‘Apparently inebriated’ Rudy Giuliani advised Trump to claim victory prematurely, Liz Cheney says

Comes on the second day of testimony for the January 6 select committee.

Representative Liz Cheney said on the second round of hearings investigating the January 6 riot at the US Capitol than an “apparently inebriated” Rudy Giuliani advised former president Donald Trump to declare victory on election night in 2020, despite campaign advisers telling him not to do so.

The vice chairwoman of the committee made the revelations in her opening remarks on Monday, saying how Mr Trump’s campaign advisers told him to wait the counting of votes and not to declare victory on election night.

“The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden voters had voted by mail, because President Trump ignored the advice of his campaign experts and told his supporters only to vote in person,” she said. Ms Cheney said that Mr Trump knew that the counting of mail-in ballots would not begin until much later.

“This was expected, reported and widely known,” she said. She added that Mr Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on the night of the election.

“And instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim that he won,” she said.

The select committee also played video testimony from former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who said that Mr Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City had too much to drink on election night.

“The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke to the president” Mr Miller said when questioned. “There were suggestions, by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani to go and declare victory and to say we, won it outright.”

Mr Miller added that he said it was not wise to declare victory until the campaign had a better sense of the numbers around election results.

Mr Giuliani said in his video testimony that he had spoken to the president.

Video testimony from Bill Stepien, who was Mr Trump’s campaign adviser and was scheduled to testify before the committee before his wife went into labour, said it was far too early to declare victory.

“Ballots were still being counted, ballots were still going to be counted for days, and it was far too early to be making any proclamation like that”, he said.