Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani during a press conference, November 19, 2020


Lawyers for Donald Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, have testified under oath that they did not check out claims of election fraud and conspiracy theories before spreading them publicly.

CNN has reviewed more than 2,000 pages of court records and documents, in a defamation lawsuit by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer against the Trump campaign, Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell, and prominent conservative activists.

Giuliani said in a deposition that he spent less than an hour reviewing allegations that Coomer was part of a plot to rig the election. However, the former New York City Mayor then publicly made those claims at a press conference 11 days after the November 8 election.

At the press conference, Powell set out a conspiracy theory involving Dominion, Biden, leaders of 10 Democratic cities, the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, the financier and philanthropist George Soros, “Antifa”, Cuba, and China. She acknowledged in a deposition that she did not have “a lot of specific knowledge about what Mr. Coomer personally did” before that presentation.

Giuliani said of the conspiracy theory claiming meetings between Dominion and another voting machine company with Venezuelan officials:

Before the press conference I was told about it. Sometimes I go and look myself — when stuff comes up. This time I didn’t have the time to do it.

It’s not my job, in a fast-moving case, to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that was given to me. Otherwise, you’re never going to write a story. You’ll never come to a conclusion.

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Wisconsin state officials have also cited the depositions in their pursuit of sanctions against Powell for failing to make “even the most basic” effort to verify their declarations of electoral fraud.

Powell was dismissed by the Trump team later in November as the claims were ridiculed. However, in December Trump proposed she be named as Special Counsel to investigate the election, taking control of voting machines and examining them. Even Giuliani balked at the proposal, and the White House meeting “dissolved into shouting”.

Trump Proposes Conspiracy Theorist Sidney Powell as “Special Counsel” to Investigate Election

“Severe Emotional Distress”

In court filings submitted last month, Dominion’s Coomer says the Trump camp and right-wing attack outlets, including One America News Network, spread misinformation even though they knew it might be false. Dominion is also suing Giuliani, Powell, and other members of the Trump camp.

Giuliani had labelled Coomer “a vicious, vicious man” with antifa ties, who “specifically” said “that they’re gonna fix this election”. Powell declared that Coomer had been “recorded in a conversation with antifa members, saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden” — a claim she retracted in her deposition, saying she did not know of any such recording.

Coomer left the company earlier this year. He says in his court filings that he’s “suffered severe emotional distress,” has dealt with “anxiety and depression,” and has seen his reputation “tarnished across the country,” while his “career in election services is effectively over”.

Despite his admission that he had not checked out claims, Giuliani maintained in his deposition, “We didn’t pronounce [Coomer] guilty. We laid out the facts that we had.”