Now that Giuliani had the president’s permission to run the show, he became even more overbearing. Giuliani’s office advised Trump’s campaign that he ordinarily would be paid twenty thousand dollars per day for a project of this nature; some campaign officials balked at that estimated fee. Giuliani for the past four years had leveraged his relationship with the president to enrich himself, continuing to take on some wealthy clients who faced Justice Department scrutiny. His clientele included foreign governments and business leaders who sought a special “in” with the Trump administration. While Giuliani claimed he wasn’t lobbying the government, some of his clients said they were counting on him as their liaison. One Trump adviser recalled, “When Rudy didn’t get attorney general or secretary of state, Rudy threw his hands in the air and said, ‘Well, I’ll just go make fifteen million dollars a year like I usually do.’ ”
Giuliani elevated a protégée, Jenna Ellis, thirty-six, who had worked on the Trump campaign’s legal team. Ellis had a high opinion of herself. “I’m the Cinderella story of the legal world,” she told The Wall Street Journal. She marketed herself as a constitutional law expert, though her experience in that realm was largely limited to self-publishing a book in 2015, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, in which she argued that the Constitution was designed on the foundation of the Judeo-Christian worldview and that our rights come from God, not government. She had worked as a deputy district attorney handling court violations in a Colorado county but was fired, and later worked at the conservative law firm Thomas More Society, where she represented churches in religious liberty cases. Before December 2020, court records showed that Ellis had not handled an election law case nor appeared in a federal district court, where constitutional matters are weighed.
With Giuliani’s blessing, Ellis walked through Trump campaign headquarters telling people they had to answer to her if they wanted to keep their jobs and must no longer take instructions from Stepien or Clark, the campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, respectively. She sent text messages to others saying the same thing. Rank-and-file staffers were shaken by what was happening; one quietly complained to Jason Miller and said, “Hey, Jenna’s going crazy.” Ellis said this account of her conduct, described by other campaign officials, was “completely false.”
* * *
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Friday the thirteenth of November was a particularly unlucky day for Trump. It marked the start of a nearly unbroken string of court defeats for him. It was an inevitable outcome, of which some Trump advisers had warned. Many of the emergency legal challenges cobbled together by Trump’s threadbare legal team lacked evidence, failed to state a legal justification for the sweeping action the campaign sought, or contradicted one another from state to state. Team Trump was simultaneously arguing to continue counting votes in states he was winning and to stop in states he was losing. His campaign lawyers were throwing spaghetti against the wall in hopes some might stick. It was amateur hour.
In Michigan, a state court judge in Wayne County, the state’s largest jurisdiction and the home of heavily Democratic Detroit, denied a Republican group’s petition to halt the canvassing and certification there, as well as its request for an independent audit. Judge Timothy Kenny wrote that the Republican challengers “did not have a full understanding” of the processing and counting of mailed ballots. “Sinister, fraudulent motives were ascribed to the process and the city of Detroit,” he wrote. “Plaintiff’s interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
In Arizona, the Trump campaign voluntarily withdrew its challenge to the vote tally, as well as a suit it had filed the previous weekend claiming poll workers did not notify in-person voters when electronic ballot tabulation machines detected an “overvote,” meaning a voter’s choice may have been counted more than once. The Trump campaign admitted in a legal filing that even if the judge had ruled in its favor, tossing the votes in question would not be enough for Trump to overtake Biden in the state.
In Pennsylvania, two judges—in Philadelphia and suburban Montgomery County—rejected the Trump campaign’s request to toss out an estimated nine thousand absentee and mail-in ballots as fraudulent.
Kellyanne Conway talked to Trump around this time and told him she thought there were too many cases in too many states for his lawyers to successfully litigate.
“Bush v. Gore was about one state, one issue,” Conway said, referring to the Florida recount in 2000. “It was cleaner. Gore had his chip on black, Bush had it on red. Someone would win and someone would lose.”
Trump insisted to her that he had the facts on his side. “Did you see these crazy things?” he asked.
“Mr. President, you’ve got to produce evidence,” Conway said.
“We have evidence,” Trump replied.
“It’s not enough,” she said.
For Trump, the defeats appeared to have cast a pall. Speaking that afternoon in the Rose Garden, the president for the first time publicly allowed for the possibility that he might not remain in office for a second term. Addressing the possibility of a nationwide lockdown in response to the surging pandemic, Trump said, “This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell. But I can tell you, this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
The judiciary was not the only institution discounting Trump’s delusions of voter fraud. His own government’s top experts on election security did, too. On November 12, Trump had invited a formal declaration of this fact. Just after 11:30 a.m., he tweeted news “analysis” from his new favorite site, One America News Network, which backed up his alternate reality: “REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE.” Trump’s tweet went on to claim that Dominion software, used in voting machines in many states, including Pennsylvania, had also switched hundreds of thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes. There was no evidence for this. Chris Krebs, head of a Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity team that had spent months ensuring election systems nationwide were protected from tampering, was flabbergasted. He and his team had created a website called Rumor Control to bat down misinformation about the election coming from foreign actors, but his office had been getting angry calls from the White House to remove some of their fact-based public service announcements because they were rejecting claims the president was himself promoting.
