Giuliani to GOP: Pressure Legislature on Biden win

Trump’s lawyer made claims of ‘massive fraud’ while pressing lawmakers to intervene

LANSING » President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer urged Michigan Republican activists on Wednesday to pressure, even threaten, the GOP-controlled Legislature to “step up” and award the state’s 16 electoral votes to Trump despite Democrat Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory.

Rudy Giuliani made baseless claims of “massive fraud, all over the country,” which he later restated to a Republican-led legislative committee while pressing legislators to intervene. Just a day before, Attorney General William Barr declared the Justice Depart

ment had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.

GOP legislative leaders have said they will not try to replace Michigan’s electors.

Giuliani said the U. S. Constitution empowers legislatures to appoint electors directly, even though the Legislature long ago passed a law allotting them to the popular vote winner. Biden won the state by 2.8 percentage points. The result was certified by the state’s bipartisan election board last week.

“They’re the ones who should have the courage to step up,” Giuliani said of lawmakers during a virtual event hosted by the Michigan Republican Party. “You have state legislators who are so frightened that they have a hard time focusing on it. You have got to get them to remember that their oath to the Constitution sometimes requires being criticized. Sometimes it even requires being threatened.”

Later, he told the House Oversight Committee in a 4 ½-hour evening hearing that lawmakers can “take back the power” to select electors. “It’s your responsibility to stand up.” The electors will meet on Dec. 14.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who was among GOP lawmakers who attended an extraordinary meeting with Trump at the White House less than two weeks ago, reiterated Tuesday that the Legislature will not undermine the voters’ will.

In a highly unusual step, the Republican chairman of the panel, Rep. Matt Hall, ceded the meeting to Giuliani — who in turn began calling and questioning witnesses. The first was Jessy Jacob, a furloughed Detroit worker who was temporarily assigned to the city clerk’s office.

She repeated claims in her affidavit that was submitted in a lawsuit in which GOP poll challengers unsuccessfully sought to stop the certification of votes in the Democratic stronghold of Wayne County, home to Detroit. She said, for example, that she saw other workers coaching voters to cast ballots for Biden and she was instructed not to ask voters for photo ID.

A judge denied the suit, ruling that the interpretation of events by the plaintiffs — who ascribed “sinister, fraudulent motives’ to the city and its election workers — was “incorrect and not credible.” Trump’s legal team and his allies have lost repeatedly in courts in Michigan and other states.