MI Prosecutor Claims Rudy Giuliani Asked Him to Gather Voting Machines, Hand Them Over to Trump’s Team

A Michigan attorney says Rudy Giuliani asked him to round up voting machines from around his county after the 2020 election and give them to Donald Trump’s team.

Prosecutor James Rossiter told the Washington Post in an interview that Giuliani and his colleagues contacted him in the weeks after the election. The conversation revolved an errant vote count in Antrim County, a rural area where Republicans were believed to hold a strong advantage.

When the initial results came in for Antrim, they showed Joe Biden beating Trump by about 3,000 votes. The results were placed under review by state officials, and in the following days, a hand recount found Trump actually defeated Biden by 3,000 votes in Antrim. Local officials acknowledged the error and explained how it happened after voting machines were not updated to properly account for last-minute ballot changes in several precincts.

Rossiter told the Post that nearly 2 weeks after Trump’s general election defeat was confirmed, Giuliani called him and brought up the faulty initial tabulation. According to Rossiter, Giuliani asked him to take the county’s voting machines and give them to Trump’s team.

“I said, ‘I can’t just say: give them here,’” Rossiter said. “We don’t have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. You need probable cause.”

Rossiter added that even if he could seize the county’s voting machines, he couldn’t give them to Trump’s team because of their interest in the matter. The reported request from Giuliani suggests, however, that Trump’s allies sought to hold up Antrim’s initial miscount as possible proof the entire 2020 election was rigged against the former president.

“I never expected in my life I’d get a call like this,” Rossiter said.

The Rossiter claims come months after reporting revealed a Trump campaign internal memo which acknowledged that their legal team was pushing false fraud allegations against Dominion and Smartmatic. It also comes after revelations that Trump had a draft executive order which would have directed the National Guard to confiscate voting machines after the election.