(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
After an exhausting morning whipping up a crowd of Trump supporters for “trial by combat” with fabricated tales of vote fraud, the president’s lawyer Rudy “Macho Man” Giuliani toddled off for a three martini lunch (allegedly), followed by a generous application of mascara to his sideburns (presumably), during which he managed to keep his hands out of his pants the whole time (we hope).
But Rudy’s day was not done. Ignoring the fact that congress had just been attacked by the same pitchfork mob of lunatics he’d been inciting, the president’s lawyer set himself to the task of throwing sand in the gears of the pro forma certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.
The law allows for two hours of debate on each challenge to a state’s slate of electors if that challenge is sustained by at least on representative and one senator. The Trump campaign has made false claims about illegitimate vote tallies in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which would allow for twelve hours of delay, plus another six for voting. But in light of the violent events of the afternoon, most senators had little appetite to drag out the useless charade all night long. So at 7pm Rudy Giuliani phoned up Tommy Tuberville, the newly minted senator from Alabama, for help.
“Senator Tuberville? Or, I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, president’s lawyer,” he gabbled to the answering machine they hook up to those new-fangled mobile phone devices. “I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing, and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you.”
What information Rudy hoped to glean in the last 24 hours that wasn’t available to him in the ten weeks since the election is unclear. He seems to have had in mind letters from state Republican officials disavowing the already-certified electoral slates, which would then — in his fevered imagination — provide cover for Republican congress people to reject the ones selected by voters.
I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow.
I know McConnell is doing everything he can to rush it, which is kind of a kick in the head because it’s one thing to oppose us, it’s another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it. And he wants to try to get it down to only three states that we contest. But there are 10 states that we contest, not three. So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today. It angered them, because they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they’ll fix them up.
This was, of course, pure fantasy. Even before the insurrectionists overran congress, there was no universe in which the Democratic House would vote to reject the electors. In the case of a House/Senate split, the official slates would be accepted. But Rudy Giuliani appears to have abandoned fealty to objective reality some time during the second Bush administration.
Numbers also appear to be problem for America’s Mayor, and not just the arithmetic question of where he intended to get another four states to challenge. Because the phone number he called didn’t belong to Senator Tuberville at all. So Rudy Giuliani, the international cybersecurity expert who constantly buttdials reporters and had to get the Apple store to unlock his phone, left a message on a totally different senator’s voicemail. Which is how that call wound up getting leaked to The Dispatch, which published it immediately.
Very cool, very legal, and very sane. That’s Rudy’s brand, baby!
Giuliani to Senator: ‘Try to Just Slow it Down’ [The Dispatch]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.