Rudy Giuliani

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      January 6 testimony tells chilling tale of democracy hanging by a thread

      by

      January 6 testimony tells chilling tale of democracy hanging by a thread Analysis: Viewers learned of an ‘unhinged’ White House meeting and rioters ready for war – but will it close the case against Trump?“We settle our differences at the ballot box.”Bennie Thompson, chairman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, emphasised this article of faith in his opening remarks on Tuesday.Trump allies ‘screamed’ at aides who resisted seizing voting machines, January 6 panel hearsRead moreBut what followed was a three-hour story about how American democracy, like a rickety old house, creaked and bent and struggled to hold itself together during a thunderstorm of political violence.There was the tale of an Oval Office meeting that almost ended in fisticuffs. There was testimony from a former true believer in the “big lie” who joined the rampage at the Capitol. There were predictions that if Trump runs again, no one will be safe.It was a chilling reminder that in a nation that has the genocide of Indigenous Americans, slavery, civil war and relentless gun violence in its cultural DNA, bloodshed is never far from the surface. Since white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been ascendent.Jamie Raskin, another member of the panel, observed: “The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America.”He quoted Abraham Lincoln: “Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny.”The problem has returned with “ferocity”, Raskin said. “The creation of the internet and social media has given today’s tyrants tools that yesteryear’s despots could have only dreamed of.”The kindling is always there. The politician who lit it this time was Donald Trump, desperate to cling on to power after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.With options running out, he wanted to mobilise a crowd. Raskin asked: “And how do you mobilise a crowd in 2020? With millions of followers on Twitter, President Trump knew exactly how to do it.”At 1.42am on 19 December 2020, Trump sent a tweet encouraging supporters to come to Washington on 6 January 2021.“Be there.. will be wild,” he wrote.At Tuesday’s seventh hearing on Capitol Hill, the committee laid out what led up to the tweet – and what came in its aftermath.First, Trump tweeted almost immediately after what has been described as the craziest Oval Office meeting of his administration – a claim that puts it up against some pretty stiff competition. As the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson put it in a succinct text message: “The West Wing is UNHINGED.”The meeting lasted until after midnight with coup plotters including Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell pushing for the seizure of state election machines by the military, an idea rejected by relatively professional White House staff. Raskin noted a “heated and profane clash” and even threats of a physical fight.In video depositions, Powell – whom, frighteningly, Trump verbally agreed to appoint special counsel – took a giant swig of Dr Pepper. Giuliani recalled telling Trump’s advisers: “You’re a bunch of pussies.”It was as if the aggression in the hallowed Oval Office radiated outwards across the country, activating a Trump army ready to wage war on democracy. His post-meeting tweet was, the committee member Stephanie Murphy noted, “a call to arms”.The hearing saw videos and social media posts from Trump supporters: “Is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants everyone there?”“Trump just told us all to come armed. Fucking A, this is happening.”“It ‘will be wild’ means we need volunteers for the firing squad.”One Trump supporter promised there would be “a red wedding going down January 6” – a reference to a Game of Thrones scene where many attendees are slaughtered.Slowly but surely, as in previous hearings, the committee joined dots that always lead back to Trump. They cited his infamous presidential debate advice to the Proud Boys: “Stand back and stand by.”In a video deposition, a Twitter employee testified that there had not been such direct communication between the president and far-right groups before, and they saw this as asking to join in fighting for his case on January 6. One user responded to the tweet: “Locked and loaded and ready for Civil War Part Two.”Raskin noted how the tweet motivated the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, groups which had not historically worked together, to coordinate their activities.The committee obtained thousands of messages that showed strategic and tactical planning. It displayed photos of Flynn palling around with the Oath Keepers and the pro-Trump dirty trickster Roger Stone communicating with both groups.It also displayed a draft tweet to allege Trump was planning well in advance to tell supporters to march on the Capitol. It was damning and at times sickening, even before the vice-chair Liz Cheney’s sting in the tail, revealing Trump had personally tried to call an unidentified committee witness.But did this hearing close the case against the former president? There are echoes of the Russia investigation, with plenty of suspicious contacts and common goals but not the direct evidence of collusion that might, in a simple headline, persuade Trump supporters he issued orders to militia groups.Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump White House chief of staff, tweeted: “I’m sorry, but if a bunch of nut jobs think Trump was calling them to riot, that doesn’t mean he was. Using that theory, the Beatles were responsible for Charles Manson. This is sensational (is that the purpose?), but without some connection to the [White House], it is only that.”The convergence of interests between Trump and the extremists was inescapable, however. The witness Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, cut to the chase: “I think we need to stop mincing words and just talk about truths … What it was gonna be was an armed revolution … This could have been the spark that started a new civil war.“I think we’ve gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen … I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring.”It is a valid fear in a political climate where in recent weeks a former judge was killed in Wisconsin, a man was charged with attempting to murder the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh and a Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, Eric Greitens, ran a campaign ad in which he storms a building with a gun to hunt moderates of his own party.Ex-campaign chief texted ally Trump’s January 6 rhetoric ‘killed someone’Read moreThompson and others have cause to worry about whether differences will be settled at the ballot box next time, especially if Trump avoids prosecution and runs for president again.In a closing speech for the ages, Raskin argued that Trump is dragging the Republican party into an authoritarianism that thrives on political violence. Alluding to Trump’s inaugural address, Raskin said: “American carnage. That’s Donald Trump’s true legacy … The Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions.”Describing American democracy as a “precious inheritance”, Raskin concluded: “We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have and declare that this American carnage ends here and now.“In a world of resurgent authoritarianism, racism and antisemitism, let’s all hang tough for American democracy.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansRudy GiulianiUS CongressanalysisReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Georgia grand jury subpoenas Trump lawyers over effort to overturn election

