Jacquelyn Martin/AP
- Rudy Giuliani has been sued by former Dominion employee Eric Coomer for promoting election fraud conspiracy theories.
- Giuliani admitted under oath that he did not verify the claims about Coomer before naming him in a press conference.
- In the deposition, Giuliani said some of his evidence was based on Coomer's Facebook posts.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Rudy Giuliani admitted under oath that his "evidence" of voter fraud in the 2020 election came partly from Facebook and that he did not interview or fact-check his sources, reports say.
Donald Trump's former personal lawyer made the comments in a deposition on August 14 in relation to a defamation lawsuit brought by a former Dominion Voting Systems employee, Eric Coomer, MSNBC reported.
Coomer is suing the Trump campaign and others for promoting baseless conspiracy theories that he helped "rig" the election for Joe Biden.
In the deposition, Giuliani admitted that he got some of his information about Coomer's alleged role in the election fraud from his social media posts but couldn't be sure if it was Facebook or another platform, MSNBC said.
"Those social media posts get all one to me," Giuliani said.
When questioned about whether he saw any other evidence linking Coomer with election fraud, he responded, "Right now, I can't recall anything else that I laid eyes on."
The conspiracy theories about Coomer were sparked by accusations made by right-wing podcast host Joe Oltmann.
Oltmann claimed to have infiltrated an Antifa conference call in which someone who identified themselves as "Eric from Dominion" boasted about preventing Trump from winning the election, The New York Times reported. Oltmann offered no proof of his claims.
The podcast host then found Eric Coomer's Facebook profile, on which he supposedly had written anti-Trump messages.
Giuliani and other Trump allies seized upon Oltmann's allegations, repeating them in a now-infamous November 19 press conference.
" One of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the web as being recorded in a conversation with ANTIFA members saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden," Giuliani said.
But according to court papers filed by Coomer's lawyers, Giuliani spent "virtually no time" investigating the claims.
The filings said that Giuliani did not speak to Oltmann about the claims and did not reach out to Coomer or Dominion about them.
Giuliani said he was too busy when asked why he repeated Oltmann's accusations without verifying them.
"It's not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that's given to me," Giuliani said in the deposition, reported by MSNBC.
"Why wouldn't I believe him? I would have to have been a terrible lawyer… gee, let's go find out it's untrue. I didn't have the time to do that."
After being named by Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell in the November press conference, Coomer briefly had to go into hiding.
Trump and his allies have continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
The Justice Department has said it found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, and dozens of lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election have failed.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/3a0QFCp
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