'Not helping himself': Giuliani stuns ex-prosecutors by undercutting his own criminal case

Rudy Giuliani attempted to make a statement in his own defense, now that he is for the first time in his life a criminal defendant, but legal experts said Thursday evening he only made things worse for himself.

Several former prosecutors appeared on The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the legal developments surrounding Donald Trump, including the Fulton County, Georgia, case in which the former president's ex-lawyer, Giuliani, has found himself ensnared. In response to the charges, Giuliani issued a statement suggesting that much of the information needed to know if an election was stolen didn't come in until months after he made the allegedly unlawful claims in an attempt to overturn the 2020 contest.

O'Donnell said it's interesting that Giuliani didn't say that to legislators in Georgia, instead of "telling them specifically the number of dead people that he lyingly claimed to have voted."

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Gwen Keyes Fleming, former DeKalb County (Georgia) District Attorney, said that was "exactly" her thought.

"I would assume it would also be the thought of the district attorney and her team upon listening to that statement. If there was any question that the fact could not have been known until later in time, I think she would argue that that helps her case, the statements that were made at the time in December I believe it was the third and the 10th of December, they could not have been true, or perhaps Mr. Giuliani knew that they were not true or could not be confirmed until a later point in time."

She added that she's "quite confident" that Willis and her team are "watching very closely anything that all of the defendants say going forward."

Georgia criminal defense and appellate attorney Amy Lee Copeland also agreed Giuliani gave himself a tougher time on the witness stand.

"He did not do himself any favors, Lawrence, and as prosecutors say, the investigation doesn't end until jury enters its verdict," Copeland said. "So he is not helping himself."

Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, was also stunned that Giuliani would say something that can be brought into the trial against him.

"So there are so many problems with what he just said that we were talking about this, let's just remember he is being disbarred in New York and in D.C. The claims that he was just exaggerating have been rejected by the D.C. panel. He still does not have any proof to support the claims."

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