Rudy Giuliani has deleted two tweets in which the former mayor and attorney for Donald Trump denied being drunk as votes rolled in on Election Night and advising the president to declare victory.
The two tweets disappeared from Mr Giuliani’s timeline some time Tuesday evening. The first read: “I am disgusted and outraged at the out right lie by Jason Miller and Bill [Stepien].”
“I was upset that ther were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the president),” it continued, apparently referring to the Trump campaign’s bogus claims of fraud and not his own efforts to overturn the election.
“I REFUSED all alcohol that evening,” he claimed. “My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi”.
The claim to which he was responding first arose during the January 6 hearings this week and last. In videotaped testimony, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller made clear that he believed the former mayor was visibly inebriated when he began urging Mr Trump to declare victory even as networks were declaring Arizona, and therefore the election, for Joe Biden.
Mr Giuliani was the leader of efforts following the 2020 election to overturn the results before they were certified in January by Congress. As the head of Donald Trump’s legal team, the former New York City mayor hosted press conferences and attended hearings where he repeatedly pushed bogus claims of fraud based on rumours and anonymous anecdotes his team gathered, while at no point were they or anyone else ever able to provide tangible evidence of fraud.
He and his team were portrayed as the lunatic fringe of the Trump campaign by members of “Team Normal”, in campaign manager Bill Stepien’s words, during testimony played by the January 6 committee at its hearing on Monday. According to the testimony collected by lawmakers, Donald Trump pivoted to listening to Mr Giuliani and other conspiracists like Sidney Powell while ignoring warnings about his false claims from officials like Bill Barr and advisers like his own daughter and son-in-law.
The committee’s lawmakers have sought to prove that Mr Trump and his allies like Mr Giuliani pursued the course they did with the knowledge that their actions could lead to violence on January 6, when lawmakers met to certify the election.
Like the former president himself, Mr Giuliani remains a firm supporter of the conspiracies about Mr Trump’s election loss in 2020.
