Rudy Giuliani gives voting fraud ‘evidence’ at odd press conference
‘Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny?’ Sweating Rudy Giuliani presents ‘evidence’ for ‘massive voting fraud’ as hair dye runs down his face – alongside ‘elite legal strike force’ who claim Joe Biden’s win is a Venezuelan plot they uncovered on the internet
- Donald Trump lawyer delivered a lengthy harangue at the press and claimed there was ‘massive’ vote fraud
- He claimed to have ‘hundreds’ of sworn affidavits but said he would not share the ‘evidence’ because it would put witnesses’ lives at risk
- ‘The American people are entitled to know this. You don’t have a right to keep it from them,’ he lectured the press
- He compared ballot observers to a scene in ‘My Cousin Vinny’ and even acted out a scene as actor Joe Pesci
- Said Trump was ‘way ahead on election night’ and wondered ‘how is it they all turned around?’
- ‘Even Tanzania and places that you wouldn’t think of had rules about inspectors,,’ he said in odd reference to East African country
- Said officials in Detroit and Philly can ‘get away with whatever they want to do’
- Presser comes after series of defeats for Trump’s legal team
- President-elect Joe Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232; 270 is needed to win the presidency
Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani delivered a rambling monologue Thursday meant to reveal evidence for a ‘massive’ vote fraud where he quoted ‘My Cousin Vinny’ and claimed he had ‘hundreds’ of sworn affidavits as evidence that he would not share – because, he claimed, it would put his witnesses’ lives at risk.
After suffering more than a score of legal defeats on President Trump’s multi-state case to throw out ballots, Giuliani resorted to an extended rant about alleged fraud to reporters packed in tightly at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington.
The last time he held a press conference was at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in northern Philadelphia, making the RNC’s packed conference room at least an upgrade. And this time there were no known sex offenders on stage with him.
Instead there was a self-styled ‘elite strike-force team working on behalf of the president’ who outlined a conspiracy which wove together Hugo Chavez; China; Venezuela; Cuba; the Clinton Foundation; George Soros; testimony found ‘on the internet’; ballots which arrived in trucks; New Jersey voters who crossed the Camden; ‘hack’ judges; vote counters in Germany and Spain; Democratic political machines just like Mayor Daley in the 1960s; the ‘fake news media’; and Joe Biden.
The strike-force team’s other leader, Jenna Ellis, bristled at the demand for actual evidence, saying: ‘Your question is fundamentally flawed when you’re asking where is the evidence.’
At the end she claimed that Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer – Sidney Powell – had ‘released the Kraken,’ a mythical sea creature which destroys ships.
The press conference was announced by Donald Trump and praised by him as it went on in a tweet: ‘An open and shut case of voter fraud. Massive numbers!’
As the two-hour long spectacle unfolded, two streaks of brown dye rolled inexorably down 76-year-old Giuliani’s face, apparently unnoticed by the former mayor and presidential candidate, who wiped his face and forehead repeatedly with a white handkerchief.
‘Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny?’ he said, seeking to make the point that election observers were kept too far away from ballots during the count.
‘These people were further away than My Cousin Vinny was from the witness,’ he said.
Giuliani even acted out part of a scene played by actor Joe Pesci, using a Brooklyn accent. He called it one of his favorite crime films. He said the race was ‘not a victory. It’s a fraud.’
Thin brown line: Rudy Giuliani suffered a hair-dye malfunction as his press conference went on and he outlined a national conpsiracy
I’m melting: As the bizarre press conference went on, a heavily sweating Giuliani began to have streaks of apparent hair dye on the side of his face
Not socially-distanced: Rudy Giuliani was surrounded by a maskless group on stage including from left Sidney Powell, who is Mike Flynn’s attorney, Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife lawyer team who have promoted conspiracy theories, and Boris Epshteyn, a Trump aide
Head of the suit: THis is the man leading Donald Trump’s fight to overturn the election results
Running: The president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had matching streaks of either hair dye or make-up on both sides of his face as he addressed the media
Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani delivered a rambling monologue Thursday where he asserted ‘massive fraud’ in the election, ‘not a little teeny one’
See you in court: Rudy Giuliani, 76, remains an attorney registered to practice at the federal bar in New York
My Cousin Vinny: Rudy Giuliani (left) impersonated Vinny Gambini (right) as he compared his legal case to Joe Pesce’s character
The film’s director Jonathan Lynn got a laugh out of the moment.
