Rudy Giuliani Joins Trump Legal Team Challenging Pennsylvania Election Results

President Donald Trump's lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington on July 1, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, told a court on Tuesday that he aims to represent the Trump 2020 campaign in its case to bar Pennsylvania from certifying ballots.

“I, Rudolph William Giuliani, hereby petition the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to admit me to practice before that Court,” he wrote.  “The rule of law will govern my entire conduct. I will not violate the law or place myself above the law,” he also wrote.

About 30 minutes later, the court admitted Giuliani, according to another filing.

It’s unclear whether Giuliani himself will make arguments before the court. Giuliani, who is a former federal prosecutor, is not admitted to practice law in the Pennsylvania federal court system, so he needed permission from Judge Matthew W. Brann to appear in the case.

Giuliani, earlier in the day, said that the Pennsylvania case is contingent on nearly 700,000 ballots that he claimed “were counted surreptitiously.”

“Frankly, that is a case that we would like to see get to the Supreme Court,” he told Fox Business, adding that elsewhere, “we’re probably going to sue in at least eight or nine” states that Republican poll watchers claimed were blocked from watching the vote-tabulation process on Nov. 3 and beyond.

“I believe we have amassed more than enough evidence in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Georgia,” the former mayor said, echoing a claim made by Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell over the past weekend.

The suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania last week alleged that some counties used a two-tiered system in evaluating mail-in ballots in contrast to ballots cast in person.

“Through the arbitrary and illegal actions of the Secretary, Pennsylvania created a two-track system of voting resulting in voters being treated differently depending on how they chose to exercise their franchise,” the suit stated. It was filed against Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, and the Boards of Elections in Allegheny, Centre, Chester, Delaware, Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Northampton counties.

“The first, marked by voters appearing personally at the polls complied with transparency and verifiability requirements of Pennsylvania Election Code. The second, marked by a mass of paper ballots received through the mail, was cloaked in darkness and complied with none of those transparency and verifiability requirements. This two-track election system not only violates plaintiffs’ rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, but also violates the structure of the Constitution that elections in the states must be carried out as directed by their respective legislatures,” it said.

Boockvar’s lawyers have described Trump’s claims as generalized grievances and speculative injuries that would not warrant throwing out the election results.

Lawyers representing Boockvar told Brann, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, that other counties could have allowed their voters to fix problem mail-in ballots, but chose not to.

“Election practices need not cater to the lowest common denominator, and plaintiffs’ arguments would improperly penalize those counties that are enfranchising voters by helping them avoid ballot disqualification,” they argued in a filing.

On Sunday, the Trump campaign amended its complaint in Pennsylvania about counties blocking some election observers.

And last week, lawyers on the Trump campaign’s team from Porter Wright Morris & Arthur had withdrawn from the case. It came after the anti-Trump group Lincoln Project urged followers on Twitter to contact the firm’s employees and “ask them how they can work for an organization trying to overturn the will of the American people.”

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.