WASHINGTON • With hair dye streaming down his cheeks and Mr Donald Trump watching on television, the President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani unleashed eyebrow-raising claims on Thursday that investor George Soros, China and a dead Venezuelan dictator conspired with Democratic "crooks" to hand America's election to Mr Joe Biden.
In an extraordinary 90-minute press conference at the Republican National Committee in Washington, Mr Giuliani and other members of Mr Trump's legal team left no doubt they were refusing to acknowledge President-elect Biden's win, arguing instead that a broad "national conspiracy" to deny a Trump re-election was under way.
Mr Giuliani opened with a frontal attack on "corrupt" Democratic-led cities, like Detroit, which he accused of purposely flipping thousands of votes to Mr Biden. He also spoke of "a plan from a centralised place to execute" voter fraud, and warned of an "iron curtain of censorship" denying the American people facts about the election.
Then it turned bizarre. "Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny?" asked Mr Giuliani, who proceeded to deliver his best Joe Pesci impersonation, copying the actor's mafioso persona from the hit 1992 movie.
Patting his beading brow with a handkerchief, and with sweat mixed with hair dye dripping down from his temples, Mr Giuliani launched attacks that veered towards the outlandish.
"You should be more astounded by the fact that our votes are counted in Germany, and in Spain by a company owned by affiliates of Chavez and Maduro," Mr Giuliani said, referring to Venezuela's notorious strongman Hugo Chavez, who has been dead for seven years, and the country's current leftist President Nicolas Maduro.
The company in question is elections software firm Smartmatic, founded in 2000 in Florida by two men born in Venezuela.
Smartmatic's chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is on the board of the Open Society Foundation begun by Mr Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and recurring bogeyman of Republican politicians.
The company's chairman "is a close associate and business partner of Mr George Soros, the biggest donor to the Democratic Party, the biggest donor to Antifa - and the biggest donor of Black Lives Matter", Mr Giuliani said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
