WASHINGTON (AP) – Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani could be disbarred in Washington after a review panel on Friday condemned how he pursued false claims that then-President Donald Trump made about his election loss presidential elections of 2020.
Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence,” the three-member panel wrote in a report detailing errors and unsupported claims the former mayor made in a Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to overturn the loss of the Republican president to the Democrat Joe Biden.
Between Election Day and the January 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol, Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly pressed claims of voter fraud that were almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts. He is the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law for what he did for Trump: John Eastman faces disbarment in California, and Lin Wood this week surrendered his license in Georgia.
“Mr. Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote Robert C. Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell and Jay A. Brozost.
“The misconduct here sadly transcends all of his past accomplishments,” they wrote. “It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. It sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in its refusal to acknowledge the harm it has done.”
Giuliani has already had his New York law license suspended for false statements he made after the election. The Washington review committee’s work will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.
Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, criticized the panel’s work as an attempt to go after Giuliani and “part of a larger effort to deny President Trump effective counsel.”
“I am calling on the rank-and-file members of the DC Bar Association to speak out against this gross injustice,” Goodman said in a statement.
Giuliani’s post-election work has made him a key figure in several federal and state investigations. He met with the special counsel appointed to investigate efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, also conducted an investigation.
The panel examined a case that Giuliani argued on November 17, 2020, ten days after The Associated Press and other media outlets called the election for Biden.
The Trump campaign complained that Philadelphia and six Democratic-controlled counties in Pennsylvania allowed voters to make corrections to mail-in ballots that would otherwise be disqualified on a technicality, such as the lack of a secret envelope or a signature. Some other counties did not follow suit.
Giuliani argued the case. Although he had once served as a U.S. attorney in New York, the Pennsylvania argument was his first court appearance as a lawyer since 1992, the year before he was elected mayor of New York, according to federal records.
He spent much of the hearing baselessly alleging a national conspiracy to steal the election from Trump, something the former president continues to argue today.
US District Judge Matthew Brann rejected Giuliani’s arguments days later, noting that the Trump campaign had wanted him to throw out millions of votes.
“One might expect that, when seeking such a surprising result, a plaintiff would come formidable armed with cogent legal arguments and factual evidence of rampant corruption,” Brann wrote at the time. “That didn’t happen.”
Friday’s panel review said Giuliani “offered no evidence that fraudulent mail-in votes were actually cast or counted,” but instead made his own inferences.
“Mr. Giuliani’s argument that he did not have time to fully investigate his case before presenting it is singularly unimpressive,” the panel wrote. “He tried to overturn the presidential election, but never had evidence to support this effort.”
The panel said Giuliani had violated a rule that prohibits lawyers from “engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”
“Boarding the courts with unnecessary and frivolous cases is a violation,” the court said.
