Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is already calling for a recount if the presidential election is close – because only a big margin would assure the Clinton’s couldn’t ‘defraud’ their way into the White House.

The mayor telegraphed his plan to contest a close race after GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump refused to say he would concede the election if he loses.

'I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense,' Trump said when asked Wednesday whether he would accept the results if he loses.

Serious: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told DailyMail.com that Donald Trump has every right to contest the election if it is close

Legality: Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks with guests before the start of the third U.S. presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center

‘Clinton’s a cheat,’ Giuliani said to DailyMail.com and other reporters covering the final presidential debate in Las Vegas.

‘So I would say, I’ll accept the results of an election when I see the paper, see how much they won by, if they’re big enough margins that you can’t defraud your way out of it, I’ll accept that either way.’

‘But if the margins are close, I’ll probably want a recount,’ Giuliani said – ‘as by the way Al Gore did. So if Al Gore can do it, I don’t know why everyone is so surprised that Donald Trump can do it.’

He was referencing the contested 2000 elections, where Democrats sought a recount after close margins, an infamous ‘butterfly ballot’ and other circumstances allowed for a recount in an election where the state was the deciding factor.

Then he vented, ‘It seems whenever a Republican asserts themselves, everybody gets all upset … “Oh my god, the Republicans”

‘Al Gore contested the 2000 election. He’s called a Democrat, and nobody got upset about that, Giuliani said.

Wallace was well received by each of the candidates despite giving them equally harsh treatment

The reason he is so suspicious, Giuliani, a former prosecutor, said, is that, ‘Bill and Hillary Clinton have been grifters from the day he was governor of Arkansas, and they were taking payoffs when he was governor of Arkansas.’

‘Then they sold the Lincoln bedroom. Then they gave Marc Rich a pardon for hundreds of millions of dollars for who knows what. Now they’re taking hundreds of millions of dollars from countries that kill women, stone women, don’t allow them to drive. He claims to be a feminist?’

In other comments, Giuliani said Trump would challenge the results if there are ‘indications’ of fraud.

‘If it's a close election and there are indications of fraud, he will do what Al Gore did, he'll challenge it.’

‘The last election that I can recall that's been challenged was challenged by a Democrat, called Al Gore and if [he] has a right to challenge it why wouldn't Donald Trump have a right to challenge it?

Thank you: Hillary Clinton thanks moderator Chris Wallace after the debate during which she called Donald Trump's threat to not concede the election 'horrifying'

In these comments, ‘America’s mayor’ said the size of the win isn’t what mattered.

‘If there are indications that it's a fraudulent election of course he would. Al Gore challenged it.’

‘Any Republicans who would accept the results of a forged election would be stupid. I would not accept the results of a fraudulent election.’

Giuliani said there is ‘some evidence’ of fraud. ‘There are something like 140-150,000 people that are registered that don't seem to be alive,’ he said.

He said if the margin in a state like Pennsylvania were within 50 votes, ‘I guarantee you theyre going to steal a lot more than 50 votes in Philadelphia.’

‘I will tell you how they will do it. Because they did it to me in New York. They will bus people in who will vote dead people's names four, five, six and seven times, bus them in from Camden, New Jersey, but them in from some of the outskirts of Philadelphia or pay people from Philadelphia to vote three, four, five times. It happened to me in ‘89, I caught about 70 percent of it in 93.’

Challenge: Donald Trump thanks Chris Wallace after telling him point blank that he will contest the general election if he deems it necessary

Academic studies of voter fraud have found that it is rare.

An article by Loyala Law School professor Justin Levitt tracked 14 years of allegations since 2000, and found just 31 incidents out of a billion ballots, factcheck.org noted.

The 2000 election is seared into the memory of Democrats. Gore won the popular vote in the race but lost in the electoral college due to the contested Florida election.

Hillary Clinton had Gore appear with her at a rally in Miami this month as a way to urge young voters to turn out and vote.

A series of hacks of Democratic accounts, including Clinton’s campaign chairman, has raised fears of Russian interference in the U.S. election, after the government said Russia was behind the hacking.