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You have to be drunk or crazy to think Trump won the election and a senior Trump campaign advisor seems to agree.
Today’s Select Committee testimony included a number of legal highlights from former AG Bill Barr openly throwing the campaign under the bus and throwing it in reverse to former Jones Day lawyer Ben Ginsberg explaining that Trump’s efforts to undermine democratic elections failed to live up to acceptable standards of undermining democratic elections.
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But the most interesting nugget to come out of today’s testimony came from Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller discussing White House conversations on election night:
Questioner: Was there anyone in that conversation who, in your observation, had had too much to drink?
Miller: Uh, Mayor Giuliani.
Questioner: Tell me more about that. What was your observation about his, uh, potential intoxication during that discussion about what the President should say when he addressed the nation on election night?
Miller: The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not, um, know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the President, for example.
Wait, are you suggesting the guy who butt-dials reporters and got pegged as being “in the mumble tank” by multiple Trump officials speaking to Michael Wolff about Giuliani and drinking might have had too much on the night he watched his gravy train of a client implode? Interesting allegation!
[UPDATE: Giuliani issued a statement that he wasn’t even drinking that night. Which seems to miss the point…]
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Video testimony from former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who missed the hearing because his wife went into labor, suggested that this conversation happened during a meeting also involving Miller, Bill Stepien, Justin Clark, and Mark Meadows. For his part, Rudy testified that he didn’t remember who was present when he talked to Trump.
Miller: 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.
One would be hard-pressed to want legal advice from a sober Giuliani let alone a drunk one, but whatever his condition that night, if the now-suspended from legal practice former mayor really told Trump to go out and make statements that the people who actually knew what they were doing already identified as untrue that’s…
… well, honestly, it still wouldn’t be the most problematic thing Rudy’s done in the past two years. I mean, his cronies are taking guilty pleas, he’s getting caught with his hands down his pants on a hotel bed with a woman he thinks is underaged, and he’s getting duped into bashing his own clients on Cameo.
Though it would say a lot about the state of mind of teetotaler Donald Trump if others in the room thought Giuliani was in no condition to give sound legal advice and Trump went ahead and followed Rudy down the fraud road anyway.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.