Witnesses Reportedly Told Jack Smith That Trump Knew Giuliani Was Drunk While Giving Him Legal Advice Amid 2020 Election: Rolling Stone

One defense being used by the legal team of former President Donald Trump in the case of his third indictment, in which he is being federally charged with allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is that Trump was merely listening to the advice of his counsel. But according to a report in Rolling Stone, witnesses say some of that legal advice was coming from an unreliable source – and Trump knew it.

The counsel in question is Trump’s lawyer and ally Rudy Giuliani. As detailed by reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, the disgraced former mayor of New York was not only witnessed to have been inebriated at several points throughout the campaign, but that Trump knew Giuliani was a heavy drinker. What prosecutor Jack Smith and his team wanted to know was exactly when Giuliani was known to have been drunk while giving legal advice to his client, the former president. If there’s an intersection between these two points, then it’s possible that Trump was knowingly taking legal advice from someone he knew was giving him bad legal advice and ignoring the fact that it was bad. That’s called “willful recklessness.”

Suebsaeng and Rawnsley wrote:

Some witnesses told Smith’s team that they saw Giuliani consuming significant quantities of alcohol; some told the special counsel’s office that they could clearly smell alcohol on Giuliani’s breath, including on election night, and that they noticed distinct changes in his demeanor from hours prior, the sources tell Rolling Stone.

Some have already told investigators that they were directly aware of moments when Trump had talked to others about Giuliani’s drinking, and that Trump spoke negatively about his then-top lawyer’s alcohol consumption. (Trump is known for being a longtime teetotaler.)

Specifically, former senior advisor to Trump Jason Miller told the Jan. 6 Committee: “I think the mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president.”

If proven, this means that Trump relying on “advice of counsel” could blow up in his face. Mitchell Epner, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey explained:

In order to rely upon an advice of counsel defense, the defendant has to, number one, have made full disclosure of all material facts to the attorney. That requires that the attorney understands what’s being told to them. If you know that your attorney is drunk, that does not count as making full disclosure of all material facts.

Suebsaeng appeared on MSNBC and explained to Deadline White House guest host Ali Velshi that Smith was building a case that Trump was “not just leaning on ‘advice of counsel,’ he was engineering a reality that he perhaps knew was fictitious and wanted to will into existence because he wanted to cling to power.”

Here’s the MSNBC segment:

Giuliani has denied that he was drunk during the time in question and provided a statement to MSNBC from spokesperson Ted Goodman:

One should always question a story that is completely reliant on anonymous sources. This false narrative by nameless sources has been contradicted by on-the-record witnesses.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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