RNC Chief Counsel Reportedly Called Trump Legal Team’s Election Fight a ‘Joke’
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The chief counsel for the Republican National Committee reportedly warned last November that what Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis were doing in court was “a joke.”
According to The Washington Post, Justin Riemer sent an email to Liz Harrington (then an RNC spokesperson, now a spokesperson for Trump) that said, “What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court… They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.”
Riemer said Ellis and Giuliani were damaging a broader Republican Party push on “election integrity” issues, according to the email. Riemer had led the party’s legal efforts for months ahead of and after the November election, particularly limiting the expansion of mail-in ballots. But Riemer was skeptical internally of some of the most conspiratorial theories and did not believe many of the claims from Giuliani and others about fraud, according to people who spoke to Reimer and discussed his views on the condition of anonymity because they were private conversations.
The Post report says some Trump allies, “including Giuliani,” wanted Riemer fired.
The Trump legal team lost case after case in their quest to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The former president and his allies have continued to push their false claims to this day.
Riemer told the Post in a statement that “any suggestion that I did not support President Trump or do everything in my power to support the RNC’s efforts to reelect President Trump is false.”
He added, “I will say publicly now what I then said privately: I take issue with individuals who brought lawsuits that did not serve President Trump well and did not give him the best chance in court.”
This report comes on the heels of a spat between the RNC and Ellis over an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s upcoming book. Insider’s report said that according to Wolff, Riemer “wrote to his RNC colleagues asking why they were backing Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud.”
Giuliani, Wolff says, called Reimer and angrily threatened his job.
The RNC denied this, saying, “As is typical with most things Michael Wolff writes, this story is simply false.” Ellis responded on Twitter claiming it did happen and accused the RNC of lying.
