Giu­liani claims to be able to prove that Trump was robbed of Joe Biden as a result of a vote steal orga­nized by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Giu­liani was con­sid­ered a hero after his time as May­or of New York City, but is now ridiculed by many as a not always suc­cess­ful stooge of the pres­i­dent. The more improb­a­ble the cur­rent endeav­or becomes in view of the expir­ing dead­lines and dis­missed law­suits, the more unbri­dled Trump’s lawyers rum­ble — and dive deep­er and deep­er into con­spir­a­cy theories.

In a 40-minute mono­logue at a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Giu­liani spoke furi­ous­ly about the mas­sive elec­toral fraud, for which he has still not pre­sent­ed any sol­id evi­dence. The lawyers Jen­na Ellis and Sid­ney Pow­ell fol­lowed up with their already refut­ed accu­sa­tions and inco­her­ent the­o­ries. In sum­ma­ry, their expla­na­tion for Trump’s defeat goes like this: Bal­lot papers for Biden have been scanned sev­er­al times, which is why mil­lions of votes are invalid for him. Also involved in the fraud are Cuba, Venezuela (includ­ing ex-Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013), Chi­na, large cities in the USA, Antifa, tech com­pa­nies and even an inter­net serv­er in Germany.

Giu­liani was sweat­ing in the head­lights. When dark paint ran down his cheeks to the left and right of the hair­line on his ears — pre­sum­ably traces of dye or mas­cara — the par­al­lel to the hor­ror film was quick­ly drawn. On Twit­ter it rained not only mock­ery and mal­ice, but also warn­ings. “This press con­fer­ence was about the most dan­ger­ous 1:45 hour TV in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. And prob­a­bly the cra­zi­est,” wrote Christo­pher Krebs, who Trump has just fired. As head of the agency for cyber and infra­struc­ture secu­ri­ty, he was respon­si­ble, among oth­er things, for secur­ing the elections.

A court is shat­ter­ing after the Trump camp’s next law­suit for lack of evi­dence — on the week­end, for exam­ple, in the state of Penn­syl­va­nia, where Trump appar­ent­ly want­ed to inval­i­date mil­lions of postal votes and stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the final results that was due this Mon­day. But the judge in charge wrote that the argu­ments of Trump’s lawyers had not even been suf­fi­cient to inval­i­date the vote of “a sin­gle vot­er”. The seem­ing­ly ama­teur­ish approach of Giu­liani & Co. can eas­i­ly hide what it is actu­al­ly about: over­turn­ing the result of an elec­tion that US author­i­ties have already described as the safest in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. “It would all be very fun­ny if it weren’t so seri­ous,” Justin Levitt, a law pro­fes­sor from Los Ange­les, told the New York Times. Trump’s behav­ior is not only attack­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, but is also endan­ger­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty in unprece­dent­ed ways. Since he does not admit his defeat, his gov­ern­ment has not yet allowed an order­ly han­dover of offi­cial busi­ness to elec­tion win­ner Biden.