Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has had his law license permanently revoked in the nation’s capital, after a New York court took similar action earlier this year over Giuliani’s role in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals in a one-page order Thursday did not directly address a panel of lawyers’ recommendation in May to disbar Giuliani because he legally challenged the Pennsylvania election results without providing factual support for the claims.
Instead, a three-judge panel of the Washington, D.C., court ruled that Giuliani had failed to respond to an order asking him to explain why he should not face a “mutual” suspension following a New York appeals court’s decision to strip him of his law license in that state. The Washington, D.C., court temporarily suspended Giuliani in July 2021 after being notified of a similar suspension in New York.
A disciplinary panel of the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility recommended in 2022 that Giuliani be disbarred, resulting in the indefinite suspension of his law license. Giuliani had opposed that recommendation when the appeals court issued its decision Thursday.
“This is an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice,” said Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani. “Members of the legal community who care about protecting the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision.”
It was not immediately clear why Giuliani did not respond to the Washington, D.C., court, even as he has been aggressively fighting the separate case filed against him by Washington, D.C., attorneys for more than two years. Attorneys handling the proceedings for Giuliani did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
While the court’s decision did not hinge on the DC Bar panel’s findings of misconduct, it is the culmination of a process that began with disciplinary investigations in both New York and Washington. DC Bar investigators accused Giuliani of unethical conduct over false and unsubstantiated claims he made in a Pennsylvania federal court as part of an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
A panel of judges in New York found similar misconduct when they disbarred Giuliani there, where he rose to prominence as a federal prosecutor and a tough-on-crime Republican politician who later led the city through the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Giuliani “repeatedly and willfully made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state legislatures, the public … and this Court regarding the 2020 presidential election, baselessly attacking and undermining the integrity of this country’s electoral process,” the five-judge appeals panel said.
