William Barr says Rudy Giuliani's infamous Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference was 'a grotesque embarrassment'

• Barr called Rudy Giuliani's Four Seasons Total Landscaping press event "a grotesque embarrassment."
• Giuliani, Trump's former lawyer, promoted baseless election fraud claims at the event.

Former Attorney General William Barr wrote in his new memoir that the infamous November 2020 press conference hosted by President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani in the parking lot of a small company called Four Seasons Total Landscaping was "a grotesque embarrassment."

Barr shared his thoughts on the failed efforts by Trump's legal team to challenge the 2020 election results in his new book, "One Damn Thing After Another," released on Tuesday.

"His legal team had a difficult case to make, and they made it as badly and unprofessionally as I could have imagined," Barr wrote, pointing to the "bizarre" Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference on November 7 and the November 19 press event "in which mascara appeared to drip from" Giuliani's sideburns.

"It was all a grotesque embarrassment," Barr added.

Four days after the 2020 presidential election, Giuliani promoted baseless voter fraud claims during a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a small landscaping business in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yet Giuliani's claims were drowned out by critics mocking the event venue, theorizing that Trump's legal team mistakenly booked the landscaping business instead of the luxury Four Seasons hotel.

"A gap soon developed between what Giuliani and his team were saying in public and what they were telling courts. In public, they aired sweeping but unsubstantiated assertions of voter fraud," Barr wrote. "But in their court papers—as Giuliani frankly acknowledged—they were not claiming fraud."

Indeed, as the press briefing took place, major news networks projected then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden as the winner of the election, prompting an outcry from Giuliani.

"The call for Joe Biden isn't, isn't — who was it called by?" Giuliani asked. A reporter replied that "all" the major cable news networks had announced that Biden was the expected winner.

"All of them! Oh my goodness! Wow, all the networks! We have to forget about the law, judges don't count!" Giuliani responded sarcastically, throwing his arms in the air.

Giuliani and other members of Trump's legal team continued to pursue efforts to overturn the results in several battleground states that Biden won, though they were unsuccessful. Federal, state, and local officials have repeatedly said there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Barr made no secret of his disdain for Giuliani in his book, calling the former mayor "an unguided missile." The former AG described his frustration with how Giuliani tried to rope the Department of Justice into his schemes to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden's son Hunter in 2019 and then to back Trump's false claims of massive fraud in the 2020 election.

"Rudy Giuliani saved New York City after 9/11 and should go down as probably the most consequential mayor of a big city in American history," Barr wrote. "But he will also go down as the man who helped President Trump get himself impeached—not once but, as it turned out, twice."