NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani surrendered a Mercedes-Benz, watches and a ring on Friday to two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for defamation — while still refusing to turn over other property to comply with a $148 million judgment against him.

The initial delivery comes as Giuliani is embroiled in a dispute over his legal representation and is trying to keep some items of his personal property.

The car and other items represent the first pieces of property, aside from access to his New York City apartment, that Giuliani has been forced to hand over to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who won the $148 million defamation verdict against him last year. But even as Giuliani began complying with court instructions to part with his belongings by Friday, he demonstrated more of the delay tactics and obfuscation that have defined his approach to the legal proceedings.

An attorney for Giuliani, Joseph Cammarata, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that the former New York City mayor hadn’t given items in a storage facility to Freeman and Moss because a court-imposed restraining order prevented him from doing so. And, Cammarata wrote, certain categories of items the judge ordered Giuliani to turn over to the women are exempt by statute.

Cammarata, for example, told the judge that “all wearing apparel” is exempt by law from turnover, which should make a Joe DiMaggio jersey off-limits.

Freeman and Moss won the verdict last year after Giuliani falsely accused them of committing election fraud in the 2020 election.

Earlier this month, Liman threatened to hold Giuliani in contempt after he missed a court-imposed deadline to surrender his assets to the women.

The storage facility, in fact, has become a flashpoint in the case, because Giuliani has repeatedly claimed he doesn’t have access to it. On Wednesday, an attorney for Freeman and Moss told the judge that a lawyer for the facility had provided them with invoices and photographs suggesting that Giuliani had moved large amounts of property there in October, including 24 pallets of “unknown boxes and loose furniture,” potentially in violation of a restraining notice that took effect Aug. 7. The documents also showed Giuliani owed the facility nearly $100,000 as of mid-October.

Until this week, Giuliani had been represented by two other attorneys, Kenneth Caruso and David Labkowski. Hours after the filing about the storage facility, Caruso and Labkowski wrote to the court asking to withdraw as his attorneys, citing rules that allow withdrawal based on a client’s behavior.

Their court filing suggested their deep disagreement with Giuliani’s approach to the case, his lack of cooperation and his insistence on a defense that is “not warranted under existing law.”

Rather than immediately accept the lawyers’ requests to quit, which could have left Giuliani without representation the day before he was due to turn over his property, the judge ordered a hearing on the matter on Nov. 26.

On Friday night, however, Cammarata filed a proposed order to represent Giuliani, along with the letter saying he had turned over the car and other items.

In his letter, Cammarata also noted that a trial over whether Giuliani has tried to shield his Palm Beach condo from creditors by falsely claiming it as his “homestead” is set for Jan. 16. The lawyer asked that the trial be delayed so that Giuliani can attend the President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and related events.