Legislatures in states that saw fraud this month should be careful not to certify a “false election,” President Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Sunday.
Citing witnesses who have attested to seeing Republican poll observers blocked from properly watching ballots be counted in cities like Philadelphia and Detroit, Giuliani asserted ballots were counted for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden multiple times but for Trump just once.
“You in essence have two different elections. One for Biden, where he can get four times the vote, and one for Trump, where he’s limited to the actual vote that he got. Seems to me the state legislature can’t live with that. They'd be certifying a false election,” Giuliani said on WABC 770 AM.
That leaves the second prong of the campaign’s approach: state legislatures.
“There’s no question the legislature has a role. The Constitution of the United States, Article II, section 1, clause 2, says that the presidential election shall be conducted by the state legislature—not the governor, not the commissioner of elections, not the crooked political officials in Philadelphia—but by the state legislature,” Giuliani said.
“Now, they’ve delegated that. But when fraud is going on, they have a perfect right to rescind that delegation. They didn’t delegate it to be conducted fraudulently. They delegated it to be conducted honestly.”
Giuliani asserted the worst fraud took place in Pennsylvania and Michigan, with over 680,000 mail-in ballots that were cast without any inspection by Republicans. Evidence suggests election workers were counting ballots for Biden four or five times, which would have tilted the election toward him, the lawyer added.
Top officials in the battleground states have challenged claims of fraud.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said earlier this month that the state’s election “was secure, transparent, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people.” Allegations otherwise are “misinformation,” she added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said last week that local and state election officials “worked tirelessly to ensure Pennsylvania had a free, fair, and accurate process that reflects the will of the voters.”
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said recently that election officials there “ran this election and counted the votes in accordance with Arizona law.”