Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the US president said on Twitter.
Rudy Giuliani speaking to media last month as US networks called the presidential race for Joe Biden. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
Giuliani, 76, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The former New York mayor has been spearheading Trump's floundering effort to overturn his 3 November election loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden through a flurry of lawsuits.
That work has taken Giuliani to various US states such as Michigan and Arizona, where he has been urging state lawmakers to stop certification of Biden's win.
The campaign team's numerous legal challenges have almost all failed, and Trump's allegations of widespread voter fraud have been rejected by state and federal officials across the country.
In a move unprecedented in modern US history, the Trump team has tried, without success, to get Republican-controlled legislatures in battleground states won by Biden to set aside the results and declare Trump the winner.
Biden won the election with 306 Electoral College votes - more than the 270 required - to Trump's 232, in the 3 November presidential contest.
Trump kept up the false claims at a rally in Georgia at the weekend for two Republican senators, in a move that some in his party feared could end up hurting, not helping, their chances by focusing on his efforts to reverse his own election defeat.
In his first rally appearance since he lost to Biden more than a month ago, Trump urged the crowd to vote for Republican candidates in this week's runoff election despite his unsubstantiated claims of significant electoral fraud in the state.
But he gave considerable time in his remarks to allegations, made without evidence, of widespread fraud in the nationwide election that led to a Democrat reclaiming the White House. Trump has declined to concede the race.
Before the rally, Matt Towery, a former Georgia Republican legislator who is now a political analyst and pollster, said Trump could help if he praised the candidates, but warned: "If he talks about them for 10 minutes and spends the rest of the time telling everyone how terrible Brian Kemp is, then it will only exacerbate things."
When Loeffler and Perdue briefly took the stage and were handed the microphone by Trump, many in the crowd drowned out their words with chants of "Fight for Trump!"
Two pro-Trump lawyers, L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, have argued that Georgians should not vote in the runoff until issues from the 2020 election are resolved in the state, even after lawsuits they have filed to overturn the results have failed.
The runoff elections in the state races will determine which party controls the US Senate. Democrats, who already have the majority in the House of Representatives, need to win both seats to control the Senate. If Republicans win one seat, they will retain their majority and be able to block much of Biden's legislative agenda.
- Reuters