Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Thursday continued to amplify President Donald Trump's baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
Giuliani, who's spearheading the Trump campaign's long-shot legal battle to overturn Joe Biden's victory, spent a Thursday news conference pushing the unfounded claim that Democratic officials engaged in a nationwide "conspiracy" to steal the election from Trump.
"This is real! It is not made up!" Giuliani shouted at reporters in the room. "There is nobody here that engages in fantasy. I have tried a hundred cases. I prosecuted some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. I know crimes. I can smell them."
Despite Giuliani's claims, there's no evidence that Biden's decisive victory was facilitated by any type of widespread fraud.
Election officials from both parties in all 50 states have asserted that the Nov. 3 contest was remarkably secure, and international observers say no major irregularities or fraud occurred.
But that hasn't stopped Trump's team of lawyers from filing a flurry of lawsuits alleging that an insidious voter fraud plot carried Biden to victory and that millions of ballots should be thrown out as a result.
Giuliani went so far as to accuse Biden himself of crimes.
"He doesn't get asked questions about all the evidence of the crimes that he committed," Giuliani said Thursday, without explaining what crimes Biden supposedly committed.
"What's going on in this country is horrible," said Giuliani, who dabbed at his face with a napkin and at one point appeared to have hair dye running down his face.
One component of the Trump campaign's dubious accusations involve the idea that Republican election watchers weren't allowed to stand close enough to poll workers in Pennsylvania and other states.
Giuliani tried to drive home that point by referencing a scene from the 1992 movie "My Cousin Vinny," which he called "one of my favorite law movies, because he comes from Brooklyn."
"These people were further away than 'My Cousin Vinny' was," he said of the poll watchers. "They couldn't see a thing!"
Most of the Trump campaign's lawsuits have been thrown out by judges who note that the wild assertions of voter fraud aren't backed up by evidence.
Still, Giuliani vowed to keep filing more lawsuits.
"We're about to file a major lawsuit in Georgia. That will be filed probably tomorrow," he said.
The ex-mayor also lashed out at the FBI after a reporter asked why the agency isn't getting involved if election crimes are as rampant as the Trump campaign claims.
"I don't know where the FBI has been for the last three years," he said. "What do we have to do to get the FBI to wake up? Maybe we need a new agency to protect us."
Sidney Powell, another member of Trump's legal team, piled on by falsely claiming the president won the election.
"President Trump won by a landslide," she said. "We are going to prove it and we are going to reclaim the United States of America."
Trump, who has barely been seen in public since losing the election, cheered on his lawyers from the White House.
"Lawyers now on," he tweeted. "An open and shut case of voter fraud. Massive numbers!"
As it has been forced to do dozens of times in recent weeks, Twitter quickly labeled the Trump tweet as "disputed."
Trump's refusal to concede the election is beginning to have dire consequences.
Biden said this week that he's concerned his administration will be behind the ball on shipping doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine because Trump has blocked the incoming president's transition team from accessing federal distribution plans.
Trump is also blocking Biden from receiving the top-secret intelligence briefings that presidents-elect are supposed to get in order to be up to speed on threats facing the nation before taking office.
