The panel said disbarment is needed to protect the public, courts, and legal profession, and also to ‘deter’ other lawyers from launching similar claims.
The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary board on Friday recommended disbarring Rudy Giuliani for his involvement in “frivolous” legal efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
The decision, which would see him lose his license to practice law in the District of Columbia, marks another legal blow for the former New York City mayor and attorney for former President Donald Trump, who alleged election fraud following the 2020 election.
In the 63-page report and recommendation, which will require approval from the D.C. Court of Appeals at a forthcoming hearing, the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility severely criticizes Mr. Giuliani’s actions in the report, accusing him of attempting to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters.
The panel found “clear and convincing evidence” that Mr. Giuliani violated two Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct by making “baseless” claims of voter fraud in a federal lawsuit filed in November 2020. The lawsuit claimed that barriers for poll-watchers and “illegal” mail-in ballots were proof of “nationwide voter fraud.”
The report acknowledges that disbarment “has not been imposed in other frivolous litigation cases.” However, it claims that Mr. Giuliani’s efforts can’t be compared and that the “aggravating factors” involved here warrant severe disciplinary action.
“He urged a federal judge to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters even though he had no objectively reliable evidence that any such scheme existed, or even that any illegal mail-in ballots had been counted,” the report states.
“No prior disciplinary cases involving frivolous litigation are remotely comparable to this case,” it continues. “We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief.”
Mail-in ballots increased from just over 266,000 in the 2016 election to more than 2.6 million in the 2020 election. This was due to a 2019 state law and the COVID-19 pandemic.
