Pelosi plans to hold House vote on infrastructure bill today

Rudy Giuliani’s admission under oath that Donald Trump’s claim of voter fraud in the 2020 election is baseless will help Republicans “lose the midterms” just as admitting there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq cost them control of Congress in 2006, a Trump White House and Trumpworld insider said.

MSNBC reported Giuliani’s deposition in Coomer vs Trump Campaign, a defamation case in which it has been shown that the campaign knew its claims about Dominion Voter Systems were false.

Last November, Giuliani stood with the attorney Sidney Powell as she told reporters Dominion worked with actors including Venezuela and George Soros to help Joe Biden steal the election. In response, Dominion sued Powell, Giuliani and Mike Lindell, another Trump ally.

No evidence has been produced to back up Trump’s claims about voter fraud.

In passages of a deposition by Giuliani quoted by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Thursday, Giuliani says he cannot remember which social media platform the claims came from; that he did not “lay eyes on” any other evidence for the claims; and that he did not speak to a witness he has claimed in public to know of.

“It’s not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that’s given to me,” the former New York mayor turned Trump attorney said. “Otherwise, you’re never going to write a story.

“Why the heck wouldn’t I believe him? I would have been a terrible lawyer to say, ‘Let’s go find out if it’s untrue.’ I didn’t have the time to do that.”

Giuliani’s work for Trump has contributed to his suspension from practicing law in New York and Washington DC and other blows including a reported ban from Fox News, also sued by Dominion.

But Trump’s “Big Lie” about voter fraud dominates Republican politics, fuelling biased, fruitless but politically potent election “audits” in key states, most prominently Arizona, and legislative action to reduce voting among Democratic-leaning groups.

Speaking anonymously, the Trump insider said admissions that such actions were based on lies was “how you lose midterms. Pandering by admitting.

“Caving on WMD cost us 2006 and caused the financial crisis. It’s happening again.”

The Bush administration sold the invasion of Iraq as necessary to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction which might be used in another 9/11.

In August 2006, as US casualties mounted, George W Bush told reporters: “The main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t.”

He also said Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, had “nothing” to do with the attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11 – a link the administration was previously happy to make.

In November, Democrats took both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.

Most observers pin the financial crisis of 2008-09 on decades of deregulation by politicians on…