Former NYC Mayor Giuliani, local lawmakers react to Donald Trump's 3rd indictment
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Local lawmakers are reacting Tuesday after former President Donald Trump made history, again, after being indicted by a grand jury for the third time.
Trump -- already facing two indictments -- now faces a third set of charges after a grand jury handed up a wide-ranging indictment against him, alleging he undertook a "criminal scheme" to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Prosecutors say the alleged scheme, which allegedly involved six unnamed co-conspirators, included enlisting a slate of so-called "fake electors" targeting several states, using the Justice Department to conduct "sham election crime investigations," enlisting the vice president to "alter the election results." and doubling down on false claims as the Jan. 6 riot ensued.
RELATED | Read the new Trump indictment
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who as a member of Trump's legal team sought to overturn 2020 presidential election results in battleground states, has been identified by ABC News to likely be one of the six co-conspirators who took actions alongside Trump.
The indictment describes this conspirator as "an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant's 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not."
Specifically, the indictment says it was Trump and this Co-Conspirator who called Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers to ask him to "use the legislature to circumvent the process" regarding fake electors. In the conversation, this conspirator said something to the effect of, "We don't have the evidence, but we have lots of theories."
Bowers has publicly recounted this conversation in his testimony to the January 6 committee, and named Rudy Giuliani as the individual who said this line.
A spokesman for Giuliani released a statement.
"Every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment," said Ted Goodman, political advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "This indictment eviscerates the First Amendment and criminalizes the ruling regime's number one political opponent for daring to ask questions about the 2020 election results. This indictment underscores the tragic reality of our two-tiered justice system-one for the regime in power and the other for anyone who dares to oppose the ruling regime. The news today is particularly egregious in light of the growing evidence proving that Joe Biden and his family made millions of dollars in bribes from America's most intransigent adversaries."
Meanwhile, several New York lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spoke out following news of the indictment.
In a joint statement, the two top congressional Democrats -- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries -- said the third indictment "illustrated in shocking detail that the violence of that day was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people."
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, said in a scathing statement that the indictment is a "sham."
The former president has been summoned to appear in court on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
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