By Felicia Sonmez and Josh Dawsey
Sunday December 6, 2020
President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, center, holds a news conference at Republican National Committee headquarters in D.C. last month. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has contracted the coronavirus, the president said Sunday in a tweet.
“.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus,” Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. “Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!”
Giuliani traveled to states including Michigan and Georgia last week and met indoors with state legislators in an effort to persuade them to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Videos of the appearances showed Giuliani was not wearing a mask during the meetings.
Hours before Trump’s tweet, Giuliani appeared on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he repeated the president’s false claims of election fraud.
Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon. It was unclear why the president disclosed his condition — or whether he’d asked for Giuliani’s permission.
In the wake of Trump’s election loss, Giuliani has been flying all over the country with the Trump campaign’s senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis, regularly not wearing a mask in public.
When he has been around others who have tested positive, Giuliani has not quarantined, including after a news conference last month at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters when his son tested positive.
Giuliani has shared the president’s skepticism of the virus’s severity and has regularly met closely with others indoors.
Early in the pandemic, he told a Washington Post reporter he was around only six or eight people regularly.