Rudy Giuliani admits Biden is president hours after being sued for $1.3 billion by voting machine company
By Sonam Sheth
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani acknowledged for the first time Monday that Joe Biden won the 2020 US election.
"As far as this election is concerned, it's over," Giuliani said on his radio show on WABC-AM, according to the New York Times reporter Azi Paybarah.
"Biden's the president, she's the vice president," Giuliani added, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Giuliani's statement came hours after Dominion Voting Systems sued him for $1.3 billion and accused him of defamation. The former mayor spent months peddling bogus conspiracy theories alleging that the voting company engaged in widespread electon fraud to deliver Biden the White House and "steal" the 2020 race from former President Donald Trump.
After Dominion filed its lawsuit, Giuliani put out a statement saying the action will "allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely."
"The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart," the statement continued. "It is another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously. As such, we will investigate a countersuit against them for violating these Constitutional rights."
Dominion's lawsuit is the latest legal minefield for Giuliani, who is also under federal criminal investigation by the Manhattan US attorney's office over whether he violated foreign lobbying laws. Earlier this month, a New York state senator referred Giuliani for disbarment over his unsubstantiated and far-fetched claims of election malfeasance.
Among other things, the former New York mayor, who is also Trump's personal defense attorney, suggested after the November election that Dominion and its rival election-technology company Smartmatic colluded to switch votes from Trump to Biden in battleground states. There is no evidence that this is true, and multiple right-wing outlets have since had to retract the claim after the two companies threatened legal action.
Giuliani and other conspiracy theorists like the GOP lawyer Sidney Powell have also embraced and amplified the baseless allegation that Democrats and voting-machine companies conspired with dead communist dictators to steal the election from Trump (they didn't).
After Dominion filed its lawsuit against Giuliani this week, the company's CEO, John Poulos, accused him of having "actively propagated disinformation to purposefully mislead voters. Because Giuliani and others incessantly repeated the false claims about my company on a range of media platforms, some of our own family and friends are among the Americans who were duped."
Business Insider's Grace Dean and Jacob Shamsian reported that the lawsuit itself detailed how Giuliani continuously accused Dominion of engaging in election fraud and having lax security measures. In addition to pointing to several people who believed his claims, the lawsuit also referenced a speech he gave at a Trump rally preceding the deadly Capitol siege on January 6, during which he called for a "trial by combat" to block Congress from finalizing Biden's victory.