Rudy Giuliani seeking to delay Georgia grand jury appearance, cites heart condition
Former President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is seeking to delay a Tuesday appearance before a Georgia special grand jury investigating 2020 election interference after Giuliani's lawyer said his client had not been cleared for air travel because of a recent heart procedure.
Giuliani's "emergency" request, filed with a local Atlanta judge, immediately drew a challenge from Fulton County prosecutors leading the investigation who included an Aug. 1 photograph of the witness and friend enjoying some down time in New Hampshire.
Prosecutors asked that Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney force Giuliani's appearance, saying that if the Trump lawyer was indeed unable to fly, they would pay his bus or train fare to Atlanta.
"We do not consent to change the date," Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten told Giuliani's attorney, Robert Costello, in an email.
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McBurney has set a Tuesday hearing for Giuliani's request.
Giuliani is one of several high-profile Trump associates, including campaign attorney John Eastman and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who are facing looming dates with the grand jury.
In Giuliani's case, Fulton County officials have outlined multiple areas of inquiry.
The former New York mayor, suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington, D.C., for his election-fraud allegations, Giuliani had made wide-ranging claims that voting systems altered Georgia ballots, while ignoring a hand-count audit that confirmed President Joe Biden's victory in the state.
Giuliani also asserted that about 65,000 underage voters, more than 2,500 felons and 800 dead people voted in the state. All of those claims have been debunked by the Georgia secretary of state, which found no underage voters, only 74 potential felony voters, and only two votes that may have been improperly cast in the name of dead voters.
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According to court documents seeking Giuliani's grand jury appearance, Fulton County authorities are highlighting the Trump lawyer's Dec. 3, 2020, appearance before the Georgia State Senate in which he offered a video recording of election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, purporting to show “suitcases” of unlawful ballots from unknown sources, outside the view of election poll watchers.
Within 24 hours of the state Senate hearing, the video had been discredited by the secretary of state's office, concluding "no voter fraud of any kind had taken place."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump lawyer Giuliani wants to delay Georgia grand jury appearance
