Inside the Trial That Could Be ‘the End of Mr. Giuliani’

On December 3, 2020, one month after Americans voted for president and nearly two weeks after Joe Biden was certified as the winner in Georgia, Donald Trump’s campaign lawyers announced they had proof that the election had been stolen. “WATCH,” the official @TeamTrump account posted on Twitter, over a series of screenshots of surveillance footage from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, which had served as a temporary vote tabulation center. The campaign claimed that the images showed election workers clearing the room of witnesses, and then pulling “suitcases filled with ballots” from under a table. Testifying before the Georgia state legislature that day, a lawyer for Trump’s campaign played a 90-second video, spliced together from many hours of surveillance footage, and drew attention to a handful of alleged culprits, including a “lady in purple,” who “had the name Ruby across her shirt.” Rudy Giuliani, the leader of the Trump legal team, repeated the claims of thievery on social media. “SMOKING GUN FROM GEORGIA,” he posted on the afternoon of December 3. He later called it “the Zapruder film” of the election.

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