Special counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors has repeatedly questioned witnesses about former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s drinking habits on and after election day in 2020 as part of an effort to discern if the former president was taking legal advice from a potentially intoxicated personal lawyer, according to a report from Rolling Stone. Investigators reportedly asked about how seemingly inebriated the former New York City mayor was during the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, a time when he was acting as an alleged co-conspirator in Trump’s attempts to flip the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The special counsel’s team also inquired as to whether Trump ever spoke with them about Giuliani’s drinking habits and if Trump ever stated that he felt Giuliani’s alcohol consumption altered his judgment or decision-making ability. Additionally, Smith’s investigators wanted to know if Trump was ever warned about Giuliani’s reported drinking problem, and if was ever told the attorney was feeding him advice legal and political advice following the election while drinking. Prosecutors wanted to know, in minute detail, “how drunk witnesses and others believed Giuliani to be during specific and consequential moments.”
Rolling Stone reported that according to lawyers and witnesses who have been in the presence of the special counsel’s investigating team, Smith is keen on determining Giuliani’s drinking habits because it could help show that Trump was actively employing counsel from someone he knew to be intoxicated. Proving this would bolster prosecutors’ argument that the former president was acting recklessly as he tried to undo the legitimate results of the election, an argument that, if used in court, could also erode Trump’s “advice of counsel” defense. Giuliani’s political adviser and spokesman, Ted Goodman, pushed back on the Rolling Stone report. “One should always question a story that is completely reliant on anonymous sources. This false narrative by nameless sources has been contradicted by on-the-record witnesses,” he said in a statement.