‘I regard Giuliani’s praise of My Cousin Vinny as generous from the man who is currently giving the Comedy Performance of the Year,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Giuliani’s charges ran the gamut, and he spoke before a team of lawyers and a sign that was meant to show Trump’s ‘Multiple Pathways to Victory.’ It highlighted states all carried by President-elect Joe Biden.
‘What I’m describing for you is a massive fraud. It isn’t a little teeny one,’ he said.
‘The president way ahead on election night,’ Giuliani added.
Later, he claimed that the results didn’t comport with his sleep schedule.
‘When I went to bed on election night, he was ahead in all those states … How is it they all turned around?’
He bristled at a question about whether he would seek to drag out cases, and what he would do with his evidence if courts refuse to hear it.
”We’re not going to drag it out. It’s ridiculous for you to say we’re dragging it out. Al Gore had a lot more time than we have had and we have had two weeks to investigate so that’s also completely unfair to say we’re dragging it out,’ he said.
He expressed shock at how the vote changed as absentee ballots came in.
‘We have statisticians willing to testify,’ Giuliani said, in a harangue that lasted for more than 40 minutes.
He blasted Detroit and Philadelphia, cities with concentrations of black voters where he said there was fraud in elections going back decades.
‘Each one of these cities are cities that are controlled by Democrats. Which means they can get away with whatever they want to do,’ he claimed.
‘Unfortunately they have some friendly judges that will issue ridiculously irrational opinions just to come out in their favor,’ he said, days after losing in the Pennsylvania state supreme court.
‘Even Tanzania and places that you wouldn’t think of had rules about inspectors,’ he said, without explaining why it would be surprising for the East African nation to observe the vote count.
He also attacked the media, who sat silently as he trained his attacks on them about 30 minutes into his presentation.
‘I know you keep reporting falsely that we have no evidence,’ he said. Then he read a single affidavit of Jessy Jacob alleging fraud at the Detroit center where votes were counted.
A judge found the claims, while serious, were ‘generalized’ and had ‘no date, location, frequency, or names of employees.’
But it was the only one he shared. ”We have 100 more of these. I can’t show them to you.’ He said it was because people who filled them out would be ‘harassed.’
‘The American people are entitled to know this. You don’t have a right to keep it from them,’ he lectured the press.
‘If you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin by a good margin,’ he said.
He promised additional suits in Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, and other states.
‘If you count the legal votes in Pennsylvania, he won by about 300,000 votes,’ he said.
‘We have very significant fraud allegations in the state of New Mexico,’ Giuliani said of the state that went for Biden. Then he claimed there were cases in Virginia too.
But he held back information.
‘This had to be planned in advance,’ he said, complaining that observers were put in ‘pens’ and ‘corrals.’
As he wrapped up, Giuliani lobbed more wild accusations, this time referencing Dominion Voting Systems machines that are the subject of a conspiracy touted by Trump that they ‘deleted’ votes for him and ‘switched’ votes from Biden to Trump.
‘What we are seeing is massive influence of Communist money from Venezuela, Cuba and likely China,’ he said.
‘We use largely a Venezuelan voting machine to count our vote,’ he said.
‘Joe Biden is in the lead because of the fraudulent ballots,’ Giuliani claimed.
Then he yielded the mic to lawyer Sidney Powell, who represented former Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn when he sought to retract his guilty plea.
