CNN
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A lawyer disciplinary committee has recommended that Rudy Giuliani be disbarred in Washington, DC, for his efforts on behalf of then-President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The committee, which weighs legal ethics and attorney misconduct cases in the District of Columbia, issued the report and recommendation on Giuliani on Friday after an attorney misconduct hearing for Giuliani in December that it worked like a trial.
“He claimed massive election fraud, but had no evidence,” the committee wrote. “By prosecuting this destructive case, Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law. He should be disbarred.”
The panel’s recommendation is not final; the case against Giuliani has yet to be heard by the DC Board of Professional Responsibility and the DC appeals court.
The committee specifically criticized Giuliani for dishonesty after the 2020 election and what they called “calculated” attempts to undermine confidence in the election, when he falsely claimed in federal court in Pennsylvania that there had been voter fraud that could overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
“Mr. Giuliani has neither acknowledged nor accepted responsibility for his misconduct. On the contrary, he has expressed his indignation at having been subjected to the disciplinary process”, the commission wrote in its report. “We are convinced that a penalty should be enhanced to ensure that it adequately deters both the defendant (Giuliani) and other attorneys from acting similarly in the future.”
The three-person panel, made up of two lawyers and one member of the public, was unanimous in recommending that Giuliani be disbarred.
Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, called the report a “gross injustice” and said that “the decision-makers at the DC Bar Association are nothing more than an arm of the permanent regime in Washington “.
Giuliani’s lawyers had argued to the committee that he had a reasonable basis to believe the claims in the litigation were true and that he relied on what others who worked with the Trump campaign told him about the fraud allegations.
Giuliani, the former Manhattan federal prosecutor and Trump’s lawyer, also faces a lawyer ethics review in New York. His law license is currently temporarily suspended, which is a substantial fall for the once highly respected American political and legal figure.
“We considered as mitigation the conduct of Mr. Giuliani after the 9/11 attacks, as well as his previous service at the Justice Department and as mayor of New York City. But all of that happened a long time ago,” the report said Friday. “The misconduct here, unfortunately, transcends all of his past accomplishments.”
