By Tony Czuczka
President Donald Trump said his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has been leading efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 general election, has tested positive for the Covid-19 virus.
Trump wished the 76-year-old former New York mayor well in a tweet on Sunday, saying “we will carry on!!!”
It’s the latest setback for Trump’s re-election fight. His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was sidelined after the election by the virus. A number of others who attended a Nov. 3 election party at the White House — including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Trump campaign adviser David Bossie — also contracted the virus.
Trump himself was hospitalized with Covid-19 before the election in October, interrupting his re-election campaign. He entered Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 2 after announcing that he and first lady Melania Trump had been diagnosed with Covid-19. He was released three days later.
Giuliani has been a key force in spearheading Trump’s claims of a widespread and implausible election fraud on behalf of President-elect Joe Biden, whose victory has been certified by states comprising more than the required 270 Electoral College votes.
He and other lawyers presented allegations at a Nov. 19 news conference ranging from complaints that Republican poll watchers weren’t allowed to observe vote-counting in Philadelphia and Detroit to a claim by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell that U.S. voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. used software made in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez.
Trump’s state challenges against the elections results have been unsuccessful. Undaunted, on Sunday he again tweeted his unsubstantiated claim that he won the presidential election.
— With assistance by Jennifer Jacobs
