Rudy Giuliani talks to reporters before the Republican National Convention, on July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/Paul Sancya).
The judge overseeing the Arizona fake electors case on Wednesday rejected, once and for all, claims by Rudy Giuliani that the grand jurors who indicted him were solely chosen for their political party affiliation.
In August, the former New York City mayor filed a motion in Maricopa County Superior Court seeking certain grand jury information premised on the idea the grand jurors themselves were chosen by prosecutors because of their presumed or likely political prejudices.
Earlier this month, Judge Bruce Cohen thoroughly rubbished those claims as “pure speculation and abject conjecture,” but also moved to resolve the issue and directed the state to obtain a sworn statement from a county official about the makeup of the grand jury.
The requested statement was provided and now the court considers the matter “resolved,” according to a terse, two-page ruling.
Stylized as a “denial of relief,” Cohen recounts the basic dispute.
“Defendant Giuliani filed a motion on August 30, 2024 seeking disclosure of grand jury selection records as part of his intended challenge to the grand jury indictment in this matter,” the court order reads. “Specifically, he postured a claim that grand jurors could have been biased or prejudiced or perhaps ‘interested’ in the matter under investigation. He did not provide any allegations that would support this claim but rather, imagined a circumstance where grand jurors may have been summoned and selected based upon their purported political ideology.”
In the Aug. 30, request, Giuliani’s defense sought disclosure of a large tranche of information on voters in the Grand Canyon State. The state replied on Sept. 26 and oral argument took place the next day.
The judge then harshly recounted how those arguments went down:
When pressed by this court during oral argument, counsel for Defendant Giuliani acknowledged that there was no underlying factual support for the claim. Rather, he seemed to assert that since there was no information about whether political party information of grand jurors was known at the time of summoning, that lack of knowledge formed a basis to investigate whether that information was possibly available during the summoning process. In other words, he argued that he should be permitted to pursue the “theory” because it had not been demonstrated that the theory was baseless.
“This court was not at all persuaded by the motion or the arguments made on behalf of Defendant Giuliani that would support the supposition that political affiliation played any role in grand juror selection,” the judge continued.
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The court’s original order nixed various asks by the defense — noting that some of the requested information could be gained with a public records request, that one of the requests would have resulted in Giuliani obtaining a list of “millions of identified potential jurors” and another request was for software he was not entitled to access.
Still, there was an impetus for a resolution, Cohen said. The Wednesday order notes: “[T]he court elected to seek further confirmation.”
The judge continued:
There are times in which dispelling unsupported allegations becomes crucial in maintaining public trust and institutional credibility. During those times, addressing a claim promptly and clearly is essential. Hopefully, it fosters a more informed environment, one in which fact rather than speculation is controlling. Here, despite there being no apparent factual support for a claim that political ideation was part of the grand jury selection process, this court directed the State to confirm what was a seemingly unassailable belief; that being, grand jurors, or jurors as a whole, are not selected based upon affiliation or ideation other than perhaps their common affinity to constitutional principles.
In other words, the judge aimed to shut down the political bias narrative because it is wholly unsupported — and he viewed the refutation of the claim as something not entirely unlike a public service.
So, Cohen reasoned, he asked the government to secure an affidavit from “a representative of the jury commissioner who would have personal knowledge as to whether Defendant Giuliani’s concern about political party affiliation information was part of the grand jury selection process.”
On Wednesday morning, prosecutors provided the requested document. The judge says it reads, in relevant part: “[P]olitical party affiliation information as to potential grand jurors was not known or available to the grand jury commissioner or representatives when summoning a potential pool for the 93rd Grand Jury.”
“This renders the claimed issue ‘resolved’,”” Cohen wrote — while “denying any further relief sought” sought by the former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor.
Giuliani and 17 other codefendants are named in a six-count indictment handed up by grand jurors in late April.
Prosecutors allege multiple felonies were committed in service of a failed effort — by many of Donald Trump’s closest allies, advisers and stalwarts — to submit a slate of fake, or “alternate,” electors who were prepared to deny President Joe Biden the Electoral College votes he won in the state during the 2020 election. Similar efforts took place in multiple states where Trump lost by solid but narrow margins.
Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which his adviser and spokesperson Ted Goodman has called an attempt to “interfere with the 2024 election and to take down President Trump and anyone willing to take on the permanent Washington political class.”
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