An advisor to Rudy Giuliani, the former attorney for Donald Trump who helped the former president try to overturn the 2020 election results, said Tuesday night that the latest Trump indictment “eviscerates the First Amendment” and is an attempt to criminalize “the ruling regime’s number one political opponent.”
Ted Goodman, a political adviser and spokesman for Giuliani, also said the facts his client possesses establish “the good faith basis” Trump had for his post-election actions.
Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became one of Trump’s leading political allies, appears to be the unnamed co-conspirator 1 mentioned in the indictment. There are six unnamed alleged co-conspirators who have not yet been charged with any crimes.
Co-conspirator 1 is identified as “an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorney would not.”
The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators: knowingly used false claims of election fraud to try to get state lawmakers and elections officials to subvert the legitimate election results, organized false slates of electors in seven targeted states, falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns with the election, attempted to enlist then-vice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role in certifying the election to alter the election results, and exploited the violence and disruptions on January 6, 2021, to convince members of Congress to further delay the certification of the election results.
“This indictment eviscerates the First Amendment and criminalizes the ruling regime’s number one political opponent for daring to ask questions about the 2020 election results,” Goodman, the Giuliani adviser, told National Review in an email. “This indictment underscores the tragic reality of our two-tiered justice system—one for the regime in power and the other for anyone who dares to oppose the ruling regime.”
The news of the indictment, he said, “is particularly egregious in light of the growing evidence proving that Joe Biden and his family made millions of dollars in bribes from America’s most intransigent adversaries.”
The indictment lays out a series of actions that Giuliani took on Trump’s behalf after the election in an effort to get lawmakers in states like Arizona and Georgia to overturn their results. In mid November after a campaign attorney conceded that Trump lost in Arizona, the indictment says Trump “turned to Co-Conspirator 1, whom he announced would spearhead his efforts going forward to challenge the election results.”
Later that month, Trump and co-conspirator 1 called Arizona house speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers, “and made knowingly false claims of election fraud,” including asserting that non-citizens and dead people voted in the state. When Bowers asked for evidence, Co-Conspirator 1 did not have any, “but claimed he would provide.”
Trump and co-conspirator 1 asked Bowers to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of fraud, and asked him to circumvent the selection of electors for Biden.
On December 1, co-Conspirator 1 met with Bowers again. When Bowers asked for evidence of “outcome-determinative election fraud,” co-conspirator 1 “responded with the words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have a lot of theories,” according to the indictment.
Testifying before the January 6 Committee, Bowers noted that meeting with Giuliani.
The indictment also lays out co-conspirator 1’s efforts to affect the election results in Georgia. According to the indictment, co-conspirator 1 helped to orchestrate “a presentation to a Judiciary Subcommittee of the Georgia State Senate with the intention of misleading state senators into blocking the ascertainment of legitimate electors,” he and Trump “falsely claimed that more than 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia,” and he played a misleading video clip to lawmakers, claiming “it showed ‘voter fraud right in front of people’s eyes’ and was the ‘tip of theiceberg.” He also named two election workers and suggested they were criminals, the indictment says. Those workers “received numerous death threats.”
The indictment also accuses co-conspirator 1 of making false claims of election fraud and trying to overturn the elections in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“Every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith bases President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment,” Goodman told National Review in the email.
CNN claims to have identified four of the other alleged Trump co-conspirators: former Trump lawyer John Eastman, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. The sixth alleged co-conspirator has not yet been identified.