Giuliani team claims president was robbed of votes in ‘global plot’
DONALD TRUMP’S legal team led by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, gave a remarkable press conference yesterday making sweeping and unsubstantiated allegations of election corruption.
Addressing the media for more than an hour, Mr Giuliani and his fellow legal representatives made a slew of outlandish claims while providing little evidence to back them up.
At one point Mr Giuliani alleged that Democrat Joe Biden, now US presidentelect, had known of a plot to steal the election from Mr Trump.
Sidney Powell, another attorney, claimed US adversaries from Venezuela, Cuba and China had meddled in the election through a voting system that, she alleged, systematically robbed Mr Trump of votes. She claimed the president, who clearly lost the election on current vote counts, had actually won a “landslide” but the result had been reversed by nefarious forces.
The press conference at times tipped into the comic, with a sweating Mr Giuliani at one point wiping away what appeared to be dye from his face.
Critics say the claims from the Trump camp are an assault on the act at the heart of US democracy – voting. The president’s supporters argue he is in fact defending democracy.
The press conference at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, DC, came more than two weeks after election day.
Mr Biden was pushed over the allimportant 270 electoral vote line by multiple states with clear winning vote margins,
Throughout the press conference Mr Giuliani, now in charge of Mr Trump’s legal team contesting election results, spoke of “fraud”, “corruption”, “mass cheating” and “crooks” who got “caught”. “I know crimes, I can smell them. I don’t have to smell this one. I can prove it in 18 different ways,” Mr Giuliani, a former prosecutor, claimed at one point.
Amid the flurry of allegations, a few claims which have already been discussed were aired.
One was that close to 700,000 ballots cast in Pennsylvania, a swing state which Mr Biden won, were invalid because Republican poll watchers had not been able to see them being counted. That argument has been disputed in places. It is also not evidence of the mass voter fraud being alleged.
Mr Giuliani claimed “logic” showed that alleged evidence of wrongdoing in different states was part of a wider coordinated election conspiracy.
Mr Biden last night expressed frustration with Mr Trump’s fortnight-long refusal to concede the election and instead launch legal challenges.
“It is hard to fathom how this man thinks. It’s hard to fathom. I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won,” Mr Biden told reporters.
He described the president’s behaviour as “totally irresponsible”, adding: “It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country”.
Mr Biden would not rule out launching legal action to counter Mr Trump’s false claims of election victory.
He also revealed he had selected his Treasury secretary, another sign of moving forward with his transition preparation despite Mr Trump’s stance. Mr Biden said he would name the individual either j ust before or after Thanksgiving on Nov 26.
Mr Biden yesterday said his administration would not order a national shutdown despite a dramatic rise in the number of coronavirus cases. “There’s no circumstance under which I can see that would require total national shutdown,” he insisted. “I think that would be counterproductive. I am not going to shut down the economy. Period.”
‘I know crimes. I can smell them. I don’t have to smell this one. I can prove it in 18 different ways’