      by

      Georgia grand jury subpoenas Trump lawyers over effort to overturn electionRudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham among members of legal team to receive subpoenas over ex-president’s efforts to ‘find’ votes The special grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia has subpoenaed several of the former US president’s legal advisers and political allies.Court documents show the Fulton county special grand jury has issued subpoenas to members of the Trump campaign legal team, including Rudy Giuliani, and Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina.‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia election workers on how Trump upended their livesRead moreThe grand jury is also seeking information from the conservative lawyers John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis. Mitchell participated in the phone call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, that sparked the grand jury investigation.On 2 January 2021, Trump called Raffensperger and urged him to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in Georgia. Raffensperger refused to do so, and the call, which quickly became public, ignited widespread outcry.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, launched the criminal investigation weeks after the call was leaked, and Raffensperger testified before the grand jury last month.The latest round of subpoenas in the investigation indicates the grand jury is seeking additional information about Trump allies’ efforts to meddle with the Georgia results.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Giuliani repeatedly testified before Georgia legislators about his baseless claims of widespread fraud tainting the state’s results. Graham also reached out to Raffensperger days after the 2020 election and pressed him on whether he could reject all mailed-in votes cast in counties with higher levels of mismatched signatures on ballots. (Graham has denied that allegation.)The grand jury will continue to gather information about Trump and his allies’ attempts to interfere with Georgia’s election results, and the group will then submit a report about whether the former president or any of his associates should face criminal charges over their efforts. Willis will make the final decision about filing charges in the case.The newest development comes as the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has looked more closely at Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Raffensperger testified publicly before the committee last month, and he recounted how his office investigated a number of Trump’s election conspiracy theories and found no evidence to substantiate any of them.“The numbers are the numbers,” Raffensperger told the committee. “The numbers don’t lie.”TopicsGeorgiaUS elections 2020Donald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      January 6 testimony puts Donald Trump in even greater legal peril

