Just like your misguided boomer dad and mom and estranged relations, Rudy Giuliani gleaned his supposed “evidence” of voter fraud within the 2020 presidential election from unvetted posts on Facebook and different social media platforms.

That’s in response to an Aug. 14 deposition in a defamation lawsuit in opposition to the Trump marketing campaign from former Dominion Voting Systems worker Eric Coomer, MSNBC reported this week. It’s considered one of a number of lawsuits Coomer has filed in opposition to distinguished conservatives who peddled baseless conspiracy theories that he labored with antifa to “rig” the election in favor of President Joe Biden.

In the filing, Giuliani, former private legal professional to Donald Trump, admits underneath oath that a few of his claims about Coomer’s alleged function in “The Big Steal” got here from social media posts, probably on Facebook although he wasn’t totally certain as a result of “those social media posts get all one to me.”

He went on to say he by no means reached out to Coomer or Dominion to fact-check the data he noticed on-line earlier than sharing it in a Nov. 19 press conference the place he and different conservative figures, together with one other Trump lawyer on the middle of a number of election-related defamation lawsuits, Sidney Powell, pushed a slew of unfounded claims about widespread election fraud.

When legal professionals requested Giuliani whether or not he had every other sources to again up his allegations in opposition to Coomer, he responded: “Right now, I can’t recall anything else that I laid eyes on.”

In the wake of the election, Coomer grew to become the unwitting scapegoat for a wave of voting conspiracists and indignant Trump supporters. Right-wing podcast host Joseph Oltmann initially sparked the conspiracy principle with claims that he had infiltrated an “antifa conference call” (regardless of the hell which means) the place Coomer, then the director of product technique and safety for the Denver-based voting machine producer, bragged about rigging the election. Why Oltmann selected to call Coomer particularly stays unclear, although it’s believed he was focused due to his job title and anti-Trump posts he made on his private Facebook account.

Court papers filed by Coomer’s legal professionals declare that Giuliani spent “virtually no time” investigating these allegations earlier than he and Powell echoed them on the November press convention. It’s actually value a learn when you have a second; this shit may as effectively be the script for a Saturday Night Live sketch.

After being named by Trump’s legal professionals, Coomer was focused by conspiracy theorists calling for his head. He went into hiding one week after the presidential election out of concern for his security, later submitting multiple defamation lawsuits in Colorado state district court docket in opposition to the Trump marketing campaign, Trump’s legal professionals, One America News Network, Newsmax, and different right-wing media networks and figures that unfold these unfounded allegations.