The Ruling Suspending Rudy Giuliani’s Law License Is Kind of Hilarious
Back in November, four top scholars on legal ethics argued in Slate that it was time for courts and state bar organizations to start disciplining lawyers who were pushing Donald Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
A little more than seven months later, a committee of five judges from the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department, has unanimously suspended Rudy Giuliani’s legal license pending a disciplinary hearing for false claims he made about election fraud as part of his representation of Trump.
Thursday’s ruling is unsparing, with the five judges concluding
. . .there is uncontroverted evidence that [Giuliani] communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.
Here are some of the most ridiculous of Giuliani’s suspension-worthy antics, as documented by the five-judge committee: Here's just one relating to Arizona
> Rudy Said Tens of Thousands of Undocumented Immigrants Voted in Arizona
At various points, Giuliani said 10,000, 32,000, or 250,000 undocumented immigrants voted in Arizona in the 2020 election. From the ruling: On their face, these numerical claims are so wildly divergent and irreconcilable, that they all cannot be true at the same time. Some of the wild divergences were even stated by respondent in the very same sentence.
. . .As the judges took pains to note—and in spite of their maybe inadvertently hilarious presentation—this is actually no laughing matter. In their conclusion, they pointed to audits “that arise from the narrative of a stolen election” going on around the country and laws proposed to restrict the vote based on that narrative as major ongoing harm that Giuliani and his cohort continue to cause.
“One only has to look at the ongoing present public discord over the 2020 election, which erupted into violence, insurrection and death on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, to understand the extent of the damage that can be done when the public is misled by false information about the elections,” the judges wrote.
It’s a good thing that some institutions, at least, are finally asserting the authority they have to protect this country from the damage wrought by Trump’s and Giuliani’s big lie.
New York Daily News Flips An Old Rudy Giuliani Boast To Oprah Winfrey Back On Him
The New York Daily News editorial board on Friday highlighted former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s fall from grace with something he once told Oprah Winfrey.
In a scathing essay responding to the suspension of Giuliani’s law license for promoting the election lies of his former client, ex-President Donald Trump, the newspaper’s board recalled Giuliani telling Winfrey years ago that he “always tried to be honest when communicating with people.
But “that man is dead and buried,” said the board.
“Words have consequences, especially for attorneys,” the board noted.
“Rudy knew the rules, and he broke them again and again, spouting lies about the November election,” it said. “Nor is this some case of broken windows ethical policing; the calumnies were as big as they come, about a subject as consequential as they come.”
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