Rudy Giuliani wipes sweat from his face during a news conference about the 2020 US presidential election results
Credit: REUTERS
There has proved to be little meat on the bones of the Giuliani team’s allegations.
Some of the claims were so wild that one of Mr Trump’s favourite Fox News hosts, Geraldo Rivera, quipped in a post-conference TV debate: “what about Elvis?”
Chris Krebs, who was the US’s top election security official until he was unceremoniously fired by Mr Trump on Tuesday, described the press conference as “the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history.”
New Yorkers have struggled to reconcile the Rudy Giuliani they see unravelling before them — the one caught with his pants down in a Manhattan hotel room with an actress pretending to be a Russian journalist after falling for a Borat prank — with the man they once knew.
They remember an attorney general who went after the mafia and brought down some of the biggest mob bosses in the city, putting an end to a period of unprecedented violence. A Giulaini who was gracious in defeat following his failed 1989 mayoral bid, calling on New Yorkers to pray for David Dinkins, the Democrat who beat him, and to unite behind him.
They recall the leadership he showed after the 9/11 attacks more than a decade later that earned him the “America’s mayor” nickname.
The press conference capped a fortnight of barely believable appearances from Mr Giuliani.
Rudy Giuliani became Time magazine's person of the year in 2001
On the day the election was called for President-elect Mr Biden, the Brooklyn-born lawyer was lampooned for holding a news briefing at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia — situated between a crematorium and an adult bookstore — after Mr Trump mistakenly suggested it would be at a Four Seasons hotel.
He addressed gathered media at a lectern in the middle of a car park in the city’s industrial outskirts, where he struggled to be heard over a man in his underwear shouting about Mr Soros and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Mr Giuliani was himself responsible for bringing the world’s attention to the contents of the youngest Biden son’s computer, which he tried to falsely claim linked him and his father to corruption in Ukraine.
The former mayor is alleged to have spent time with unsavoury characters in Ukraine trying to unearth dirt that would help his client in the White House, an effort at the heart of Mr Trump’s impeachment.
When he was told the news that Mr Biden’s win had been called by the networks. “All the networks, ALL THE NETWORKS!,” he shouted as he raised his arms to the heavens. “The networks don’t get to decide elections,” he chided.
Some dismiss Mr Giuliani’s performances as mere theatrics, but critics believe they are working to erode Americans’ confidence in their demcratic system.
President George W. Bush surveys the damage at the site of the World Trade Center with New York Mayor Giuliani
Credit: AFP
Recent surveys show that only 30 per cent believe there had been a free and fair election, down from 60 per cent before November 3. Thirty-eight percent of Republicans still think the results will be overturned.
Trump supporters The Telegraph spoke to outside the Philadelphia conference spoke of an attempted coup against the president. They believed that the Democrats had stolen the election by flipping mail-in ballots cast for the president while poll watchers were not looking.
“Trump will not overturn the election result,” said Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia and director of Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “But he and his silent GOP enablers are doing real damage to our democracy and fuelling deeper polarisation in American society by trying.”
As days turn into weeks, the signposts Team Trump flagged as moments that would deliver them a victory have come and gone.
Mr Giualini and the Trump campaign have launched dozens of lawsuits in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, in a strategy described by election law experts as “throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick.”
They now stand at one post-election win to 31 losses, with a small number still to be heard.
Judge after judge has told them there is no evidence of widespread voting irregularities and that the lawsuits are becoming vexatious.
Georgia recounted its votes, which maintained Mr Biden’s razor-thin lead of 14,000, and certified the result on Friday. Pennsylvania has until Monday to certify theirs.
Mr Trump’s last throw of the dice has been to seek to take the power of appointing electors away from the governors and secretaries of state and give it to friendly state lawmakers from his party, saying the US Constitution gives legislatures the ultimate authority.
He summoned Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders to the White House for an extraordinary meeting on Friday.
In another gift to satirists everywhere, Mr Giuliani was unable to attend after coming in contact with his son, White House staffer Andrew, who on Thursday tested positive for Covid-19.
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