Rudy Giuliani, you've been served. Oh, and Happy Birthday

Opinion: Rudy Giuliani got what many in America consider the best birthday present ever -- a summons to appear in an Arizona courtroom.

Rudy Giuliani, you’ve been served.

After weeks of evading agents, making light of his indictment by a state grand jury and generally acting like a jackass, America's self-proclaimed and thoroughly bankrupt "mayor" has been served with a summons to appear in Arizona to face felony charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.

Giuliani was in Palm Beach, Fla, on Friday evening, throwing himself an early 80th birthday bash. Naturally, he was posting pictures of his party on social media, taunting Attorney General Kris Mayes as he has for several weeks now.

“If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes,” he wrote, alongside a picture of him surrounded by young women.

A little later, around 11 p.m. in Florida, just as his 75 guests finished singing Happy Birthday, Giuliani got what many in America might consider the best gift of all.

“The final defendant was served moments ago,” Attorney General Kris Mayes announced, in reply to Giuliani’s since-deleted taunt. “Rudy Giuliani, nobody is above the law.”

Giuliani was at the center of the plot to overturn Arizona’s vote in 2020.

Maybe you recall hearing about the Nov. 22, 2020, phone call, when Donald Trump and Giuliani called then House Speaker Rusty Bowers, claiming to have evidence of widespread fraud and pressuring him to convene the Legislature to replace Biden electors with Trump electors.

Fortunately, Bowers, R-Mesa, is a guy with scruples. He asked for the evidence, believing you ought to have actual proof that an election was stolen before disenfranchising the state's voters.

Or maybe you recall that Nov. 30, 2020 legislative “hearing” in a downtown Phoenix hotel, at which Giuliani claimed, among other things, that “a few hundred thousand” of the state’s four to five million “illegal aliens” voted.  (Given that the state’s total population is only 7.2 million, I suppose that makes five out of seven of us are here illegally.)

Maybe you recall the Dec. 1, 2020, meeting, when Giuliani met with Bowers at the state Capitol to try again to overturn our vote and the speaker again asked for the evidence. “We don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani conceded, “but we have lots of theories.”

You know who does apparently have evidence of fraud? Mayes.

And on April 24, she presented enough of it to convince a state grand jury to indict Giuliani and 17 others, including Arizona’s 11 fake electors.

On Friday evening, the 18th of those 18 was served with a summons to return to Arizona.

Happy Birthday, Rudy.

Believe me when I say, we can’t wait to see you.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRoberts.

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