‘Definitely intoxicated’ Rudy Giuliani convinced Trump he won on Election Night: Jan. 6 committee witnesses

Rudy Giuliani was drunk when he convinced former President Trump to “just claim he won” on Election Night, fellow MAGA loyalists told the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Monday.

The “definitely intoxicated” former New York City mayor won the ear of Trump in the hours after the polls closed, even as other top advisers warned him that the race was far from being definitively called.

“Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on Election Night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim that he won,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in her opening statement.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller said they met with Giuliani before the mayor spoke to Trump in his White House residence on Election Night.

“The mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Miller said in previously taped testimony to the committee. “I’m not sure about his level of intoxication when he talked to the president.”

Giuliani told Trump to “just say we won” because the president was leading President Biden in some battleground states on Election Night, before hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were counted.

Both Miller and Stepien told the panel they urged Trump to hold off from declaring victory on Election Night. They said they knew there would be large numbers of ballots still counted in the coming days.

Ivanka Trump also said she knew it was folly for anyone to claim victory on Election Night.

“It was becoming clear the race would not be called on Election Night,” the former first daughter

But former President Trump had other plans. He emphatically rejected the advice of his top campaign officials and his own daughter.

“The president disagreed,” Stepien said. “He thought I was wrong… and he told me so.”

Trump addressed the nation on Nov. 8, 2020, with a fiery declaration that he had, in fact, beaten Biden to win reelection.

The congressional panel portrayed that speech as the launch of his Big Lie that the election was stolen from him, a campaign that led to the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.