By Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu
06/13/2022 11:55 AM EDT
An “apparently inebriated” Rudy Giuliani advised then-President Donald Trump to declare victory in the middle of the night after Election Day 2020, top Trump aides told the Jan. 6 select committee in testimony presented Monday.
“There were suggestions by, I believe it was Mayor Giuilani, to go and declare victory and say that we’d won it outright,” former Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a video of his interview played by the select panel. Both Miller and Trump’s then-campaign manager Bill Stepien told the panel in testimony that Giuliani appeared intoxicated at the time.
Still, Trump took Giuliani’s advice, despite aides’ and his own family members’ exhortations that it remained unclear whether he or Joe Biden had prevailed.
“My recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted. It’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien told the select committee in an interview. Stepien said Trump disagreed, instead delivering a combative statement that declared victory and alleged widespread fraud. Those claims were later proven false.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said on Nov. 4, 2020.
The Jan. 6 select committee used Monday’s second of six scheduled public hearings to highlight the corrosive effect of Trump’s lie and his weeks promoting it with the help of political allies, friendly media megaphones and members of Congress. Trump’s campaign and the...
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