Opinion: Judge rejects Rudy Giuliani’s latest conspiracy theory on how he got indicted

Will the (imagined) conspiracies never end?

Rudy Giuliani apparently suspects the fix was in with the state grand jury that indicted him in Arizona’s fake elector case.

As such, he wants a copy of the grand jurors’ voter registration cards.

He also wants, among other things, a copy of the program used to randomly select prospective grand jurors and the identity of the programmer.  He wants to depose the commissioner who oversaw impaneling of the grand jury.

And, in his quest to root out the imaginary rot, he also wants an unredacted copy of the master jury list – meaning the names and addresses of every voter in the state.

Goodness, the conspiracy theories run deep with this one.

Fortunately, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sent Giuliani packing this week, noting that he hadn’t supplied even “one scintilla of information” that grand jurors were picked based on their politics.

“He claims that there is concern that the grand jurors that served on the grand jury that indicted Defendant Giuliani were selected based upon their political party affiliation,” Judge Bruce Cohen wrote, in denying the request. “Yet he alleges not one scintilla of information that would support this claim.”

Really, is that so surprising?

Giuliani was at the center of the plot to overturn Arizona’s vote in 2020.

Perhaps you recall hearing about the Nov. 22, 2020, phone call, when Donald Trump and Giuliani called then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers, claiming to have evidence of widespread fraud and pressuring him to convene the Legislature to replace Joe Biden electors with Trump electors.

Fortunately, Bowers is a guy with scruples and asked for the evidence, believing you ought to have actual proof that an election was stolen before disenfranchising the state’s voters.

Perhaps you recall that Nov. 30, 2020 legislative “hearing” in a downtown Phoenix hotel, at which Giuliani claimed, among other things, that “a few hundred thousand” of the state’s four to five million “illegal aliens” voted – quite the feat given that the state’s population was only 7.2 million at the time. (Or are five out of every seven of us here illegally?)

Or perhaps you recall the Dec. 1, 2020, meeting, when Giuliani met with Bowers at the state Capitol to try yet again to overturn our vote and yet again, Bowers asked for the evidence.

“We don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani conceded, “but we have lots of theories.”

Apparently, he still does though now his theories have turned to the villainy of the state grand system and jurors he clearly suspects were out to get him.

Never mind that the grand jurors were impaneled “well before” the fake elector case was presented to them.

“This was not a special grand jury to address the charges brought against these various defendants,” Cohen wrote. “Rather, it was a sitting grand jury who was not selected for this case or any other specific case. There is therefore no reliable information to suggest that the empaneling of this grand jury occurred in contemplation of this case or with a political agenda in mind.”

Cohen did throw Giuliani a bone, “even if there appears to be no factual basis for the question”. He’s ordered the Attorney General’s Office to get an affidavit to determine whether the party affiliation of potential grand jurors would have been available to the grand jury commissioner.

This to keep the case on track — or, as the judge put it, “to strive for efficient management of this case and …. reduce rather than expand the litigation.”

To which, I am quite sure, the collective response of Giuliani and the conspiracy squad will be:

aHA!

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz and on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz.

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