      by

      January 6 testimony puts Donald Trump in even greater legal perilFormer president and senior aides face exposure over knowledge that supporters were armed and intended to march on Capitol02:44Donald Trump and his two closest advisers could face widening criminal exposure over the Capitol attack after ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified about their potentially unlawful conduct to the House January 6 select committee at a special hearing on Thursday.The testimony revolved around the disclosure – one of several major revelations from Hutchinson – that the former president directed supporters to descend on the Capitol even though he knew they were armed and probably intended to cause harm.Angry, violent, reckless: testimony paints shocking portrait of Trump Read moreHutchinson testified under oath that Trump was deeply angered by the fact that some of his supporters who had gathered on the National Mall were not entering the secure perimeter for the Save America rally at the Ellipse, where he was due to make remarks.The supporters did not want to enter the secure perimeter, Hutchinson testified, because many were armed with knives, blades, pepper-spray and, as it later turned out, guns, and did not want to surrender their weapons to the Secret Service to attend the rally.“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump exclaimed in an extraordinary outburst of fury, according to Hutchinson. “Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the fucking mags [magnetometers] away.”The response from the former president is significant for two main reasons: it makes clear that he had been informed that his supporters were carrying weapons, and that he knew those armed people intended to make a non-permitted march to the Capitol.Trump then took the stage at the Save America rally and told his supporters both there at the Ellipse and around the Washington monument that he would march to the Capitol with them – giving them the strongest incentive to descend on the joint session of Congress.The former president additionally made the comments, Hutchinson said, despite the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, desperately trying to stop Trump and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, going to the Capitol for fear of potential legal exposure.“We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” if Trump went to the Capitol, Hutchinson said Cipollone told her the morning of January 6, alluding to obstruction of an official proceeding and defrauding the United States.The legal analysis from Cipollone was prescient: the select committee, even before hearing from Hutchinson for the first time earlier this year in closed-door depositions, has argued Trump and his top advisers violated multiple federal laws over January 6.At the special hearing, Hutchinson also revealed that Trump’s then attorney Rudy Giuliani and Meadows expressed an interest in receiving pre-emptive presidential pardons in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack.The disclosure from Hutchinson marked a new degree of apparent consciousness of guilt among Trump’s closest advisers – in addition to that of at least half a dozen Republican congressmen and the Trump lawyer John Eastman – or fear that they might have committed a crime.In raising Giuliani’s interest in a pardon, Hutchinson also testified that Trump’s former attorney may have also been central to a crime with respect to his seeming knowledge of what the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups were planning for January 6.“Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” were words heard at the White House when Giuliani was around the complex in the days before the Capitol attack, Hutchinson testified at the hearing.The new connection between Giuliani and the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys raised the spectre that the former president’s then attorney was broadly aware of the intentions of two far-right groups – whose senior members have since been indicted for seditious conspiracy.Meanwhile, on the eve of the Capitol attack, Trump asked Meadows to speak to the far-right political operative Roger Stone and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, which Meadows did, according to Hutchinson’s testimony.The former president’s chief of staff then repeatedly raised the prospect of travelling to the Trump war room at the Willard hotel in Washington DC, though Meadows ultimately demurred and ended up calling the Trump war room instead, Hutchinson testified.The Guardian first reported last year that from the White House, Trump then called Giuliani and a cadre of lawyers working at the Trump war room at the Willard and discussed ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.01:42Meadows’s connection to the Trump war room appears to be as significant as Giuliani discussing the far-right groups, not least because the Willard was also the base for Stone, who has ties to the Proud Boys, and Flynn, who previously worked with the Oath Keepers.The select committee’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, ended the special hearing with evidence of potential attempted witness tampering by people apparently close to the former president. In one mafia-style call, one witness was warned that Trump knew they would remain “loyal”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Police arrest New York man accused of slapping Rudy Giuliani on back

