‘Your election is a sham’: Giuliani tells Pennsylvania ‘I know crooks really well’ as he appears in Gettysburg

Rudy Giuliani has told a hearing in Pennsylvania that the election in their state was “a sham”, alleging “crooks” staged an illegitimate vote and worked to block Donald Trump’s victory.

Despite having told a federal judge that theirs was “not a fraud case”, the 76-year-old former mayor of New York introduced a series of Pennsylvania residents to complain about fraud, to cheers and whoops, and the occasional audible sharp intake of breath from the staunchly pro-Trump crowd.

It was unclear why he did not introduce their testimony in court, when he had the chance, or whether he intended to. 

Mr Giuliani told the state senate majority policy committee, gathered in Gettysburg, that there were serious irregularities with the election – in particular in Philadelphia, and Allegheny County, which surrounds Pittsburgh.

“Your election – because of these two counties, and maybe one other – is a sham,” Mr Giuliani told those assembled at the Wyndham Hotel.

Drawing laughter from the crowd, the former federal prosecutor said that he knew “crooks”, and accused election officials of deliberately rigging the election.

The hearing was viewed by others as a farce, designed to confuse and anger Trump supporters but with little actual effect, and with no context or corroboration of the accusations being made.

On Monday Pennsylvania certified the vote, meaning that the process is concluded. Mr Biden won the state by 80,555 votes.

“President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” said Pat Toomey, a Republican senator for Pennsylvania, in a statement following the court ruling over the weekend.

Mr Giuliani insisted that there had been fraud.

He claimed that 682,770 mail-in ballots entered in Allegheny County and Philadelphia were “not observed by any single Republican”.

“They could have been from the same person,” he said. "There could have been multiples, there was no name on them.

“Under the law of your state, those ballots are illegal.”

Mr Giuliani referenced a 17 November court hearing in Williamsport, Pennsylvania – his first time arguing before a federal judge in almost 30 years – in which he was accused of trying to disenfranchise millions of voters.

“We don’t want to disenfranchise anyone,” he said. “We want to disqualify 682,000 votes so 72 million people are not disenfranchised.”

Mr Giuliani said that 22,686 mail-in ballots were returned on the day they were mailed.

He said 32,591 were returned the day after they were mailed, and “20,000 returned before they were mailed”.

“And I think this is kind of a low count – I guess the crooks in Philadelphia are kind of disappointed about this – but there were 8,021 votes from dead people.”

Mr Giuliani told the panel of Republicans that there were problems with their mail-in ballots – a key component of the Trump administration’s legal argument.

“The mail-in ballots that were received were not inspected at all by any Republicans. They were hidden from Republicans,” he said.

He said he “couldn't be entirely sure,” though.

“In your state, Republicans were uniformly kept out – put in chutes, like cows, to keep them away.”

He said it happened in “highly-controlled Democrat cities”.

“What are the odds that they are always going to wake up with the same idea? We’re not going to allow any Republicans to see them. Or is it more likely that this was a plan? 

“It gives you much more margin to cheat. When you have 2.5 million, you have a much bigger range to cheat.”

He expressed surprise, once again, that when he went to sleep Mr Trump was in the lead but that lead evaporated.

“What are the odds that they all switched, overnight? They switched, by the next day.”

The lead evaporated because more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail, and as their votes were slowly counted, the pendulum swung in Mr Biden’s favour. 

Mr Giuliani introduced a series of Republican poll watchers and observers, who claimed that votes had gone missing, poll watchers were kept too far from the vote counters, and USB sticks mysteriously went missing.

“What I saw was not a secure and transparent election,” said Justin Kweder, an attorney in Philadelphia who served as a poll watcher. 

“There are major concerns about the legitimacy of hundreds of thousands of ballots counted in Pennsylvania.”

Greg Stenstrom, another poll watcher, said that in Delaware County, 47 USB cards were missing.

“As a computer scientist, an American and a patriot, it doesn’t matter who those votes were for. It was shocking to me that that could even happen,” he said.

“There is no cure for this, no remedy for this. I don't believe as a citizen and an observer to this, anyone can certify this with a good conscience.”

No one was called to provide an explanation for what they were witnessing, or explain what the protocols should have been.