(New York) Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer and close friend of Donald Trump, was disbarred Tuesday from the New York bar by an appeals court for his repeated lies about alleged fraud during the 2020 presidential election, one more episode in the fall of the former “mayor of America”, praised for his management of September 11, 2001.
The former New York mayor, who has become a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, is at the centre of suspicion by the justice system, which has indicted him in the states of Arizona and Georgia for his role in attempts to reverse the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden.
Accused by the courts of having put pressure on elected officials to change the result of the vote, he had also been one of the loudest voices to claim, without proof, that fraud had tainted the vote in favor of Joe Biden.
Rudy Giuliani, 80, has seen his legal troubles mount. Last December, he was ordered by a court to pay $148 million to two Georgia state election officials for defaming them by accusing them of participating in the alleged cheating. He has since declared bankruptcy.
At the same time, he had been suspended from the New York bar and a New York State appeals court upheld that decision on Tuesday, which amounts to a disbarment.
In its 31-page decision, the appeals court lists a long list of false and unproven claims publicly made by the former lawyer as counsel to Donald Trump, such as the claim that thousands of votes came from deceased people in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
“He has baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process,” the appeals court said, adding that Rudy Giuliani “not only willfully violated some of the most fundamental principles of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national conflict that followed the 2020 presidential election, for which he is completely unrepentant.”
Rudy Giuliani’s fall is as strong as his image had shone 20 years earlier, when, as mayor of New York, he embodied resilience after the attacks of September 11, 2001, which brought the city to its knees and left some 3,000 dead.
Some had predicted a national destiny for this former tough prosecutor, who had dealt harsh blows to the New York mafia, but Rudy Giuliani had failed in the Republican primary for the presidential nomination in 2008.