An “Intoxicated” Rudy Giuliani urged Trump to declare victory in the 2020 election in spite of others in the president’s circle advising against it.
Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign strategist, told the House select committee investigating the events of January 6 that he and other members of Trump’s advising team recommended that he wait to declare victory and not give any credence to the theories being discussed by the former New York City mayor, including those discussing rigged voting machines and stolen ballots.
“There were suggestions by, I believe it was Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that we won it outright,” Miller told the committee. “I think effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying, ‘We won it. They’re stealing it from us. Where did 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’s deposition was played during Monday’s public hearing.
Miller was then asked if anyone was inebriated during these discussions to which he replied, “The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president, for example.”
Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager, made a similar claim, attempting to convince Trump to avoid claims of election fraud, but also said that the mood shifted after Arizona was called for Biden.
“My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien said in his testimony, adding that Trump “thought I was wrong. He told me so.”
Stepien claimed that after that night, there were two groups in Trump’s campaign team, “my team and Rudy’s team.”
“I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal, as reporters kind of started to do around that point in time,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, 25 years, and I’ve spanned political ideologies from Trump to McCain to Bush to Christie. I can work under a lot of circumstances for a lot of varied candidates and politicians…and I think along the way I built up, I hope, a pretty good reputation for being honest and professional and I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time.”
Giuliani has since issued a general denial rejecting “all falsehoods” that he claims were being said about him.
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