Seeing Trump’s tweet that Thursday morning, Krebs and his team felt they couldn’t let it stand. His office, joined by an advisory council of election security partners, announced that the 2020 election had been “the most secure in American history.” Their joint statement explained how closely the election had been monitored by auditors and cyber teams. Though it never mentioned Trump, the statement included one line in bold font that directly rejected the president’s refrain.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the statement read.
Krebs understood the consequences. He prepared that day to be fired but come morning he still had a job. Yet on November 17, after Krebs reaffirmed publicly that the election had been secure and fraud allegations were baseless or “technically incoherent,” Trump terminated him via tweet.
* * *
—
On Saturday, November 14, legions of Trump supporters from across the country converged on Freedom Plaza, a couple of blocks from the White House, for a rally protesting the election results. It was billed as a “Million MAGA March,” although only tens of thousands attended.
The rally had been heavily promoted in advance, including by Trump, and law enforcement and military leaders were bracing for civil unrest. After attending a security briefing on November 10 about the Million MAGA March, Mark Milley told aides he feared this could be the modern American equivalent of “brownshirts in the streets.” Milley was referring to the p
aramilitary forces and stormtroopers that protected Nazi Party rallies in the 1920s and 1930s and enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Milley told aides the moment reminded him of strange commentary Trump made earlier in his presidency, during a discussion in the Oval Office about NATO and the U.S. alliance with Germany. Trump, who had a strained relationship with German chancellor Angela Merkel, had remarked to his advisers, “That bitch Merkel.”
“I know the fucking krauts,” the president added, using a derogatory term for German soldiers from World War I and World War II. Trump then pointed to a framed photograph of his father, Fred Trump, displayed on the table behind the Resolute Desk and said, “I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all.”
Trump, through a spokesman, denied making these comments.
The group of demonstrators on November 14 included members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that promotes violence under the auspices of “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt.” Some wore flak jackets, helmets, and shirts that read “Stand Back, Stand By,” quoting directly Trump’s comment from the September debate. The more organized Proud Boys mingled with scores of regular protesters—parents and young people, seniors and flag-toting veterans. They waved MAGA flags as speakers blared Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” which was Trump’s walkout song at his MAGA rallies.
The lineup of speakers included people famous for pushing, and possibly believing, dangerous and salacious falsehoods. Alex Jones, an alt-right activist described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America,” and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican QAnon adherent just elected to Congress from Georgia, both amplified the fiction that the election had been rigged and that Trump was the rightful victor.
The president of the United States was not scheduled to speak. Trump planned that morning to do what he did most Saturdays: golf. But he asked his Secret Service detail to make a dramatic detour on the drive out to his club in Sterling, Virginia. Just before 10:00, Trump’s supporters began cheering and hollering when they realized the presidential motorcade was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. Many of his fans had to scurry out of the path of the black SUVs and specialized trucks as they passed Freedom Plaza.
The demonstration was largely peaceful, although there were brief but intense clashes throughout the day. Counterprotesters showed up. When some held up orange “Refuse Fascism” posters, Trump fans shouted at them, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” As darkness fell, scuffles among activists escalated. Demonstrators on both sides shouted threats and profanity and threw punches and bottles. Police arrested at least twenty people, including four on gun charges. Tensions continued into the night, with altercations occurring at various points across the city. During a melee at a downtown intersection, a man in his twenties was stabbed in the back.
Leaders at the Pentagon and in law enforcement had reason to worry. For most of the year, the nation had been a tinderbox, and Trump was splashing around kerosene with each false claim of a rigged election. Milley’s aides remembered the mission the general had outlined for himself after the June 1 Lafayette Square incident: ensure the United States had a free and fair election with no military involvement whatsoever. Sixty-seven days remained until Biden would be sworn in as president. A lot could happen still.
* * *
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On November 14, Jason Miller arrived at headquarters riled up about what Ellis was telling people. He had a fondness for Giuliani, having worked on communications on his 2008 presidential campaign, but had no tolerance for Ellis’s apparent power trip. Miller felt protective of the staff.
Miller found Giuliani and Ellis in the big conference room, along with lawyers Joe DiGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Boris Epshteyn, and a handful of Giuliani associates: his girlfriend, Maria Ryan; his son, Andrew Giuliani; his longtime friend Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner (and convicted felon); and a few twentysomething women who often hung around him and usually wore tight-fitting apparel. The conference room smelled rancid, an aromatic mix of body odor and soiled food—“as if they’d gotten buffalo wings that went bad,” as one attendee described it. Garbage cans were overflowing. And nobody was social distancing—another potential Trumpian superspreader event.
