Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani may face ‘false statement’ charges in Georgia for making baseless claims of voter fraud, according to The Daily Beast.
“I think it’s clearly going to be an uphill climb,” Kenneth W. Mauldin, a retired district attorney, said.
“It would be highly unusual to use the false statement statutes in a circumstance like this,” Alan Cook, a former district attorney, said. “In 13 years as a prosecutor, I probably only used the statute a half dozen times. It’s typically used when state or local investigators are investigating a crime and they interview a witness who willfully and knowingly gives false information that misleads the investigators.”
Giuliani presented a trumped-up video to Georgia’s House Governmental Affairs Committee. Titus T. Nichols, a former violent crimes prosecutor in Augusta and an adjunct law professor at the University of Georgia, says that the false statement charges should be pursued.
“This is precisely to stop people from doing this stupid thing; it wastes the government’s time,” Nichols said. “When you start going deep into ridiculous theories, you cross the line from ‘I’m giving my opinion,’ to ‘I’m purposely giving false information.’”
“He knows that he’s lying when he says that. There are no secret ballots. That’s him presenting false information. And with him being an attorney, it’s even more clear that he’s lying. As a lawyer, you can’t just make up ridiculous theories,” Nichols said.
George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump, and disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements. Giuliani may be next.
