Rudy Giuliani and other legal advisers to former President Trump asked a Michigan prosecutor to hand over his county's voting machines to Trump's team, the prosecutor told the Washington Post.
Driving the news: Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter, a Republican, said Giuliani and others asked him to get the machines during a phone call after the county's results for the 2020 election were initially misreported.
- The misreport, which had said that President Biden beat Trump by 3,000 in a red county, was used by Trump to argue that the election was rigged, WaPo notes. The county later corrected the tally.
What he's saying: "I said, ‘I can’t just say: give them here.’ We don’t have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. You need probable cause," Rossiter told the Post.
- He added that even if he could get the voting machines as evidence, he could not have released them to outsiders.
- "I never expected in my life I’d get a call like this," he said.
- Giuliani did not respond to Axios' requests for comments.
The big picture: The request was part of a broader effort to claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, per the Post.
- There is currently no evidence that suggests that the election was rigged.
Between the lines: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, said the panel has information indicating that the Trump administration had planned to have the military "potentially seize voting machines."
