Giuliani should be disbarred for false election fraud claims: panel

Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred in Washington, D.C. for falsely claiming “massive election fraud” after the 2020 presidential election, a three-member panel said in a report Friday.

The former mayor of New York City, who repeatedly pressed claims of fraud on behalf of former President Donald Trump, should be disciplined over his “frivolous” attempt to “disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters” in an effort to overturn the results of the election, the committee said in its 38-page report.

The Washington-based bar discipline committee reviewed Giuliani’s conduct when arguing a case in Pennsylvania on Nov. 17, 2020.

Ten days after the results of the election were called by the Associated Press and several other news outlets, the Trump campaign cast doubt on the validity of the votes in Philadelphia and six other Democratic-controlled counties in the state, saying some voters were allowed to make corrections to mail-in ballots that would have been disqualified.

Giuliani, a formal federal prosecutor, represented the now-former president in court. He alleged a conspiracy to steal the election from Trump but failed to provide any evidence.

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His efforts to undermine the integrity of the election have “helped destabilize our democracy,” the panel wrote in the report.

The three members of the committee — two D.C. lawyers, Robert Bernius and Jay Brozost, and one public member, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell — said Giuliani’s “malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage and are antagonistic to the oath to ‘support the Constitution of the United States of America’ that he swore when he was admitted to the Bar.”

Giuliani claimed “massive election fraud but had no evidence of it,” the report concluded. “By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law. He should be disbarred.”

Their recommendation will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.

Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, slammed the panel’s decision as a “great injustice” and another attempt to persecute the prominent Trump ally as “part of a larger effort to deny President Trump effective counsel.”

In June 2021, a panel of Manhattan judges suspended Giuliani’s license to practice law in New York over “false and misleading” claims about the 2020 election on behalf of the Trump campaign.

With News Wire Services