Rudy Giuliani: former New York City mayor, ex-lawyer for Donald Trump, and, as of Tuesday morning, Diet Pepsi enthusiast.
The conspiracy-obsessed lawyer and his allies on Tuesday responded to embarrassing claims aired the day prior by the congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot, insisting he was totally on the wagon on election night.
In previously recorded video testimony played by the committee, former Trump aide Jason Miller and former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien described an intoxicated Giuliani telling Trump to declare victory on election night, way before the result was clear.
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Trump’s closest advisers testified that they knew Trump hadn’t won—and had told him as much—but Trump instead followed the advice of the drunk Giuliani, who told him to simply reject the results, throwing the nation into chaos and triggering a monthslong election-fraud crusade that culminated in the Capitol riot.
In a typo-filled tweet Tuesday, Giuliani said he was “disgusted and outraged at the out right [sic] lie by Jason Miller and Bill Steppien [sic].”
“I was upset that they were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the President) I REFUSED all alcohol that evening. My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi.”
In a second tweet, he added, “Is the false testimony from Miller and Steppien [sic] because I yelled at them? Are they being paid to lie?” Giuliani later deleted the tweets.
Giuliani’s allies also rushed to his defense. Former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik ripped into Miller while stating Giuliani “was not drinking at all.” Appearing on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, the longtime Trumpworld acolyte added, “I don’t know why he [Miller] made this statement.” Bannon, a longtime pal of Miller’s, insisted that Giuliani “has too much respect for the White House and office of the presidency” to ever be intoxicated like that. Likewise, ex-Trump aide Boris Epshteyn claimed that Giuliani was “sober” that night.
On his Tuesday afternoon radio program on New York’s WABC, Giuliani was still fuming. “The group of people that says that I were drunk are the group of people that blew the election for the president,” he said.
“I don’t lie,” he claimed. “I tell the truth.”
Miller, who didn’t respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Tuesday, told the committee in his videotaped testimony that, on election night, he said “we should not go and declare victory until we had a better sense of the numbers.” But Giuliani became defiant and told Trump’s team, “We won it, they’re stealing it from us… we need to go say that we won.”
Miller said Giuliani’s aggressive tone was that “anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.”
Giuliani went on to spearhead Trump’s increasingly unhinged—and unsuccessful—campaign to overturn the election results by floating bizarre conspiracies including dope-dealing ballot-counters in Georgia to vote-flipping machines created by Venezuela.
Given that the Jan. 6 committee is planning to hold as many as eight hearings this month, Giuliani will have plenty of opportunities to crack open a (non-alcoholic) cold one and watch the investigation unfold.
