria’s Freedom Party received a mandate Monday to try to form a new government, the first headed by the far right since World War II if he succeeds.

The anti-immigration and euroskeptic Freedom Party, which opposes sanctions on Russia and is led by Herbert Kickl, won Austria’s parliamentary election in September. It beat outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party. But in October, President Alexander Van der Bellen gave Nehammer the first chance to form a new government after Nehammer’s party said it wouldn’t go into government with the Freedom Party under Kickl, and others refused to work with the Freedom Party. Alliance efforts without the far right collapsed in the new year, and Nehammer said Saturday that he would resign.