President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, took the president’s voter fraud claims even further on Thursday, baselessly alleging during a frenzied news conference that the fraud was nationally coordinated.
The president's legal team alleged already debunked claims of voter fraud, baseless allegations of corrupted and hackable voting machines, election interference by foreign communists, and even references to antifa. The former New York City mayor also offered alternative election results for swing states and argued the president had a viable path to a second term.
"It's not a singular voter fraud in one state,” Giuliani said, speaking at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. “This pattern repeats itself in a number of states, almost exactly the same pattern, which any experienced investigator prosecutor, which suggests that there was a plan — from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats, and particularly if they focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption."
There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud, coordinated or isolated, and the Trump campaign has repeatedly seen its claims tossed out of court for a lack of evidence. On Thursday, the president's legal team instead flooded the zone with false claims.
"I know crimes, I can smell them. You don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you, 18 different ways. I can prove to you that he won, Pennsylvania, by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan, probably 50,000 votes," Giuliani continued.
The president and Giuliani have repeatedly alleged that the fraud was coming from big Democratic cities with large Black populations, including Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. while acknowledging the results in mostly white areas. In Thursday’s news conference, Giuliani doubled down on this.
"And I've often said, I guess sarcastically but it's true," he said. "The only surprise I would have found in this is that Philadelphia hadn't cheated in this election. Because for the last 60 years, they've cheated in just about every single election. You could say the same thing about Detroit."
Giuliani promised major suits in Georgia and Arizona and said the legal team is looking at New Mexico as well; he simultaneously promised "hundreds" of affidavits but that he couldn’t show them to reporters.
Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who congratulated Biden after the race was called, blistered Giuliani in a statement to NBC News.
”Wild press conferences erode public trust. So no, obviously Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute,” Sasse said. “We are a nation of laws, not tweets.”
“What matters most at this stage is not the latest press conference or tweet, but what the President’s lawyers are actually saying in court,” he said. “And based on what I’ve read in their filings, when Trump campaign lawyers have stood before courts under oath, they have repeatedly refused to actually allege grand fraud — because there are legal consequences for lying to judges.”
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell also claimed a vast conspiracy of changed votes.
"It affects votes around the country around the world, and all kinds of massive interests of globalist — dictators, corporations, you name it, everybody's against us, except President Trump, and we the people of the United States of America should be astonished," she said.
The president's legal team repeatedly scolded reporters for noting in their work that there is no evidence of the claims they've made. Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis said the reporters had not been patient enough, because court cases take time.
"This is not a 'Law & Order' episode, where everything is wrapped up in 60 minutes," she said.
