Rudy Giuliani pushed Trump to declare victory on election night and said anyone who wanted to wait was 'weak,' the former president's ex-aides say
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- Former Trump aides testified that Rudy Giuliani pushed Trump to prematurely declare victory.
- Trump's campaign manager said it was too early to declare victory on election night 2020.
- Despite their pleas, Trump later declared, "Frankly, we did win this election."
A group of former Trump aides testified that Rudy Giuliani pushed Donald Trump to prematurely declare victory on election night in 2020, overriding the advice of the then-president's campaign manager to take a more measured tone as votes were still being counted.
"It was far too early to be making any calls like that," Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, testified before the January 6 select committee in testimony that was first aired on Monday. "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."
Another top Trump aide, Jason Miller, testified that Giuliani was pushing Trump to go declare victory and that the former New York mayor lashed out at those in Trump's orbit who wanted to proceed in a more cautious manner.
"I think, effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying, we won it, they're stealing it from us, where did all the votes come from? We need to go say that we won, and, essentially, anyone who didn't agree with that position was being weak," Miller testified during his previous deposition that like Stepien's was partially aired on Monday.
Stepien, who was scheduled to appear publicly, testified that he was asked to hear Giuliani out in a meeting just off of the White House's map room that was attended by then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Giuliani testified during his deposition that he spoke to Trump "several times" on election night.
While the exact sequence of events is unclear, Trump's own views are abundantly clear.
Trump later declared from the White House in the early morning after the election, "Frankly, we did win this election" and called for "we want all voting to stop." Trump's latter view came despite his own campaign advisors warning him that the massive influx of mail-in voting due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant that it could take days to know the election's outcome.
"I always told the president the truth, and I think he expected that from me," Stepien said, adding that he told Trump, "we're going to have to see how this plays out."
Miller also testified that Giuliani was "definitely intoxicated" around the time he was making this push. Giuliani testified that he spoke to Trump directly "several times" on election night.
Monday's hearing is the latest in a series of the January 6 panel's major public hearings. The committee is using the hearings as an opportunity to share some of their findings from the more than 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents they have collected during their probe into the January 6 insurrection.
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