      by

      Police arrest New York man accused of slapping Rudy Giuliani on backEmployee Daniel Gill, 38, apparently asked Giuliani, 78, ‘What’s up, scumbag?’ during incident in ShopRite store on Staten Island A 38-year-old Staten Island store employee was arrested for allegedly hitting Rudy Giuliani on the back, an attack that the former New York City mayor says felt as if he had been “shot”.A surveillance video showed Giuliani standing inside a ShopRite store with a group of people he later identified as his supporters. As he was standing, 38-year-old Daniel Gill walked up from behind Giuliani, slapped his back and continued to walk, the video showed.The video, obtained and published by the New York Post, also showed Gill saying something to Giuliani as Gill walked past the group standing with the 78-year-old, who has also previously served as a lawyer to Donald Trump.Gill asked Giuliani, “What’s up, scumbag?”, according to a statement from the New York police department. As the group of onlookers watched, the woman next to Giuliani immediately began patting his back as if to soothe him.Gill continued to say something while he walked away into an aisle, and another person in a cap tried to talk to him. It was not clear from the video if that man was also a store employee.As Gill walked into one of the aisles, Giuliani was seen shaking his finger and saying something back.The New York police department confirmed the encounter to the Guardian and said Gill has been charged with two counts of assault. One of the counts alleges assault on someone 65 or older, the NYPD said.According to an interview with the Post, Giuliani said he felt “this tremendous pain in my back”.Giuliani claimed Gill said: “You … you’re one of the people that’s gonna kill women. You’re gonna kill women.” That appeared to be reference to the decision by the supreme court’s conservative majority to overturn the right to abortion that had been established nearly 50 years ago by Roe v Wade.“Then he starts yelling out all kinds of, just curses, and every once in a while, he puts in that woman thing,” Giuliani added.The encounter occurred during a campaign event for Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who is running to become New York’s next governor.Father and son have turned the incident into a part of their political pitch, with the younger Giuliani claiming the slap was the latest example of “​​the left wing … encouraging violence”.The elder Giuliani – who refused medical treatment – reportedly said he was pressing charges against Gill to create “an example that you can’t do this”.Neither ShopRite nor Andrew Giuliani’s campaign immediately responded to requests for comment.In a statement, Andrew Giuliani said: “Innocent people are attacked in today’s New York all of the time. This particular incident hit very close to home. The assault on my father, America’s Mayor, was over politics.“I will stand up for law and order so that New Yorkers feel safe again.”Mentions of Giuliani have been frequent during the recent series of public hearings held by the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.For instance, the committee aired evidence that, in attempting to overturn election results in service of Trump’s lie about voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, Giuliani told an official the battleground state of Arizona: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”A purportedly “inebriated” Giuliani also urged Trump to falsely claim victory on election night, according to evidence that the committee aired during the hearings.TopicsRudy GiulianiNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their lives

      by

      ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their livesShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraudRead moreTestifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south.Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers.No Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992 but Joe Biden beat Trump by just under 12,000 votes, a result confirmed by recounts.Tuesday’s hearing detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn that result via pressure on Republican state officials and vilification of Moss and her mother over video supposedly showing them engaged in voter fraud, a claim swiftly debunked.Moss’s mother attended the hearing. In taped testimony, she said: “My name is Ruby Freeman. I’ve always believed it when God says that he’ll make your name great. But this is not the way it was supposed to be.”“For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, knew me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name: Ruby’s Unique Treasures. A pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions.”“I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was and I am Lady Ruby. I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven’t worn it since and I’ll never wear it again.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me.“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with [Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”Freeman also said: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. And he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”Freeman said she had been forced to leave home for two months.Moss described threats also made to her grandmother.“That woman is my everything,” she said. “I’ve never even heard or seen her cry, ever in my life. And she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, like ‘Shaye, Shaye, oh my gosh, Shaye’, freaking me out, saying that people were at her home.”“And they knocked on the door and of course she opened it, seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest. They needed to find me and my mom, they knew we were there.“And [my grandmother] was just screaming and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t there so I just felt so helpless and so horrible for her. And she just screamed and I called her to close the door. Don’t open the door for anyone.”Moss was asked how her own life had been affected.She said: “My life was turned upside down. I no longer give out my business card. Don’t want anyone knowing my name. Don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store anymore.“I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve gained about 60lb. I don’t want to go anywhere, I second-guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a major way, every way.“All because of lies.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS elections 2020US politicsGeorgiaRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia election workers on how Trump upended their lives

