(Washington) Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani could be disbarred in Washington after a review board on Friday condemned the way he repeated then-President Donald Trump’s false claims about his defeat in the 2020 US presidential election.
Mr Giuliani “claimed there was massive electoral fraud, but he had no proof”, the three-member group wrote in a report that details the errors and unsubstantiated claims that the former mayor made in a Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to overturn the Republican president’s defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
Between Election Day and the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, Mr. Giuliani and other Donald Trump lawyers repeatedly alleged voter fraud that was almost uniformly dismissed by federal courts and tribunals. of state. He’s the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law because of what he did for Trump: John Eastman is at risk of being disbarred in California and Lin Wood gave up his Georgia license this week. .
“Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election have helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote panel members Robert C. Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell and Jay A. Brozost.
“The fault committed here sadly transcends all his past achievements, they write. It is unprecedented in its purpose and its destructive effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the harm he has done. »
Mr. Giuliani has already had his lawyer’s license suspended in New York for the false statements he made after the election. The work of the Washington review board will now go to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals for a final decision.
Ted Goodman, political adviser to Mr Giuliani, criticized the panel’s work, calling it “behavior worthy of the Soviet Union”.
“I call on grassroots members of the Washington Bar Association to speak out against this great injustice,” Goodman said in a statement.
Mr. Giuliani’s work after the election made him a key figure in several federal and state investigations. He met with the special counsel investigating attempts to nullify the 2020 election and prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, who are also investigating.
The three-judge panel considered a case that Mr. Giuliani argued on Nov. 17, 2020, ten days after The Associated Press and other news outlets announced Mr. Biden’s election.
Mr. Trump’s campaign complained that Philadelphia and six Democratic-controlled counties in Pennsylvania allowed voters to make corrections to mail-in ballots that would otherwise have been disqualified for technical reasons, such as the absence of a secret envelope or signature. Other counties did not follow this example.
Mr. Giuliani argued the case. Although he had previously served as a New York City prosecutor, the Pennsylvania plea 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 Mr Trump, something the former president continues to argue today.
Days later, District Judge Matthew Brann dismissed Mr. Giuliani’s arguments, noting that Mr. Trump’s campaign wanted him to nullify millions of votes.
“One would expect that, when seeking such a startling result, a plaintiff would be formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual evidence of endemic corruption,” Judge Brann wrote at the time. . It was not the case. »
The panel’s review on Friday says Mr Giuliani ‘provided no evidence that fraudulent mail-in ballots were actually cast or counted’, but merely made his own inferences .
“Mr. Giuliani’s argument that he did not have time to fully investigate his case before filing it is singularly unconvincing,” the jury wrote. He sought to upset the presidential election, but never had evidence to back up that effort. »
The jury said Mr Giuliani breached a rule that prohibits lawyers “from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice”.
“To clutter the courts with unnecessary and frivolous cases is such a violation,” the jury said.