Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani launched a conspiracy theory about the deadly Capitol insurrection on Friday that was so insane that fellow conspirator Steve Bannon had to jump on the brakes.
Giuliani, currently facing a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for promoting unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud about the company, was recently on a mission to distance former President Donald Trump (and himself) from the seditious mutiny that the president urged January 6.
Although Giuliani recently said he cannot defend Trump in his Senate impeachment trial because he is a witness – the infamous Giuliani called for “trial by combat” at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the MAGA riot – the ex-mayor of New York tried to present an alternative reality to what actually happened that day.
After initially claiming that the riot was “99 percent peaceful”, Giuliani has since clung to the Trumpists’ point of discussion that the violence was actually instigated by antifa and other leftist groups, despite the FBI saying there is no evidence antifa’s involvement. Meanwhile, at least 21 of the arrested protesters have direct ties to right-wing extremist groups.
Bannon, who was recently forgiven by Trump and was directly involved in promoting the “Stop the Steal” rally, welcomed Giuliani on his War Room podcast on Friday to discuss the impeachment’s defense of the former president . And while Bannon was as responsible as Giuliani for selling the “Big Lie” that the election was “stolen” from Trump due to widespread voter fraud, he was not buying everything that Giuliani was selling on Friday.
Saying that the Capitol riot was planned by antifa and “even some right-wing groups that were enemies” of Trump, the former mayor said that the anti-Trump political action committee, Project Lincoln, was involved in this alleged scheme .
“Wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa – what are you saying ‘work for Project Lincoln?’ Right-wing groups, like who? ”Bannon interrupted quickly.
“One of the people who organized this is known to have worked with the Lincoln Project in the past,” exclaimed Giuliani with wide eyes.
While the former mayor of America continued to dive into his rabbit hole, Bannon tried to stop Giuliani – only to have Trump’s lawyer demand that he finish his theory.
“Go ahead,” replied Bannon, puzzled.
Giuliani, meanwhile, told a story about how this person supposedly linked to the Lincoln Project had “the same motivation that antifa people had”, which was “to blow this thing up”. He went on to say that many of the right-wing groups involved in the riot “were not pro-Trump” and that “the biggest problems were caused by antifa – where the shooting took place”.
(It seems that Giuliani is calling John Sullivan, who recorded the footage of Ashli Babbitt’s shooting and was later arrested for participating in the attack on the Capitol, the antifa. While Sullivan participated in Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the past, leftist groups for a long time he denounced him as a “provocative agent” who seeks to exploit protest violence to gain fame.
“So, who’s the guy who works on the Lincoln Project?” Bannon finally circled back.
“I don’t know if I can reveal his name,” murmured Giuliani. “Because we have it from anonymous sources. But he has worked in the past to [Utah Sen. Mitt] Romney. “
Bannon, in a strangely rare self-reflective moment, said that they are “exploding all the time” for throwing out such illusory and inflammatory speculations.
“You can’t launch a charge like that and then say, ‘I have a secret double parole guy that I can’t mention, but he worked for Romney and he worked for Project Lincoln,'” he scolded Giuliani.
Of course, it is not as if Bannon had suddenly seen the light of his dangerously conspiratorial ways. In another part of the discussion, he said that defending Trump’s impeachment should focus on electoral fraud to “fix November 3” as “hard facts” show “that this thing has been stolen”.
The Lincoln Project, for its part, seemed to accept the baseless allegations launched against them calmly, sneaking on Twitter that Giuliani went from asking for “trial by combat” to blaming them for the uprising in a matter of weeks.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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