Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani‘s legal efforts on behalf of an election the president claims is ‘rigged’ have yet to pan out in court, and now the president’s former acting chief of staff is saying he isn’t the right counsel for the job.
Mulvaney, who served as head of the White House budget office before his tenures as acting White House chief of staff, raised the alarm on the Fox Business Network.
‘I’m still a little concerned about the use of Rudy Giuliani. It strikes me that this is the most important lawsuit in the history of the country, and they’re not using the most well-noted election lawyers,’ Mulvaney said.
‘They’re not using the most well-noted election lawyers,’ former White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox Business Wednesday in a dig at Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani
‘So on one hand, I think it needs to go forward — it absolutely does. I wish that it was being prosecuted a little more efficiently,’ he told interviewer Maria Bartiromo.
His statement came after Trump’s legal team has suffered a series of setbacks and defeats amid the president’s claim the election was ‘rigged.’ Trump tweeted Wednesday that he ‘won,’ despite President-elect Joe Biden winning 306 electoral votes and holding a lead approaching 6 million votes nationwide.
It came a day after Giuliani appeared in person in a federal courthouse in Pennsylvania.
In court, Giuliani, who represented Trump during impeachment and gave information he said came from Hunter Biden’s laptop to the New York Post weeks before Election Day, wove together a sweeping claim of a fraud conspiracy allegedly carried out by Democrats, saying there was a ‘widespread nationwide voter fraud.’
‘They stole an election,’ he added. But Giuliani also acknowledged to federal district court judge Matthew Brann, who was hearing the case that, ‘This is not a fraud case.’
Mulvaney still said the case ‘needs to go forward,’ saying he wanted it prosecuted ‘more efficiently’
President Trump calls the election ‘rigged’ and says he ‘won’
‘This is just disgraceful,’ said Mark Aronchick, representing the Allegheny County Board of Elections, in the county that includes Pittsburgh, said in response to Giuliani’s arguments. ‘I don’t think that Mr. Giuliani has even read Judge Rogers opinion or even understands it,’ he said of Giuliani at one point.
It appears to have been Giuliani’s first appearance inside a courtroom to represent a client since 1992, according to court records, a Philadelphia NBC affiliate reported.
When Rudy shot back at Aronchick to the judge, he called him ‘“the man who was very angry with me, I forgot his name.”
Rudy Giuliani
The Trump campaign had shaved numerous allegations from its initial filing, now arguing that there had been constitutional violations because some counties allowed voters to ‘cure’ their mail-in ballots while others did not.
‘In the plaintiffs’ counties, they were denied the opportunity to have an unobstructed observation and ensure opacity,” Giuliani said at one point. “I’m not quite sure I know what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?”
“It means you can’t,” responded Judge Brann.
“Big words, your honor,” Giuliani quipped.
Giuliani was mocked on line for a post-election press conference he held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside Philadelphia. President Trump had accidentally tweeted out the location as the Four Seasons hotel. The first witness he brought forward turned out to have served jail time after being convicted of exposing himself to young girls.
Team Trump has withdrawn suits in some states. On Wednesday it announced it was paying for a recount in two largely Democratic counties in Wisconsin – but didn’t demand a full statewide recount as the campaign said it would press for.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against the Trump camp’s lawsuit Tuesday 5-2, and even the two dissenters wrote that the idea of tossing out ‘presumptively valid’ ballots based on ‘isolated irregularities’ was ‘misguided.’