‘The world is watching this,’ said Powell.
Another lawyer, Jenna Ellis, also lectured the press, who were forced to sit silently for an hour of presentations in a cramped room where none of the speakers wore masks as the pandemic reached record levels.
‘I can see all of you taking pictures right now and I can anticipate what your headlines are going to be,’ she sneered – although she did not appear to have noticed Giuliani’s brown streaks.
Then she provided the quasi-military unofficial name of the group.
”This is an elite strike-force team working on behalf of the president … to make sure that our Constitution is protected,’ she said.
The group includes Giuliani, Powell, Ellis, former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova and his wife and fellow lawyer Victoria Toensing.
‘I don’t know what you need to wake you up? To do your job!’ Giuliani lectured the press.
Clean-up time: Shortly before the end of the press conference Rudy Giuliani managed to wipe away most of the brown streak on his face
We can flip them all: Giuliani had a map beside him of the states where he claims the Democratic plot went down – although he also claimed it happened in New Mexico and Virginia, which are not colored
Elite strike team: A sweaty Rudy Giuliani outlined his claims of a massive conspiracy which had been going on apparently unnoticed by anyone but the president’s current legal team in a low-ceiling conference room at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters
How it went: Rudy Giuliani leads the ‘elite strike force team’ out at the end of the press conference, with Jenna Ellis, who in 2016 called the president an ‘idiot’ behind him. She later tweeted that Giuliani and Sidney Powell (immediately behind her) had ‘unleashed the Kraken.’ Krakens cannot survive out of water.
Witness claims: Giuliani gestured at an affidavit from a Detroit poll worker, Jessy Jacob, which appeared to have had some scanning error
He’s found a fan! The president’s second son was apparently unconcerned by the dye on Rudy Giuliani’s face
Damp squid: The Kraken is a mythological Scandinavian sea creature sometimes compared to a giant octopus
The former federal prosecutor spoke to his past.
‘I know crimes. I can smell them. You don’t have to smell this one,’ he said.
‘When I went to bed on election night, he was ahead in all those states … How is it they all turned around?’ he asked. The simple answer to that was that mail-in ballots in a series of states could not be counted until after in-person ballots because Republican legislatures had refused to allow them to be processed in advance.
‘Our goal here is to go around the iron curtain of censorship,’ Giuliani said, before calling on Trump loyalist outfit OANN.
Even after the attacks on the media, the lawyers took multiple questions from the press – including a series of softballs from seemingly friendly outlets provided seating in the front row.
Finally pressed about his string of legal defeats, Giuliani attacked the judiciary in Democratic states. ‘Judges are appointed politically, and too many of them are hacks,’ he said.
Powell floated a conspiracy theory centered around money-making. ‘Think about the global interests behind your own news organizations,’ she said. ‘They make one heck of a lot of money off of it.’
Ellis tried to discourage questions about evidence, saying people who would inquire don’t understand the judicial process.
‘Your question is fundamentally flawed when you’re asking where is the evidence,’ she said.
Giuliani acknowledged several members of the legal team who have dropped out of the bevy of lawsuits the Trump camp has organized.
‘We have difficulty getting lawyers because our lawyers get threatened with being killed because of the ridiculous way in which you cover this,’ he said.
MEET THE ELITE STRIKE FORCE LEGAL TEAM TRUMP IS RELYING ON
President Donald Trump’s attorneys – the group of lawyers working to overturn the election results in his favor – pegged themselves as ‘elite strike force team’ in a bizarre press conference at the Republican National Committee.
But the group of five – Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Boris Epshteyn, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing – are more known for their engagement with conservative media, appearances on Fox News and their public advocacy for Trump rather than for winning election cases.
Here’s a look at the president’s legal team:
Rudy Giuliani: Hair apparent
He made his name in New York City as a top federal prosecutor where he battled the mob. He became a national hero on September 11th, when, as mayor, he led the city through the worst terrorist attack in American history.
