A District of Columbia disciplinary panel has recommended that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred over a lawsuit he filed challenging the 2020 election results.
The board’s decision stems from a lawsuit Mr. Giuliani filed challenging Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results that was ultimately rejected by several courts. The lawsuit sought to invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes following Mr. Trump’s defeat in the swing state.
The D.C. panel found that Mr. Giuliani made sweeping claims of voter fraud that he did not have evidence to support. The hearing committee said in its decision that Mr. Giuliani’s conduct was “calculated to undermine the basic premise of our democratic form of government: that elections are determined by the voters.”
“Mr. Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote the three lawyers on the panel, Robert C. Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell, and Jay A. Brozost.
“He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it,” the hearing committee wrote. “By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law. He should be disbarred.”
James T. Phalen, an executive attorney at the Board on Professional Responsibility, said in a letter to Mr. Giuliani that the full board could still modify the hearing panel’s recommendation of disbarment before it issues its final recommendation to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which will ultimately decide on Mr. Giuliani’s disbarment or other penalties.
Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, John Leventhal, told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview that the hearing committee’s decision is merely a recommendation and that Mr. Giuliani’s legal team will seek review before the full board and, if necessary, will appeal the decision “even higher.”
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Mr. Giuliani, called the hearing committee’s decision “part of an effort to deny President Trump effective counsel by persecuting Rudy Giuliani—objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history.”
Mr. Giuliani has insisted that federal courts in Pennsylvania ruled incorrectly on Mr. Trump’s 2020 legal challenges.
Mr. Trump continues to insist that the 2020 election was “rigged” and he was robbed of a rightful win.
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In December 2022, the panel heard evidence in the case against Mr. Giuliani, who was accused of breaching ethics rules against bringing frivolous lawsuits and harming the administration of justice.At the time, Hamilton “Phil” Fox, a disciplinary counsel with the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, claimed that Mr. Giuliani tried to undermine the credibility of the 2020 election and should be disbarred.
Mr. Fox alleged that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about the 2020 election were tantamount to “harming the country” and described them as a form of “misconduct.”
He said at the hearing that Mr. Giuliani “has at least got to realize that his or her law license is at risk” for filing a lawsuit that tries to “ignore the will of the voters.”
Mr. Giuliani would later describe Mr. Fox’s remarks as an unjustified attack because he had a “good faith belief” that there were irregularities in the 2020 election that deserved to be examined and challenged.
His attorneys claimed to the committee that Mr. Giuliani had valid reasons to believe the claims in the lawsuit were true. They also argued that he relied on information from others working with the Trump campaign who told him about the allegations of voting irregularities.
At the time, Mr. Leventhal told the panel in closing arguments that Mr. Giuliani should not be disciplined in part because the crux of the lawsuit was not voter fraud but social distancing restrictions imposed on election observers, as well as policies in some counties that allowed voters to address mistakes on mail ballots.
“A reasonable attorney can make that argument without being frivolous,” Mr. Leventhal said at the time.
However, the D.C. disciplinary panel found at the time that Mr. Giuliani violated ethics rules with the Pennsylvania lawsuit, though it did not issue a final recommendation.
“The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments,” the panel wrote concluded.
“It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done,” they added.
Separately, a New York court suspended Mr. Giuliani’s law license in 2021 over his statements about the 2020 election.
