Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred for false election fraud claims, D.C. review panel says

Washington, D.C. — A Washington, D.C., Bar Association review panel is recommending former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani be disbarred in Washington for his handling of litigation challenging the 2020 election on behalf of then-President Trump.

Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence,” wrote the three-lawyer panel in a report released Friday, regarding the errors and unsupported claims in a Pennsylvania lawsuit he argued seeking to overturn the Republican president’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Between Election Day and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly pressed claims of election fraud that were almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts. He’s the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law over what he did for Trump: John Eastman faces disbarment in California, and Lin Wood this week surrendered his license in Georgia.

“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.

The panel’s report will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.

Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, criticized the panel’s work in a statement: “The decision-makers at the DC Bar Association are nothing more than an arm of the permanent regime in Washington.”

Goodman said the decision “is also part of an effort to deny President Trump effective counsel by persecuting Rudy Giuliani—objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history.”

“This is the sort of behavior we’d expect out of the Soviet Union, not America,” he added, and he called on members of the D.C. Bar Association “to speak out against this great injustice.”

Giuliani’s law license in New York was suspended in June 2021 for false statements he made while trying to pursue Trump’s repeatedly debunked fraud claims.

Graham Kates contributed to this report.