But at 76, he has served as Trump’s personal lawyer for years and has fed him conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and argued it was a Ukrainian company that had the server with Hillary Clinton’s emails.
U.S. intelligence agencies have said they believe Giuliani is a target of an influence operation from the Russian government. Giuliani is believed to have business clients with ties to the Ukraine although he has not revealed his client list.
Now he’s reported to have asked the Trump campaign for $20,000 a day to spearhead Trump’s effort to overturn the election results.
He’s told the president that his other advisers have not been telling him the truth about his chances of success in his legal battles to overturn the results of the election, The New York Times reported.
On Friday, Trump put Giuliani in charge of all election-related litigation and communications for it. That resulted Thursday’s press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters where Giuliani, with hair dye dripping down both sides of his face, spouted baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud while praising the movie ‘My Cousin Vinny.’
Trump elevated Giuliani, a source told The Wall Street Journal, because ‘he was the only person telling the president he could win.’
Sidney Powell: Plans to unleash the Kraken
She represented Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and has been a major promoter of viral conspiracy theories about vote switching – theories she repeated on Thursday.
In her series of bizarre claims, she said Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) was part of a group of communists from China and Venezuela helping to rig the election in Joe Biden’s favor.
She also claimed that operators of Dominion voting machines went in and injected votes for Biden while deleting votes for Trump. She has shown no proof of her claims.
She has said she will ‘release the Kraken’ when it comes to proving voter fraud – a phrase that trended on Twitter.
Trump first noticed her when she was on Fox News defending Flynn, her client. She has accused the Justice Department of prosecutorial misconduct against Flynn.
She also has alleged special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was part of a plot by the intelligence community to force President Trump from office.
Jenna Ellis: Called Trump an idiot in 2016
Ellis, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, was reportedly part of an internal coup that put her and Giuliani in charge of the post-election legal strategy.
White House aides have expressed concern about her.
She was viewed as an uncontrollable figure inside the campaign who often provided President Trump with questionable information about alleged voter fraud.
And she appeared on television without asking for approval from campaign officials, aides told The Washington Post.
She dubbed herself ‘President-Elect Jenna Ellis’ on Twitter.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, she called Trump an ‘idiot,’ a ‘bully’ and agreed that he was someone intent to ‘destroy American democracy.’
Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing: Anti-Soros conspiracy theorists
The husband-and-wife legal team are panelists on Newsmax, a right-wing media outlet. They used to be regulars on Fox News until DiGenova made wild claims that much of the State Department was under the control of a well-known Jewish financier George Soros.
Trump wanted them on his legal team for his impeachment trial – he was said to be impressed with diGenova’s defense of him on Fox News – but the two were unable to join due to conflicts of interest.
They represent Ukrainian businessman Dmitri Firtash, who was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with bribery and racketeering.
They also reportedly worked with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of Giuliani’s who were arrested on charges of campaign finance violations.
A former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, diGenova pushed the theory that lawmakers tried to frame Trump when they investigated whether his campaign colluded with Russia four years ago.
Toensing represented Scooter Libby, the assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, when Trump pardoned him.
Boris Epshteyn: Eric Trump’s Russian-born friend
He was the Chief Political Commentator at Sinclair Broadcast Group until December 2019 when he joined President Trump’s re-election campaign.
He was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States as a child with his parents. He met Eric Trump at Georgetown University, where Epshteyn received his law degree.
Epshteyn became a special assistant in the Trump administration when the president first took office. He wrote Trump’s controversial statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2017, which omitted any mention of the Jewish people. He later resigned from the White House in March 2017.
He also testified behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee as part of its probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
Rudy Giuliani was surrounded by a maskless group on stage including from left Sidney Powell, who is Mike Flynn’s attorney, Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife lawyer team who have promoted conspiracy theories, and Boris Epshteyn, a Trump aide
