The Daily Beast
Even Steve Bannon is not buying Rudy Giuliani’s latest unbalanced plot
Twitter / @ peltzmadelineTrump, personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Friday, launched a conspiracy theory about the deadly Capitol insurrection that was so insane that fellow conspirator Steve Bannon had to jump and hit the brakes. Giuliani, currently facing a billion-dollar defamation suit against the Dominion voting system to promote unfounded 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 prompted on 6 January. While Giuliani said recently that he cannot defend Trump in his Senate impeachment trial because he is a witness – Giuliani infamously called “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 horn players’ argument that the violence was actually instigated by antifa and other left-wing 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 former president’s impeachment defense. And although 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. Rudy Giuliani is blaming the @ProjectLincoln uprising pic.twitter.com/tj4tu4k1ux— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) January 29, 2021 Saying that the Capitol riot was planned by antifa and “even by some right-wing groups that were enemies Trump, the former mayor wildly claimed that the anti-Trump political action committee, Project Lincoln, was involved in this alleged scheme. 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 well known for having worked with the Lincoln Project in the past,” exclaimed Giuliani with wide eyes. Bannon tried to stop Giuliani – only to have Trump’s lawyer demand that he finish his theory. “Go ahead,” replied a puzzled Bannon. Giuliani, meanwhile, told a story about how this person was supposedly connected to the Lincoln Project had “the same motivation as the antifa people”, 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 occurred.” (It seems that Giuliani is calling John Sullivan, who recorded the images of the Ashli Babbitt shooting and was later arrested for participating in the attack on the Capitol, for the antifa. While Sullivan participated in Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the past, groups of left have long denounced him as a “provocateur” looking 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 the name “Giuliani murmured.” Because we have it from anonymous sources. But he has worked in the past to [Utah Sen. Mitt] Romney. “Bannon, in an oddly rare moment of self-reflection, said that they are” exploding all the time “for launching illusory and inflamed speculations of this nature.” You can’t throw a load out there like that and then say, ‘I have a double secret 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 Trump’s impeachment defense should focus on electoral fraud to “fix November 3”, as “hard facts” show “that this thing has been stolen”. The Lincoln Project, meanwhile, seemed to accept the baseless allegations launched against it in a matter of weeks, denouncing on Twitter that Giuliani went from asking for “trial by combat” to blaming them for the uprising in a matter of weeks. January 6: let’s do the trial by combat! January 29: The Lincoln Project was to blame. pic.twitter.com/S2fWZ3P9vD— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) January 29, 2021 Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.