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Rudy Giuliani blasts Trump aides over claim he was drunk on election night

"I REFUSED all alcohol that evening," Giuliani tweeted, disputing claims he was inebriated when he urged Trump to declare victory that night.
Image:
Video from a deposition Rudy Giuliani is played during a hearing by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 13, 2022.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Rudy Giuliani denied Tuesday that he was drunk when he urged former President Donald Trump to declare victory on election night as votes were still being counted, and said he was "disgusted" by a Trump aide who'd testified otherwise before the Jan. 6 committee.

"I REFUSED all alcohol that evening," Giuliani wrote in a pair of tweets that were later deleted.

In videotaped testimony played at the Jan. 6 committee hearing Monday, Jason Miller and Bill Stepien, said the former New York City mayor demanded to speak to the then-president as the returns were coming in on election night and told Trump to declare victory.

"I think the mayor was definitely intoxicated," Miller said.

In his tweets, Giuliani said he was "disgusted and outraged at the out right lie" by Miller and Stepien, whose last name he misspelled in the tweet.

While Stepien was critical of Giuliani's stolen election claims in his testimony, he did not reference his sobriety in any of the clips aired during the hearing.

Giuliani suggested the pair were trying to get back at him for berating them about their lack of preparedness to combat his numerous baseless and debunked allegations of widespread voter fraud.

"I was upset that they were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the President)," Giuliani said in his tweets.

"Is the false testimony from Miller and Steppien because I yelled at them? Are they being paid to lie?" he continued.

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

Stepien's lawyer, Kevin Marino, said his client "complied with the Committee’s subpoena and answered its questions truthfully. He has nothing to add to his testimony in response to Mr. Giuliani’s statements."

Stepien was initially scheduled to appear in person at the Monday hearing but was excused at the last minute because his wife was in labor.

Giuliani has a well-known fondness for alcohol but has denied that he's an alcoholic. "I love Scotch. I can’t help it. All of the malts. And part of it is cigars — I love to have them with cigars. I’m a partyer,” he told New York magazine in 2019.

Giuliani lawyer Robert Costello told NBC News after the hearing the committee never asked his client about the drinking allegations during their lengthy closed-door questioning of him last month and hadn't pressed him about his discussions with Trump that night.

In his since-deleted tweets Tuesday, Giuliani suggested he had soda on election night: "My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi.”

Costello said he had not seen the tweets and could not comment.

Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment about why the tweet was taken down. The former mayor stayed active on Twitter in the afternoon, tweeting and retweeting old articles that were critical of Miller and Stepien that did not have to do with Jan. 6.

On his radio show Tuesday, Giuliani insisted that "I was on diet cola all night" that night because "I knew I would have to be called upon for advice." He also brought on friend and former business partner Roy Bailey, who said he was with Giuliani at the White House that night and he had "absolutely nothing to do drink."  

During their testimonies, Miller and Stepien said they'd intercepted Giuliani at the White House on election night when he was trying to get to Trump.

"I think effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying, we won it, they’re stealing it from us, where’d all the votes come from, we need to go say that we won, and, essentially that anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak," Miller told the panel.

Giuliani eventually was able to get to Trump, and told the panel he spoke to the president "several" times that night.

Miller and Stepien both testified that they'd urged the president to hold off on declaring victory. "It was far too early to be making any proclamation like that," Stepien said. 

Trump took the Giuliani position when he spoke publicly in the hours after the polls closed.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” he said.

CORRECTION: (June 14, 2022 4:40 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated who testified that Rudy Giuliani appeared intoxicated on Election Night 2020. It was Jason Miller, not Bill Stepien. (Giuliani blamed both for the accusation, but Stepien made no reference in his testimony to Giuliani being intoxicated.)