Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis seems to be saying the campaign has lots of evidence of "election official fraud," but they can't show it to us yet. This is just the campaign's opening statement, she says.
Giuliani says our votes are counted in German and Spain by companies affiliated with Maduro and Chavez (who died 7 years ago).
"Did you ever believe that was true?"
It isn't.
"There is nobody here who engages in fantasy," Giuliani says, after claiming some kind of conspiracy to rig the election by voting machine manufacturers, Hugo Chavez, antifa and others.
Now we're onto the FBI. "I don't know where they were on the hard drive."
Powell says they have no idea how many Democratic or Republican candidates paid to have elections rigged in their favor. "This is a massive, well-funded coordinated effort" to deprive the people of our rights.
Powell says these secret powers went in and "injected votes" for favored candidates. "Everybody's against us except President Trump."
Questioner helpfully points out that the Trump campaign has requested recounts only in Wisconsin counties that *didn't* use the software they think is fishy.
Giuliani says some cabal has "destroyed the right to vote" in an election in which many more Americans voted than ever before.
Ellis says "your question is fundamentally flawed when you're asking 'Where is the evidence?'" She says the campaign hasn't had a chance to offer evidence in court yet, though it's filed many, many affidavits.
Giuliani says "our cases haven't been dismissed," then yells that a reporter is lying.
The campaign dropped one of its few remaining lawsuits this morning.
Giuliani says they can't make their evidence public. "Our witnesses don't want to be revealed tot he tender mercies of a vicious press."
"We're headed to a very bad place," Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says, concluding a press conference at which the president's legal team laid out some truly wild conspiracies about rigged U.S. elections and said they would prove them later.
Trump's lawyers say they will prove their claims of a massive election-rigging conspiracy in its various lawsuits, and that we're just not to the evidentiary phase.
But Trump's campaign hasn't actually made these allegations in *any* of the cases it's filed.
And the claim about a Venezuelan/antifa conspiracy to rig election machines isn't in the amended lawsuit Trump's campaign wants permission to file in PA. (And it wasn't in the one they dropped in Michigan, where they say these bad things actually happened.)
Even if Trump's remaining lawsuits go forward -- and that's not something you should bet a lot of money on, given the legal theories at issue -- they won't introduce evidence of these wild conspiracies, because that's not the allegation they made and would then have to prove.
Today, Giuliani claimed that Trump was the victim of a massive election-fraud scheme and he just needed a chance to prove it in court.
Two days ago, he told a federal judge in the case in which he hopes to prove it: "This is not a fraud case."
Anyway, this was filed in Trump's Pennsylvania lawsuit today, and it's far-fetched but not as far-fetched as what Trump's lawyers claimed at that press conference.
It was filed by this guy, and I heartily encourage you to read this Philadelphia Inquirer article -> inquirer.com/business/tax-c…
It comes with a proposed order, but, unlike in the one filed by Trump campaign's lawyers, he did not extend the judge the courtesy of signing it for him.
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And the court says that even if Wood could bring this lawsuit (which he can't) and if he hadn't waited too long (which he did), he'd also lose on the merits.
The judge (a Trump appointee), goes out of his way to shoot down Wood's theory of an Equal Protection violation, which is very similar to the arguments Trump's campaign has made in its own lawsuit in Pennsylvania.
The judge said claims that lots of invalid ballots were counted in Georgia is "not supported by the evidence at this stage." The rejection rate for absentee ballots in Georgia in 2020 was the same as it was two years ago.
Exhibit J: Military ballots were "very clean." Many of the ballots "were for Biden. Many batches went 100% for Biden." Also, the watermark on three of the ballots didn't look right. "I believe the military ballots are highly suspicious of fraud."
[We're more than halfway there!]
Exhibit K: A witness says some workers did "fast counting" of ballots - instead of having each one verified by two people. Ballot boxes were left unattended. Some damaged ballots were "duplicated," but she wasn't allowed to ask what that meant. (It's a normal thing.)
Trump's lawyers said the other day that the press refuses to look at all the evidence the president and his allies have put forward of a massive scheme to rig the election.
I did.
Georgia edition, from the case filed by Trump ally L. Lin Wood ->
Exhibit A: A witness declares she was "not close enough to see much of anything" during Georgia's recount.
Exhibit B: A witness declares that people conducting the recount were not great at math. Also, sometimes ballots were left unattended on a table and drinks also were left on those tables.
President Trump's lawyers have filed a new motion in Pennsylvania making clear that they only want to block the state from certifying the results of the presidential election, which they claim was fraudulent. It can certify the other races, decided on the same ballots, they say.
Marks v. Stinson has become the hydroxychloroquine of the president's post-election litigation.
Interesting concession in Trump's filing: If PA certifies its electors by Dec. 8, its certification "shall be conclusive" when Congress meets to count electoral votes. (That's in the statute, but you'd think they'd want some wiggle room here.)
NEW: Multiple Trump campaign officials tell @Reuters the president's strategy for staying in power despite losing the election is to persuade state legislatures to do what their voters did not and simply declare him the winner.
President Trump called at least one Michigan election official who's now trying to take back her decision to certify votes in the state's largest county, she said. And he has summoned the leaders of the state legislature to the White House tomorrow. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
Trump's legal team nodded toward this strategy yesterday in a proposed amendment to the campaign's Pennsylvania lawsuit. They want the judge there to declare the state election "defective" and have the Republican-controlled legislature choose a winner instead.