Rudy Giuliani Fingered In Voting Machine Seizure Scheme

0
1168

After accidentally reserving space for a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping, a company that sits next to a sex toy shop and a strip club, and not the Four Seasons Hotel, appearing at another press conference with hair dye running down his cheeks, and calling for a “trial by combat” on Jan. 6, 2021, it’s difficult to imagine Rudy Giuliani having the ability to shock anyone at this point. Breaking news, however, proves that he can.

Within the weeks after the 2020 election and prior to the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani requested that a Michigan prosecutor named James Rossiter turn over voting machines. The team claimed that the presidential election in 2020 had been stolen from Trump, in part because the manufacturers of Dominion Voting Systems vote-tabulating machines were in cahoots with Democrats, Italy, and the long-deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Giuliani and some of his associates over claims about Dominion made publicly.

According to The Washington Post:

‘Giuliani’s team called Rossiter around Nov. 20, 2020, Rossiter said, as it worked to overturn Trump’s defeat to Biden. The direct appeal to a local law enforcement official was part of a broader effort by Trump’s allies to access voting machines in an attempt to prove that the election had been stolen. That effort extended to a recently disclosed draft executive order for Trump’s signature to have National Guard troops seize machines across the nation.’

 

In the Michigan country where Rossiter serves on the court, Antrim County, the Trump legal team did not find a prosecutor willing to entertain their conspiracy theories. Other legal scholars have noted the significant inappropriateness of the request, and Rossiter described it as shocking.

‘Rossiter said he declined. “I said, ‘I can’t just say: give them here.’ We don’t have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. You need probable cause.” Even if he had had sufficient grounds to take the machines as evidence, Rossiter said, he could not have released them to outsiders or a party with an interest in the matter.

Like public officials in other counties in states where Trump won in 2016, Rossiter says he felt pressured. Antrim County had initially announced the wrong numbers for their election results, however, making Rossiter even more of a target for conspiracy theorists like Giuliani and Sydney Powell.

‘As Trump’s advisers searched for evidence to support his false claims that the election had been stolen, they focused on Antrim. Having unsuccessfully pressed Rossiter and another county official for access to the voting machines, they supported an election lawsuit brought by local Realtor William Bailey, who won a court order granting him access to the machines from a judge who had recently donated to Trump’s campaign.’