Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/234

 Although Giuliani wouldn't assume leadership of the Campaign's legal operations until mid-November, the former New York City mayor quickly began to butt heads with "Team Normal."

On November 6th, Giuliani and his team met with the Trump Campaign's leadership at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

"Team Normal" was not impressed. Stepien told the Select Committee the campaign team was concerned that Giuliani would be a distraction to them and to President Trump. When Giuliani suggested traveling to Pennsylvania to assist in the campaign's efforts, the campaign team "didn't dissuade him from doing so." After just 10 to 15 minutes in the conference room, Stepien and other staffers left the meeting.

That same day, President Trump discussed the Campaign's legal strategy in the Oval Office with Giuliani, Clark, and Matt Morgan, the Trump Campaign's General Counsel. Prior to the election, Morgan was responsible for the Campaign's litigation strategy. Morgan and his team filed lawsuits challenging the changes States made to voting practices during the coronavirus pandemic. Morgan also studied previous elections to determine the types of cases that were likely to succeed. Clark described how the Campaign's original legal strategy was based on his general theory for election cases: "to look at what do you think, what do you know, and what can you prove" and then determine which cases to file from there.

Giuliani had other ideas and advocated to President Trump that he be put in charge of the Campaign's legal operation so that he could pursue his preferred strategy. "Mr. Giuliani didn't seem bound by those cases or by those precedents. He felt he could press forward on anything that he thought was wrong with the election and bring a strategy around that," Morgan explained. "Rudy was just chasing ghosts," Clark said. Morgan and Clark excused themselves from the meeting because it "was going nowhere."

The next day, November 7th, Giuliani held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He immediately began making outlandish claims, arguing that the Democrats had conspired to steal the election. "As you know from the very beginning, mail-in ballots were a source of some degree of skepticism, if not a lot of skepticism, as being innately prone to fraud," Giuliani said. "Those mail-in ballots could have been written the day before by the Democratic Party hacks that were all over the Convention Center." Giuliani offered no evidence to support his shocking and baseless allegation. Echoes of President Trump's relentless campaign against mail-in balloting, and his decision to exploit the Red Mirage, were easy to hear.