Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer throughout the myriad of 2020 election lawsuits, said he won’t serve as the president’s legal defense during Trump’s second impeachment trial.
Giuliani said he is prohibited from defending Trump due to his status as a witness to the events that prompted articles of impeachment to be drafted, according to ABC News.
“Because I gave an earlier speech [at the Jan. 6 Trump rally], I am a witness and therefore unable to participate in court or Senate chamber,” Giuliani said.
Rudy Giuliani now says he won’t on the Trump impeachment defense team. “Because I gave an earlier speech [at the January 6 Trump rally], I am a witness and therefore unable to participate in court or Senate chamber,” he tells me.
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) January 18, 2021
The reversal comes after the former New York City mayor indicated on Saturday that he may be involved in the legal proceedings.
“I’m involved right now. … That’s what I’m working on,” he previously told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl.
Giuliani began previewing his potential defense strategy, arguing that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were true and thus did not constitute incitement to violence.
“They basically claimed that anytime [Trump] says voter fraud, voter fraud, or I do, or anybody else, we’re inciting to violence; that those words are fighting words because it’s totally untrue,” Giuliani said. “Well, if you can prove that it’s true, or at least true enough so it’s a legitimate viewpoint, then they are no longer fighting words.”
He also argued that the rushed impeachment was tantamount to legal malpractice.
“If they decide to bring it to a trial, he should move to dismiss the impeachment as entirely illegal — that it was the only impeachment ever done in what, two days, three days,” he said. “We would say to the court, ‘You are now permitting in the future, basically in two days, the Congress can just impeach on anything they want to.'”
Trump was impeached by the House for the second time last week, with 10 Republican lawmakers voting with all Democrats to charge the president with inciting a riot on the U.S. Capitol. Giuliani said the delay between Trump’s remarks at the rally and the siege on the Capitol rendered the charge moot.
“Basically, if [incitement] is going to happen, it’s got to happen right away,” Giuliani said. “You’d have to have people running out. You’d have to have people running out of that frozen speech — right up to the Capitol. And that’s basically, incitement.”
Hours later, former Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley challenged Giuliani’s claim in a tweet, stating that Trump had not yet settled on a lawyer. Trump is set to leave office Wednesday at noon.
“Statement On President Trump’s Impeachment Defense Team: President Trump has not yet made a determination as to which lawyer or law firm will represent him for the disgraceful attack on our Constitution and democracy, known as the ‘impeachment hoax,’” Hogan tweeted. “We will keep you informed.”
Giuliani had said he would not rule out Trump testifying in a Senate trial, and he also said he believes that the Constitution does not rule out a president self-pardoning.
Advisers were incensed by Giuliani’s remarks, blaming him for the events that helped stoke both of Trump’s impeachments, according to the New York Times. He met with Trump later that night.
On Sunday, Giuliani was spotted visiting the White House for the second day in a row, as Trump and some associates, such as his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, were meeting to discuss a potential final slew of pardons.
He later reversed his position in a follow-up interview with ABC News, stating that he is a potential witness after the fiery remarks he made to protesters at the “Save America” rally on Jan. 6 before the storming of the Capitol. Among other remarks, Giuliani accused Democrats of criminal activity and called for a “trial by combat.”
The White House has yet to announce an impeachment defense team to handle the president’s case.
On Monday, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner that he was not currently representing Trump with regard to impeachment, but he declined to say if he had discussed the matter with the president recently. Dershowitz, who aided Trump’s impeachment defense last year, told the Washington Examiner last week that the two had spoken several weeks earlier about pardons.
The White House declined to comment.
