Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday dismissed Georgia charges that he helped former president Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election as politically motivated as he headed to Atlanta to surrender for booking.
Trump, Giuliani and 17 other co-defendants face a Friday deadline to turn themselves in after being charged for election subversion in the southern US state.
“I’m a big boy. I can take it. I have fought battles much worse than this,” Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, told reporters outside his New York residence.
“It’s not accidental that they’ve indicted all his lawyers. Never heard of that before in America,” he said. “The system of justice was politicized and criminalized for politics.”
Giuliani mocked the idea that authorities at the Fulton County jail would likely take his photo, lauding his own history as a Mafia-busting prosecutor in New York.
“I get photographed. Isn’t that nice? A mugshot of the man who probably put the worst criminals of the 20th century in jail,” Giuliani said.
“They are going to degrade themselves by doing a mugshot of me.”
Giuliani served as the mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, guiding the city through the shock of the 9/11 attacks, and has served as a legal adviser to Trump in recent years.
“I’m the same Rudolph Giuliani that took down the mafia, that made New York City the safest city in America,” he said.
Georgia prosecutors have used a scattershot approach in the election subversion case, Giuliani said, predicting the proceedings will eventually be shown to be “a complete hoax and a lie.”
“They’ve indicted people in this case, I don’t even know who they are. These are just regular people making a normal living. They’re going to bankrupt them. They won’t convict them,” he said.
In addition to Giuliani and Trump, Georgia prosecutors have indicted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and several other Trump lawyers.
John Eastman, a former campaign attorney for Trump, and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, were booked Tuesday at the Fulton County Jail, according to jail records.
Two other defendants, lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Ray Smith, reportedly surrendered on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to turn himself in at the same Atlanta jail on Thursday, in advance of a Friday noon (1600 GMT) deadline set by authorities in Georgia.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, is facing four criminal trials as he bids for a return to the White House.
