Giuliani Annoys MI GOP Legislators With Plodding Hearing Of Wacky Fraud Claims

LANSING, MI - DECEMBER 02: U.S. President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani listens to Detroit poll worker Jessi Jacobs during an appearance before the Michigan House Oversight Committee on December 2, ... LANSING, MI - DECEMBER 02: U.S. President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani listens to Detroit poll worker Jessi Jacobs during an appearance before the Michigan House Oversight Committee on December 2, 2020 in Lansing, Michigan. Guiliani and the president's legal team are claiming widespread voter fraud in Michigan and other closely contested states in the November 3 presidential election. The hearing will not change results of the vote in Michigan, which has already been certified. (Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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The Giuliani show made a stop in Lansing Wednesday night, where the President’s lawyer, per usual, instructed legislators to ignore the state’s millions of votes for Joe Biden and instead deliver a second term for President Donald Trump.

It’s the same schtick Giuliani and Trump attorney Jenna Ellis previously brought to Pennsylvania and Arizona, without much effect.

But the Michigan display may have uniquely soured Trump’s case in the eyes of Michigan’s Republican legislators, who were yelled at by Giuliani’s witnesses and made to hear out bogus election fraud pitches for four-and-a-half hours, rather than the scheduled three. The state, of course, has already certified Biden as the election’s winner.

No witness characterized the night more than Melissa Carone, who claimed that widespread fraud had occurred at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were counted. Among other things, Carone claimed that thousands of votes for Biden were run multiple times through vote tabulation machines.

When challenged by a Republican member of the state’s House Oversight Committee, Carone wasn’t hearing it.

“I’m just saying, the numbers are not off by 30,000 votes,” Rep. Steven Johnson (R) said, after being interrupted several times during his question by the witness.

“I know what I saw! And I signed something saying that if I’m wrong, I can go to prison. Did you?” Carone shot back, referring to an affidavit of hers.


Speaking after her, Hima Kolanagireddy made an odd point about voter ID laws.

“A lot of people think all Indians look alike. I think all Chinese look alike,” she said. “So how would you tell?”


At least one witness, Jessy Jacob, was an affiant in a lawsuit that was rejected by a Michigan judge earlier this month. Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events, a state circuit court judge wrote of that effort, “is incorrect and not credible.”

Another man, Col. Phil Waldron, is a repeat witness for Giuliani. He’s the source of the fabulous assertion that — according to the son of a Cuban intelligence officer who’d spoken to members of Hugo Chavez’s family — the American voting systems vendor Dominion had actually been compromised by communist technology.

After Waldron walked through the lengthy history of his theory of America’s corrupt voting systems, a committee member, Rep. John Reilly (R), asked why such corruption hasn’t been easily exposed by comparing electronic figures to paper ballots.

Waldron pivoted, pointing to other witnesses’ testimonies about “an injection of paper ballots… whether those are accurate or not.”

“But isn’t that another issue altogether?” Reilly pressed.

“This is a multifaceted issue,” Waldron responded, before pivoting again. “The software and the code is what we would need.”

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