"You can't make this up," Lee texted Robert O'Brien after getting a voicemail intended for Sen. Tommy Tuberville. "Rudy is walking malpractice."
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Republican Sen. Mike Lee described former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as "walking malpractice" in a late-night text to then national security advisor Robert O'Brien.
That's according to the January 6 select committee, which released its full 845-page report on the deadly Capitol siege late Thursday.
"You can't make this up. I just got this voice message [from] Rudy Giuliani, who apparently thought he was calling Senator Tuberville," Lee's text said. "You've got to listen to that message. Rudy is walking malpractice."
GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was one of several lawmakers Giuliani tried to contact before Congress resumed its joint session to certify Joe Biden's victory following the Capitol riot.
"I'm calling you because I want to discuss with you how they're trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you," Giuliani said in the voicemail intended for Tuberville.
Lee's text to O'Brien was buried in an endnote in Chapter 7 of the report, titled "187 Minutes of Dereliction." He texted O'Brien at 10:55 p.m. ET on January 6, per the endnote.
It's one of dozens of times Giuliani is mentioned in the committee's report, which paints a damning portrait of how the former New York mayor and his cohorts relied on dubious and conspiratorial theories to try to nullify Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election and install Trump for a second presidential term.
Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, told the committee that he was so uncomfortable with Giuliani's post-election antics that he locked Giuliani out of his office and instructed his assistant not to allow the former New York mayor to enter.
"I told her, don't let anyone in," Stepien testified. "You know, I'll be around when I need to be around. You know, tell me what I need to know. Tell me what's going on here, but, you know, you're going to see less of me. And, you know, sure enough, you know, Mayor Giuliani tried to, you know, get in my office and ordered her to unlock the door, and she didn't do that, you know."
Some of the claims Giuliani and his allies made were so outlandish that even Trump found them hard to believe.
For instance, the committee's report details one phone call, on November 20, 2020, between Trump and the GOP-linked lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked closely with Giuliani on election litigation.
Powell spouted baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud during the phone call, including one claim that the voting tech company Dominion Voting Systems had colluded with the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — who died in 2013 — to hand Biden his election victory.
According to testimony from Trump's top communications aide Hope Hicks, the president muted himself while Powell was detailing these allegations during their call. Hicks testified that Trump laughed at Powell and told others in the room, "This does sound crazy, doesn't it?"
Giuliani is currently facing possible disbarment as a Washington, DC, ethics panel reviews his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
His "misconduct" after the election was "so serious that it should never be allowed to happen again," disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox said last week.
The DC Board of Professional Responsibility determined in a preliminary finding that Giuliani violated at least one ethics rule by filing a legal challenge in Pennsylvania seeking to throw out millions of votes in the state. The decision is not binding, and the hearing committee will release consider alternative sanctions proposals before putting out a report with a final recommendation.
Giuliani vehemently defended himself throughout the proceedings, accusing the disciplinary counsel of engaging in a "personal attack" without presenting proper evidence. He also told Robert Bernius, the chairman of the panel overseeing the hearings, that Fox's statements were an "outrage."
