Politics

Arizona legislature shuts down after Giuliani tests positive for COVID-19

The Arizona state legislature will be closed this week as a precaution now that Rudy Giuliani — who recently testified before GOP lawmakers there — has tested positive for COVID-19.

Senate and House staffers were ordered to work remotely beginning Monday “out of an abundance of caution,” local outlets reported.

Giuliani, 76, spent more than 10 hours speaking with Republican legislators at a Phoenix hotel on Monday, as he continued his campaign to push claims that the 2020 election was rife with fraud.

President Trump’s lawyer led the meeting without a mask and flouted social distancing guidelines as he later posed for photos, according to The Arizona Republic.

At least 10 incoming state lawmakers and two US congressmen, Reps. Paul Gossar and Andy Biggs, attended the session, the newspaper reported.

Giuliani also met privately with some GOP lawmakers and members of the legislative leadership on Tuesday.

The president on Sunday announced on Twitter that Giuliani had caught the virus.

The former New York City mayor was hospitalized at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC and wrote in a tweet late Sunday that he was “getting great care and feeling good.”

The Trump campaign put out a statement saying Giuliani “tested negative twice immediately preceding his trips to Arizona, Michigan and Georgia” last week.

“The mayor did not experience any symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 until more than 48 hours after his return.”

No legislators in any of those three states, or members of the press, were deemed to have been in close contact with Giuliani, the statement said.