President-elect Joe Biden‘s campaign on Thursday belittled President Donald Trump‘s legal team for promoting “thoroughly discredited claims of voter fraud,” allegations that have failed to convince judges, elections officials or much of the American public.
Biden’s campaign spokesman blasted the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for a bizarre press conference where he made far-fetched claims of a “communist” plot to rig voting machines, berated reporters and sweated so profusely that hair dye dripped down both his cheeks.
“What I’m describing to you is a massive fraud,” Giuliani said. “It isn’t a little teeny one.”
The former New York City mayor, who long ago was a widely respected top federal prosecutor, also cited the Joe Pesci legal-comedy film “My Cousin Vinny” during a nearly hour-long stemwinder before anyone else on the self-described “elite strike force team” of Trump lawyers managed to get a word in edgewise.
Biden spokesman Michael Gwin gave Giuliani’s performance a solid thumbs down.
“Yet another Rudy Giuliani spectacle exposes, as his appearances always do, the absurdity of Donald Trump’s thoroughly discredited claims of voter fraud,” said Gwin.
“Numerous courts, election officials from both parties, and even officials within Trump’s own administration, have all reaffirmed that claims of widespread voter fraud are categorically false,” Gwin said.
“In fact, lawyers for Trump have admitted that in papers filed in court and under direct questioning from judges,” he said. “No matter how hard Trump and the flailing Giuliani try, they cannot overturn the will of the American people, who resoundingly picked Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States.”
Chris Krebs, whom Trump fired via Twitter on Tuesday as head of Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in his own tweet Thursday said, “That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history.”
“And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky,” Krebs tweeted.
Krebs on Election Day had said on Twitter from his government account that “allegations that election systems were manipulated … have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”
Krebs’ comments angered Trump, who claimed there had been “massive improprieties and fraud.” Those claims that have not been substantiated.
Hours before his press conference, the Trump campaign withdrew its federal lawsuit challenging ballots in Wayne County, Michigan.
Earlier in the week, Trump allies in multiple battleground states, including Michigan, withdrew their own lawsuits that were geared toward reversing Biden’s victories in those states.
And despite the claims of widespread voter fraud by Giuliani, other lawyers for the president, and Trump himself, the U.S. Justice Department — the executive branch agency that would be empowered to prosecute any multi-state conspiracy to rig a federal election — has taken no action to suggest any of those claims are based in fact.
That has left the Trump campaign relying on recounts and lawsuits in a handful of states for its effort to overturn Biden’s victory. Legal analysts and political experts give Trump little chance of doing so.
Biden, the former Democratic vice president, is projected to win 306 Electoral College votes when those votes are cast next month.
That is 36 more electoral votes than a candidate needs to win the presidency.
Since the national popular vote was called for Biden, Trump has, uncharacteristically for him, largely stayed out of the public eye as he refuses to concede the election.
The presumptive lame duck also has been firing off broadsides in tweets on which Twitter routinely slaps warning labels saying: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”