A letter from The Lincoln Project’s lawyers to Rudy Giuliani:
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL
Mr. Rudolph W. Giuliani
45 East 66th Street
New York, NY 10065
Re: Your False and Defamatory Statements about The Lincoln Project (with Accompanying Notice to Preserve All Relevant Documents, If Any)
Mr. Giuliani:
You were once a respected and respectable figure.
Your unfortunate, self-inflicted decline has been a public spectacle. You wanted to "lock her up." 1- You panhandled foreign interests. 2- You defended porn-star payoffs in eye-popping media appearances. 3- You revealed sleazy schemes in butt-dialed voicemails. 4- You gave a mattress-top interview to someone you thought was a journalist "looking for more," but turned out only to be a comedian who showed you to be an easy mark. 5- You represented the President of the United States in a parking lot press conference held right outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Fantasy Island Adult Bookstore, and Philadelphia Crematorium. 6- You oozed hair dye while you spewed lies about the 2020 election. 7- You assembled and led an "Elite Strike Force" legal team that somehow couldn't manage to spell or to win in court.
More important than any of that, though, you betrayed your country when you rose to speak on January 6, 2021 before a raucous crowd that your client, ex-President Donald Trump, had invited to gather a short distance from the U.S. Capitol. You promoted bogus conspiracy theories. You said the presidency had been "stolen." You advocated an extra-constitutional effort to overturn the obvious result of a free and fair election. You denigrated the established legal process for counting certified votes that would begin just moments later in a joint session of Congress. You directed people to "fight to the very end" to make sure that same process "doesn't happen." You shouted "Let's have trial by combat!"
You told your zealots what to do. They listened. They vandalised. They terrorised.
They injured.
They killed.
You are responsible for an armed occupation of the U.S. Capitol and an insurrection against the United States. You are responsible for our nation's first non-peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War. You are responsible for 140 injured Capitol Police. You are responsible for five dead Americans. You incited a riot on January 6th and then stood back to watch. Your immediate reaction to the dreadful scene that day was to phone fleeing Senators to request that they further extend the vote-counting delay that you helped manufacture, which is a treacherous act the public knows about only because you cannot properly operate a smartphone.
Rather than apologising for your actions, you have spent the ensuing weeks deflecting blame and grasping for some way to explain your misconduct. You shamelessly muttered, for example, that your demand for "trial by combat" before an angry mob on January 6th was merely a benign reference to a 2014 episode of, as you put it, "that very famous documentary" Game of Thrones."
You will say anything to anyone who will listen, but even Fox News is reportedly unwilling to listen to you anymore. I can only assume that is why you recently found yourself appearing on Steve Bannon's online "War Room: Pandemic" program, of all places, to make a grievous error that you will come to regret.
You declared without prompting or proof that my client, The Lincoln Project, "planned" the January 6th insurrection "in order to hurt" Donald Trump. You claimed The Lincoln Project and "some right wing groups that operate for The Lincoln Project" were acting as "wolves in sheep's clothing," suggesting that they had somehow disguised themselves as Trump supporters while illegally occupying the Capitol.
Mr. Bannon-yes, Steve Bannon - expressed doubt about your initial claim, but nevertheless you persisted by additionally asserting that "one of the people who organised this is well known for having worked with The Lincoln Project in the past.'
When Mr. Bannon then asked you to reveal the identity of this "guy working with The Lincoln Project," you responded with “I don't know if I can reveal his name, because we have that from anonymous sources." Mr. Bannon, realising that you had no evidence to support your wild accusation, stated "You're killing me… You can't throw a charge out there like that and then say 'Yeah, got a double secret probation guy who can't mention."
Still, you held tight to your fantastical claim about The Lincoln Project for the remainder of your appearance. You committed a textbook act of defamation. You publicly accused The Lincoln Project of an infamous and criminal act that it had nothing to do with, as you very well know.
You lied.
You have until Wednesday, February 3rd to retract your statement fully and to apologise publicly to The Lincoln Project. Refuse at your peril. In the meantime, you are hereby notified that you should retain any and all documents, including emails and other electronic files, relating to this matter. You will never again be America's Mayor, but there may still be time to save some of the cash that you pawned your credibility for, should Dominion Voting Systems ultimately leave you with any.