      by

      ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia election workers on how Trump upended their livesShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraudRead moreTestifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south.Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers.No Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992 but Joe Biden beat Trump by just under 12,000 votes, a result confirmed by recounts.Tuesday’s hearing detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn that result via pressure on Republican state officials and vilification of Moss and her mother over video supposedly showing them engaged in voter fraud, a claim swiftly debunked.Moss’s mother attended the hearing. In taped testimony, she said: “My name is Ruby Freeman. I’ve always believed it when God says that he’ll make your name great. But this is not the way it was supposed to be.”“For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, knew me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name: Ruby’s Unique Treasures. A pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions.”“I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was and I am Lady Ruby. I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven’t worn it since and I’ll never wear it again.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me.“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with [Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”Freeman also said: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. And he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”Freeman said she had been forced to leave home for two months.Moss described threats also made to her grandmother.“That woman is my everything,” she said. “I’ve never even heard or seen her cry, ever in my life. And she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, like ‘Shaye, Shaye, oh my gosh, Shaye’, freaking me out, saying that people were at her home.”“And they knocked on the door and of course she opened it, seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest. They needed to find me and my mom, they knew we were there.“And [my grandmother] was just screaming and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t there so I just felt so helpless and so horrible for her. And she just screamed and I called her to close the door. Don’t open the door for anyone.”Moss was asked how her own life had been affected.She said: “My life was turned upside down. I no longer give out my business card. Don’t want anyone knowing my name. Don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store anymore.“I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve gained about 60lb. I don’t want to go anywhere, I second-guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a major way, every way.“All because of lies.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS elections 2020US politicsGeorgiaRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraud

      by

      Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraudFormer Trump lawyer acknowledged his efforts to overturn the election were based on mere ‘theories’, officials recall Attempting to overturn election results in service of Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani told an Arizona official: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”January 6 hearings: state officials to testify about pressure from Trump to discredit electionRead moreThe Republican speaker of the Arizona house, Rusty Bowers, told the January 6 committee, “I don’t know if that was a gaffe. Or maybe he didn’t think through what he said. But both myself and … my counsel remember that specifically.”For the committee, staging a fourth public hearing, the California Democrat Adam Schiff asked: “He wanted you to have the legislature dismiss the Biden electors and replace them with Trump electors on the basis of these theories of fraud?”Bowers said: “He did not say in those exact words, but he did say that under Arizona law, according to what he understood, that would be allowed and that we needed to come into session to take care of that.”This, Bowers said, “initiated a discussion about … what I can legally and not legally do. I can’t go into session in Arizona unilaterally or on my sole prerogative.”In extensive questioning of his witness, Schiff asked if anyone at any time provided to Bowers “evidence of election fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of the presidential election in Arizona”.Bowers said, “No one provided me ever such evidence.”Biden won Arizona by about 10,000 votes, a margin slightly increased after a controversial review pursued by state Republicans.Bowers told the hearing that Giuliani, other Trump aides and the 45th president himself made him think of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, a classic novel of mob incompetence by the late New York journalist Jimmy Breslin.“This is a tragic parody,” he said.Bowers described harassment he and his family suffered. Another witness, Shaye Moss, a former Georgia elections worker, described threats and harassment dealt to her, her mother and her grandmother.Schiff said: “Your proud service as an election worker took a dramatic turn on the day that Rudy Giuliani publicised video of you and your mother counting ballots on election night.”Schiff played footage from a Georgia state senate hearing in which Giuliani said Moss and her mother were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine”.Giuliani claimed it was “obvious to anyone who’s a criminal investigator or prosecutor, they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity”, and said the women’s places of work and homes “should have been searched for evidence” of voter fraud.What Giuliani said was a “USB port”, Moss said, was in fact “a ginger mint”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS elections 2020Rudy GiulianiDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansArizonanewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      'Intoxicated' Giuliani wanted Trump to declare victory on election night, investigation told – video

      by

      An ‘apparently inebriated’ Rudy Giuliani told Donald Trump to declare victory on election night in 2020 despite Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden and with votes yet to be fully counted in other states, former advisers to the then president told the House select committee investigating the 6 January riot. The hearing presented testimonies given by Giuliani, the former Trump campaign chair Bill Stepien, the former Trump senior adviser Jason Miller, and Ivanka Trump that detailed the former New York mayor’s actions on election night

      January 6 hearings: latest updates More