Former Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani lashed out at the indictment of the ex-U.S. president on Tuesday, but the case also represents another reputational hit for the once-esteemed New York City mayor.
In a series of social media posts and media appearances, Giuliani attacked special counsel Jack Smith, the Justice Department and the Biden administration, which he alleged “will stop at nothing to take down President Donald Trump, even if [it] means permanently destroying America’s judicial system and permanently corrupting the federal government.”
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The description of co-conspirator 1’s statement and actions in the 45-page indictment charging Trump aligns with what has been reported about Giuliani by multiple U.S. media outlets the past two years, as well as through testimony at the Jan. 6 congressional committee in 2022.
Giuliani famously told Arizona officials about the bid to declare Trump the winner in that state: “We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.” That statement is attributed to co-conspirator 1 in the indictment.
According to testimony from the aforementioned committee, Giuliani asserted that Trump should declare victory on the Nov. 3, 2020, election night regardless of where the results stood, with many ballots still to be counted.
Ruby Freeman, a former election worker for Fulton County, Ga, said the FBI warned her to leave her home until after the inauguration of Joe Biden due to threats she’d received.
In addition to the pressure campaign on Arizona officials, co-conspirator 1 is singled out in the indictment for fraudulent claims presented to Georgia and Pennsylvania officials made over ineligible voters and an alternate electors scheme, as well as for spreading a conspiracy theory by misrepresenting video excerpts involving volunteer election workers at an Atlanta voting venue.
Those volunteers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea (Shaye) Moss, have spoken about the toll the allegations of wrongdoing have taken on their lives, which included death threats. Giuliani recently conceded in a legal filing in the defamation suit the two women have filed against him that he made false comments about them, but he is arguing that they are protected by the First Amendment.
Trump’s attack dog
Giuliani was widely praised as New York City mayor in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, delivering eulogies at several funerals of first responders and serving as a cheerleader for the city, urging a return to normality as soon as possible.
A former crime-fighting federal prosecutor before serving as mayor, he was one of the first notable names to support Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump now faces a third criminal indictment — this time for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss — as he campaigns to regain the presidency next year.
It has been reported that Giuliani had hoped Trump would consider him for secretary of state as a result, but he settled into a role as the president’s personal lawyer, serving as an attack dog by maligning Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe into connections between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
Giuliani’s attempts to seek damaging info on Joe Biden and his son Hunter from Ukrainian officials were front and centre at Trump’s first impeachment.
“Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” former national security adviser John Bolton was alleged to have said, according to impeachment testimony from a former State Department official, Fiona Hill.
In service of Trump’s specious claims of 2020 electoral fraud, Giuliani’s campaign mixed serious allegations with farce. Miscommunications saw him hold a news conference in a landscaping company parking lot, while at another public event, Giuliani claimed electoral fraud as sweat sent rivulets of what appeared to be black hair dye streaming down his face.
“Every statement that Mayor Giuliani made was truthful and expressing his beliefs,” Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello told Reuters on Tuesday night. “He believed there was proof of election fraud.”
Read the full indictment:
Giuliani could potentially escape being indicted in the case. He spoke voluntarily to Smith’s prosecutors as part of a proffer agreement, in which a person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.
But in addition to the defamation suit, he has been questioned by Georgia prosecutors in a 2020 election probe there.
As well, New York and D.C. legal disciplinary panels have moved to disbar him, with the three-person D.C. panel offering a damning assessment.
“The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments,” they wrote. “It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done.”
6 co-conspirators named in total
The descriptions in the indictment of five other co-conspirators could also mean the likes of John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Sidney Powell face legal jeopardy.
Eastman crafted a series of legal memos for Trump that claimed former vice-president Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states to deny Biden a majority of electoral college votes.
Clark, meanwhile, was eager to pursue Trump’s baseless claims, and tried to convince Trump to oust acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, who was only in the role after once-staunch Trump loyalist William Barr resigned after growing frustrated with the president’s refusal to accept defeat.
Powell, meanwhile, was alongside Giuliani on many occasions as they took their unfounded allegations of fraud to various states.
The lawyers Eastman and Powell have faced disbarment proceedings in the years since, and Powell has been sued for defamation by voting technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.
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