Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani walked into court on Tuesday to handle his first federal case in almost three decades as he took over the Trump campaign challenge to Joe Biden’s projected victory in Pennsylvania.
Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and a former Manhattan US attorney, entered the courthouse in Williamsport to cheers from several dozen supporters of the president gathered outside, The Associated Press reported.
Inside, Giuliani asked Judge Matthew Brann if he was formally approved to represent Trump, according to Reuters.
“You’re good to go,” Brann responded.
Online records show that Giuliani hasn’t entered an appearance in federal court since 1992, the year before he was first elected mayor of New York City.
At that time, he was part of a team from the law firm of Anderson, Kill, Olick & Oshinsky that was defending several clients in a personal injury case in northern California. But the Anderson, Kill team was replaced after about nine months and online records don’t make clear what role Giuliani played in the case.
On Sunday, Giuliani claimed to have “proof that I can’t disclose yet” about “corrupt” voting machines, as well as “more than enough illegal ballots already documented to overturn the result” in key swing states and secure Trump’s re-election.
Giuliani filed paperwork seeking to represent Trump on Tuesday morning, after Philadelphia election lawyer Linda Kerns and two Texas lawyers sought permission to quit the case, AP said.
Those moves came after a Pittsburgh law firm withdrew from the case last week under pressure from the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project.
On Monday, Kerns also said she’d suffered harassment that included an “abusive voicemail” from a lawyer at the firm representing Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
Trump’s suit claims that election officials in heavily Democratic counties illegally let voters “cure,” or fix, mail-in ballots that had problems such as missing secrecy envelopes.
That allegedly led to the “unlawful dilution or debasement” of properly cast ballots in Republican areas where officials “followed the law and did not provide a notice and cure process, disenfranchising many.”
It’s unclear how many ballots are at issue and whether disqualifying them would affect Biden’s unofficial margin of victory in Pennsylvania, where he leads Trump by more than 73,000 votes.