Giuliani quotes ‘My Cousin Vinny’ as he sets out conspiracy theories at bizarre press conference

What was stranger — the far-fetched, centrally-planned plot to swing the election? Or the hair dye running down the former mayor’s face?

Speaking at a press conference, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani laid out wild, far-reaching conspiracy theories regarding alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election, before also quoting the movie My Cousin Vinny.

In the midst of working through the states in which he believes the Trump campaign can overturn the results of the election, Mr Giuliani acted out one of the courtroom scenes from the 1992 movie.

He compared election observers being corralled away from the votes counts to a moment in the movie in which the eponymous character asks a witness in court how many fingers he is holding up, claiming that they could not see a thing.

Mr Giuliani’s allegations mostly focussed on mail-in ballots which he believes are wide open to fraud, and the logistics of counting votes. He claimed to have hundreds of affidavits to back up his accusations.

“This is enough to overturn any election,” he said, adding that widespread fraud was carried out by “Democratic bosses" and that the Trump campaign still has “multiple pathways to victory”.

At one point he referred to president-elect Joe Biden as a “crook” and chastised the press for reporting that he has no evidence of fraud. Mr Giuliani has offered no evidence in court of fraud.

He claimed that it was statistically impossible for Mr Trump to have lost in Pennsylvania and claimed to have statisticians willing to testify as such.

He described Mr Biden’s victory in the sate as: “Not a victory, but a fraud.”

Those that have reviewed the affidavits filed in Michigan say that they contain vague suspicions with some specific allegations. There is no evidence of widespread fraud.

He also said that they are about to file a major lawsuit in Georgia, which is about to finish its recount, confirming Mr Biden won the state.

The former mayor of New York also claimed in his opening remarks that there was a centralised plan to rig the election that specifically focussed on big cities, controlled by Democrats, that he says have a history of voter fraud.

The greater proportion of voters in most large urban areas consistently vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, so a larger turnout would naturally explain a greater number of votes for Mr Biden.

As what appeared to be hair dye dripped down both sides of his face, Mr Giuliani turned over the podium to attorney Sidney Powell who laid out an incredibly far-fetched conspiracy concerning Dominion Voting Systems, the late president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013), communist money interfering with US elections, and a vast plot involving computerised vote-switching.

The president has obsessively tweeted about Dominion since the election, prompting the company to release a statement refuting his attacks. MS Powell accused the company of “serious federal offences”.

After outlining an outlandish conspiracy theory regarding a scheme to decide the election through the system software, Ms Powell concludes: “We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it.”

Speaking third was Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis, whose thoughts about the president as a candidate in 2016 were uncovered yesterday by CNN. 

She lashed out at the press, saying “This is the court of public opinion right now," and that the media are not "unbiased jurors".

Mr Giuliani also jabbed at reporters saying that they were “frustrated with what we keep reading and hearing in the censored press”.

He later added later that the media are lying to the American people when they say there’s no evidence.

“Our goal here is to go around the outrageous Iron Curtain of censorship and get facts to the American people."

Ms Ellis described the assembled lawyers as “an elite strike-force team” working on behalf of the president. "We will not back down. We will not be intimidated. President Trump will not be intimidated," she added.

Earlier, Mr Giuliani said that there were many lawyers working on the project to overturn the election but those present were the senior team.

It was notable that general counsel from the campaign, senior RNC lawyers, nor the team that represented the president during the Mueller investigation were present.

The Trump legal team has been dropping or losing case after case in court.