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WILLIAMSPORT, Pennsylvania (AP): Representing a client in a courtroom for the first time in nearly three decades, Rudy Giuliani showed some rust as he tried to argue that President Donald Trump had been robbed of re-election.
The former federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, who took over Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, entered court in the small Pennsylvania town of Williamsport on Tuesday (Nov. 17) with a few dozen Trump supporters cheering him from across the street. .
For the next several hours, he fiddled with his Twitter account, forgot which judge he was talking to, and launched wild and unsubstantiated accusations about a national conspiracy by Democrats to steal the election.
No such evidence has emerged since Election Day.
Giuliani goaded an opposing lawyer, calling him “the man who was very angry with me, I forgot his name.”
He mistook the judge for a federal judge in a separate Pennsylvania district who rejected a separate case from the Trump campaign: “They accused me of not reading their opinion and not understanding it.”
And he stumbled upon the meaning of “opacity.”
“In the plaintiffs’ counties, they were denied the opportunity to have unhindered observation and ensure opacity,” Giuliani said. “I’m not quite sure what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?
“It means you can’t,” said US District Judge Matthew Brann.
“Great words, your honor,” Giuliani said.
Sometimes the Philadelphia attorney who worked alongside Giuliani, Linda Kerns, would take it upon herself to answer Brann’s questions.
At one point, an opposition attorney, Mark Aronchick, questioned Giuliani’s repeated claims that it was illegal for counties to help people vote.
“I don’t expect him to know the Pennsylvania electoral code,” Aronchick said, suggesting, without saying so, that Giuliani was an unsuspecting outsider.
The Trump campaign seeks to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its election. The lawsuit is based on a complaint that Philadelphia and six Democratic-controlled counties in Pennsylvania allowed voters to make corrections to mail-in ballots that would otherwise be disqualified on a technicality, such as the lack of a secret envelope or signature. .
It is not clear how many ballots it could involve, although some opposition lawyers say it is too few to overturn the election result. President-elect Joe Biden won the state by more than 70,000 votes.
On Tuesday, opposition attorneys asked Brann to dismiss the case, calling the cited evidence “miscellaneous irregularities at best” that would not justify undoing Pennsylvania’s election results, which turned the White House over to Biden.
Giuliani, once a tough federal prosecutor who made a name for himself by going after New York mobsters in the 1980s, had not appeared in court as an attorney since 1992, according to court records.
He was the U.S. attorney in charge of the prominent Southern District of New York before winning his second run for mayor of New York City in 1993.
He remained mayor during the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, but his term was limited and he left office in early 2002. He ran for president in 2008.
Long in Trump’s orbit, Giuliani became a fierce attack dog in the 2016 Trump campaign, lending his celebrity to the homeless and earning Trump’s gratitude. He emerged as a major player when the president made him the public face of his legal team during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia.
Giuliani then blamed others close to Trump for presenting unproven conspiracy theories in front of the president about the work that Biden’s son Hunter did in Ukraine.
Trump was indicted after pressuring Kiev to investigate the Bidens.
Giuliani came out into the open again in the final stretch of this election, but he has little to show for the legal efforts of the Trump campaign.
And it became a joke when he gave a press conference in front of a Philadelphia landscaping company, in front of an adult bookstore, when the race was called for Biden.
When he left the courtroom Tuesday night, he didn’t seem concerned if he would lose that case – “well, obviously if we lose it, we’ll appeal it” – and suggested that the Trump campaign eggs are not in a basket.
“I am afraid there are eight cases,” Giuliani said. – AP
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