7.12 PRESIDENT TRUMP STILL SOUGHT TO DELAY THE JOINT SESSION
Even after President Trump finally told the rioters to go home, he and his lead attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, continued to seek to delay the joint session of Congress.
Giuliani began frantically calling the White House line the very minute that the President's video went up on Twitter.[292] Failing to get through, he called back, once every minute—4:17 p.m., 4:18 p.m., 4:19 p.m., 4:20 p.m.[293] He managed to get through, briefly, to Mark Meadows at 4:21 p.m., and then kept calling the White House line: at 4:22 p.m., three times on two different phones at 4:23 p.m., 4:24 p.m., and once more at 5:05 p.m.[294] He finally managed to speak with President Trump at 5:07 p.m., and the two spoke for almost 12 minutes.[295]
After he spoke with President Trump, Giuliani's phone calls went nearly without fail to Members of Congress: Senator Marsha Blackburn, and then Senator Mike Lee.[296] He made three calls to Senator Bill Hagerty, then two to Representative Jim Jordan.[297] He called Senator Lindsey Graham,[298] Senator Josh Hawley,[299] and Senator Ted Cruz.[300] Giuliani had two calls with Senator Dan Sullivan over the course of the evening.[301] There were another three calls to Representative Jordan, none of which connected.[302] After 8:06 p.m., when the joint session resumed, the calls to Members of Congress finally stopped.[303] Shortly afterward, at 8:39 p.m., Giuliani had one final call of 9 minutes with the President.[304]
When asked about these calls during his deposition before the Select Committee, Giuliani initially refused to answer. Giuliani insisted his calls to Members of Congress—none of whom were his client—were all attorney-client privileged.[305] But Giuliani eventually relented.
"I was probably calling to see any—if anything could be done," he said. "About the vote—the vote."[306]
We know definitively what Giuliani was up to because he left a voice message for Senator Tuberville—inadvertently on Senator Lee's phone— recording his request.[307] He wanted for "you, our Republican friends to try to just slow it down," referring to the electoral count, and delay the joint session.[308] Here are his own words:
The only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous States and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow. So if you could object to every State and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every State, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote.[309]
