Giuliani quotes ‘My Cousin Vinny’ while discussing election lawsuits

President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani invoked the 1992 comedy “My Cousin Vinny” during a press conference Thursday organized to highlight the Trump campaign’s various legal challenges across the country.

Giuliani quoted the film while arguing that representatives of the Trump campaign were not allowed close enough to observe ballot counting in Pennsylvania for the presidential election.

He compared the distance to a scene in the movie in which Joe Pesci’s character, Vincent Gambini, demonstrates that a witness in a murder trial with poor eyesight was too far away from the scene to be a reliable witness.

“How many fingers do I got up?” Giuliani asked, imitating Pesci, as he held up two fingers. He went on to describe how, in the film, the witness incorrectly identifies the number of fingers as three.

Yup, that really happened. Watch Rudy Giuliani reference a courtroom scene from the timely 1992 film “My Cousin Vinny.” pic.twitter.com/tBis5HDf6k

— The Recount (@therecount) November 19, 2020

The film, which Giuliani described as one of his “favorite law movies,” won Marisa Tomei the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Although it is a comedy, it is frequently praised by legal experts for its accurate depiction of trial proceedings. It has been used in legal textbooks and law courses to demonstrate legal concepts such as witness cross-examination.

The Trump campaign’s legal team has argued in court that they were not given sufficient access to the Philadelphia tabulation procedures, while Trump himself has repeatedly and falsely claimed his team’s observers were outright barred. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the argument in a 5-2 ruling Tuesday.

“We conclude the Board did not act contrary to law in fashioning its regulations governing the positioning of candidate representatives during the precanvassing and canvassing process, as the Election Code does not specify minimum distance parameters for the location of such representatives,” the court ruled.