WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani, the disgraced former mayor of New York who tried to overturn former President Donald Trump’s election loss, was disbarred in the state of New York on Tuesday, yet another repercussion for the team that spread lies about mass voter fraud after Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.
Giuliani, who faces charges in Georgia and Arizona and is an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case against Trump, had no “good faith basis” to believe the lies he spread about the election, according to an order entered Tuesday. Some of the false statements cited by a New York appeals court were comments Giuliani made at a post-election news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, which took place at the same time some new outlets called the election for Biden.
“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the appeals court decision read.
Giuliani has arguably faced much wider repercussions for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election than Trump himself. He also faces disbarment in Washington, where the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility recently recommended that he be barred.
In May, WABC radio of New York suspended Giuliani and canceled his show for continuing to make false statements about the 2020 election, which could have opened the station up to legal liability.
A jury awarded two Georgia poll workers — Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — $148 million after a federal judge found Giuliani liable for falsely accusing them of election fraud, allegations that had zero factual basis. Because of security video that had spurred conspiracy theorists online, Giuliani had falsely accused the mother-daughter duo of passing around USB drives “like vials of heroin or cocaine,” when, in fact, they were passing a ginger mint. The allegations set off a wave of racist attacks and threats against the pair.
In the course of the New York disciplinary case, Giuliani stipulated to the reality that many thousands of votes were not, in fact, cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia during the 2020 election, as he’d previously falsely claimed. The referee overseeing the proceedings, the order noted, found “16 acts of falsehoods carried out” by Giuliani “were deliberate and constituted a transparent pattern of conduct intended and designed to deceive.”
The decision also accused Giuliani of trying to deceive officials during the disciplinary process.
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, called the decision “flawed” and “politically and ideologically corrupted.”
Barry Kamins, a former judge and attorney for Giuliani, said that his team is “weighing our appellate options” and that “Mr. Giuliani is obviously disappointed in the decision.”
