Mick Mulvaney Just Trashed Rudy Giuliani’s Election-Lawyering

Rudy Giuliani needs to recognize the difference between ranting on cable TV and arguing election law in a courtroom, Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday.
 

President Trump’s former chief of staff dunked hard on Giuliani’s lawyering skills in a Fox Business interview the morning after Giuliani swaggered into a Pennsylvania courthouse, ranted about voter fraud, and tried to convince the judge that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Putting Giuliani in charge of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Mulvaney said, probably wasn’t a great idea. 

“I’m still a little concerned about the use of Rudy Giuliani,” Mulvaney told the program, according to Politico. “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.”

Although Giuliani is a former New York prosecutor, Mulvaney noted that he’s not actually an expert on election law. And that’s not a good omen for Trump’s legal fortunes. 

“There are folks who do this all of the time. This is a specialty. This is not a television program. This is the real thing,” Mulvaney said. “And I was struck by a couple things that Rudy said in court yesterday. 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.”

Giuliani was reportedly seeking $20,000 a day to lead the legal efforts to install Trump in a second term, despite losing both the popular vote and the Electoral College, according to a report in The New York Times on Tuesday. Giuliani denied the story outright. But the Times cited members of Trump’s team saying Giuliani might be spurring Trump to keep fighting out of a desire to win a lucrative payday.

Trump tweeted on Saturday night that Giuliani would now be leading the legal team. Since then, Giuliani’s legal efforts have stirred up a bewildering cloud of chaotic action, and resulted in a remarkable string of defeats. Since Sunday, the Trump campaign has shuffled its legal team, gutted its own legal complaint in Pennsylvania, hired a new lawyer who previously said he believed Trump’s lawsuits would fail, insisted that this brand new attorney would be fully prepared for an all-important hearing Tuesday afternoon, and then reversed itself and begged the judge to grant the new lawyer more time to prepare.

The judge denied that request, so Giuliani stepped in and argued the case himself on Tuesday afternoon, in a presentation that was as grandiose and impassioned as it was unmoored from any constellation of provable facts. 

In the courtroom, Giuliani presented the sweeping and unfounded allegation that Democrats led a nationwide campaign to falsify electoral results in multiple large cities in important swing states, by somehow fiddling with the tabulations of mail-in ballots and then keeping poll watchers from observing the count. These assertions are not backed up by evidence, but Giuliani hardly let that slow him down.  

“As far as we’re concerned, your honor, those ballots could have been from Mickey Mouse,” Giuliani thundered. “This is absurd! This is a disgrace!”

If the judge ultimately dismisses Giuliani’s arguments, however, it will mark just the latest in over two-dozen recent courtroom defeats for Trump’s side. For the moment, there’s little to suggest that the Trump team will rethink its strategy and back down.  

Mulvaney is hardly the only one who thinks that appointing Giuliani to lead Trump’s legal efforts doesn’t bode well for Trump.

Trump’s position appears to be crumbling, outside legal observers said. Trump has insisted that President-elect Joe Biden won by way of rampant fraud. But his lawyers have been unable to substantiate that claim despite filing a dizzying barrage of legal challenges in courtrooms across the country.

“Trump’s legal path to overturn the election results appears 100 percent dead,” election lawyer and analyst Rick Hasen wrote in a blog post on Monday. “It’s over.”