Rudy Giuliani featured sex offender at press conference

President’s lawyer ridiculed for holding event outside landscape gardening business next to a sex shop

At his bizarre press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, Rudy Giuliani called up several witnesses to testify of alleged irregularities at vote-counting facilities – and one, it turns out, is a convicted sex offender.

Poll watcher Darryl Mikell Brooks was convicted in the 1990s of sexual assault, lewdness and endangering the welfare of a minor. He was charged with exposing himself to two girls aged seven and 11, although he has always maintained his innocence. 

Speaking at the press conference, he lamented that Republican poll watchers were supposedly kept too far away from the ballots to see what was being counted. “They did not allow us to see anything,” he said. “Was it corrupt or not? But give us an opportunity as poll watchers to view all the documents – all of the ballots.”

Speaking to Politico, Mr Brooks denied the charges he was convicted of, saying he was framed by the police. “I went to prison for three-and-a-half years," he said. "That’s what they said I was did. I was 25-years-old,” Brooks said. “I was an activist always doing the right thing. They lied on me. The cops set me up.”

He has unsuccessfully stood for office in Trenton, New Jersey on multiple occasions, and was apparently recognised at the press conference by the city’s mayor, Reed Gusciora, who told the site of his reaction: “Here’s New Jersey’s perennial candidate claiming to live in Philadelphia and Giuliani claiming him to be a poll watcher and Philadelphia resident."

The details of Mr Brooks’s past have no bearing on his testimony of being a poll watcher. However, his appearance at a press conference led by Mr Giuliani jars badly with the way many people close to Mr Trump have levelled accusations of various improprieties at their opponents.

The press conference, which was held in a down-at-heel parking lot next door to a sex shop and a crematorium, became the subject of ridicule even before it was announced.

Mr Giuliani’s appearance there was parodied just hours later on Saturday Night Live , while The Independent’s Richard Hall wrote that in attending the event, he “saw Donald Trump’s presidency come crashing down”.