This was the all-star team that was supposed to overturn the election for Trump. Miller walked in the room and thought to himself, What the fuck is this? The gathering felt like the famous cantina scene from Star Wars.
Miller motioned to Ellis and they stepped into the hallway and started laying into each other.
“What the hell are you doing?” Miller asked.
“You’re being threatening,” Ellis told him. “You’re being intimidating to me.”
“Jenna, you can’t tell people, especially young staffers, that their livelihoods are at stake,” Miller said.
“No, no, I never said that,” Ellis said.
“Jenna, I have the fucking text messages of you threatening people,” Miller said.
“You need to back up,” Ellis said. “You’re taking a hostile tone with me.”
“You’re nuts,” Miller said. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“You’re being a jerk,” Ellis said. “You’re being an asshole.”
“You’re one hundred percent fucking crazy,” Miller said. “You’re nuts. You can’t do this.”
“Well, the president told me I’m in charge,” Ellis said.
“Really? Let’s call him up and ask him who’s in charge, because he will not say you’re in charge,” Miller said. “I’ll swear to you he will not say you’re in charge. You’re not in charge of shit.”
Miller stormed out before anyone called the president. Ellis said that after Miller left, Giuliani joked, “Oh, well, good riddance. Better not to deal with that little shit.”
Trump caught wind of the altercation and called Miller that night.
“Don’t quit,” the president told him. “I’ve got to have you here. I need you on board. People are telling me Jenna’s a dictator, bossing people around. She doesn’t need to be. Work with Rudy. Do your thing. . . . Just don’t quit.”
Ellis said she also spoke with Trump that night and said he wanted to keep Miller on the team. The president described Miller as scared of her, according to Ellis, and told her, “Just try not to hurt his feelings so much, okay?”
The next day, November 15, Miller returned to headquarters and met with Giuliani and Ellis. The three tried to make peace.
“I know you guys got into it,” Giuliani said. “Look, I’m in charge. Jason’s my guy. I love Jason. Jason ran my campaign in 2008. I trust him. And you guys just have to work together.”
Ellis, looking at Miller, said, “I think you need to apologize.”
“No, I’m not going to,” Miller said. “Look, we can work together. Rudy’s in charge. We’ll roll with that.”
Giuliani agreed. “Knock it off,” he told Ellis. “We’re not going to do any apologies.”
* * *
—
Trump continued to insist that he would win Pennsylvania even though Biden already had been declared the winner. Yet in the aftermath of the November 13 ruling, Trump’s legal cavalry in the state was retreating. There were two law firms that together had filed four cases on his behalf in Pennsylvania, but in each, numerous lawyers increasingly grew concerned that they were being asked to gin up shoddy claims and were helping undermine confidence in U.S. elections. Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur formally withdrew from representing the Trump campaign, while a top lawyer at Jones Day, the Trump campaign’s longtime legal counsel, notified fellow attorneys by teleconference that the firm would not continue to take part in election-related litigation.
The departure of well-credentialed lawyers only further empowered Giuliani and his associates. Though the Giuliani-Ellis-Powell team dubbed itself “an elite strike force,”
it included a lawyer who hadn’t appeared in court since the 1990s; another whose work largely consisted of domestic abuse, traffic court, and religious-liberty cases; and yet another who gained notoriety for promoting conspiracy theories about a “deep state.” Some of them, including their chief strategist, Giuliani, appeared unfamiliar with the legal arguments the team had already made in court filings.
The matter of Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar was called on the morning of November 17 in Pennsylvania. The day before, Giuliani had been furious to learn that one of the Trump campaign’s lawyers had withdrawn the claims of massive fraud from the suit. The other lawyers had chosen to argue only that the campaign had standing to sue, wanting to clear that initial hurdle and then present the voter fraud case at a later hearing.
Giuliani sidelined them and decided he would argue the case himself, appearing in federal court for the first time since the early 1990s, in front of U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport. Based on the detailed nature of his questions, Brann, who had been nominated to the bench by President Obama, appeared to have carefully read all the pleadings from both parties in the case. Stuck arguing the claims the other lawyers framed, Giuliani sounded fuzzy on Trump’s case. He began by stating that Trump was the victim of “widespread nationwide voter fraud.” Later, when pressed for evidence, Giuliani acknowledged he was not arguing there had been fraud but rather was seeking to throw out about 680,000 ballots cast in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—heavily Democratic cities—because, he claimed, Republican observers were not permitted to watch them being counted.
Brann sounded puzzled.
“The poll-watching claims were deleted,” he told Giuliani, reminding the lawyer of his own team’s amended legal claims. “They’re now not before this court, so why should I consider them now?”
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year Page 42
