Over the course of three legislative hearings at the Georgia Capitol, Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani promoted falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the state’s election at the behest of key Republican leaders.
Facing a defamation lawsuit, Giuliani filed a motion this week saying he was no longer contesting accusations that he made false statements about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss – two Fulton County workers he wrongly accused of committing voter fraud.
And the GOP lawmakers who welcomed him to those December 2020 hearings have so far declined to comment.
That includes state Sens. Brandon Beach and Blake Tillery, state Rep. Shaw Blackmon, and former state Sen. William Ligon. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, then a state senator at the hearing, also didn’t comment on Giuliani’s turnabout.
The hearings unfolded across three separate days in December. He testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Dec. 3, to the House Governmental Affairs Committee, and back before the Judiciary panel on Dec. 30.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
While the House hearing was designed to propose future changes to election laws, the Senate panels were focused on airing out pro-Trump conspiracies about the 2020 vote.
During hours of testimony, Giuliani falsely told Georgia lawmakers that Joe Biden’s narrow victory was fraudulent and the results needed to be tossed. He repeated a sham conspiracy theory that the state’s new voting system was designed to switch votes.
And he showed snippets of surveillance video from the ballot counting at State Farm Arena that he said promised a “smoking gun” for election fraud -- accusing Moss of handing her mother, Freeman, “USB ports like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.”
They were, in fact, passing each other a ginger mint, as investigators later concluded. Yet Giuliani’s accusation fueled a pro-Trump frenzy that upended their lives and forced them into hiding.
As word of Giuliani’s acknowledgement that he made false statements spread, Democratic state Sen. Elena Parent said the former New York mayor put lives at risk by “knowingly propagating lies” about the 2020 election.
“Giuliani’s lies threatened the very foundation of America’s democracy,” she said. “He certainly should never be permitted to practice law again.”
Parent was among the Democrats who sat through the Giuliani hearings – and warned, at the time, they amounted to dangerous election fraud fantasies from Trump’s loyalists.
Then-state Rep. Bee Nguyen conducted a real-time fact-check of a false claim during one of the meetings. And then-state Sen. Jen Jordan called it a brazen attempt to undercut Biden’s victory.
Asked how she felt about the proceeding now, Jordan responded succinctly.
“I feel vindicated.”
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