Former mayor of New York City and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani reacts at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum during a rally held by Republican presidential nominees and former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Uniondale, New York, U.S., September 18, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is officially disbarred from practicing law in the nation’s capital over his efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss based on false claims of widespread fraud, a court ruled Thursday.
The decision by a three-judge panel on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals was just the latest blow for the 80-year-old man once known as “America’s Mayor,” who was disbarred in New York less than three months ago.
“Rudolph W. Giuliani is hereby disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia,” the judges in D.C.’s highest court wrote in a one-page order made public Thursday morning.
A spokesman for Giuliani did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Giuliani’s law license had been suspended in D.C. in July 2021 as a result of his then-active disciplinary proceedings in New York.
Three years later, a New York appeals court found that Giuliani had “flagrantly misused his prominent position as the personal attorney for former President Trump and his campaign” to spread false — and at times “perjurious” — claims about the 2020 election in multiple courts.
Giuliani “deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession” and “actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” that court wrote in the July 2 disbarment ruling.
A D.C.-based bar disciplinary panel in 2023 had already recommended Giuliani be disbarred over his false election claims.
“He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it,” that panel wrote. “By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law. He should be disbarred.”
The D.C. court of appeals on July 25 had ordered Giuliani to explain why he should not be disbarred “in reciprocity” with the New York appellate court’s decision.
Giuliani apparently did not filed a response to that order, the D.C. judges wrote Thursday.
Giuliani was on the front lines of Trump’s efforts to challenge his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. He has since been indicted in Georgia and Arizona on state charges related to those efforts. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
In July, a New York federal bankruptcy judge dismissed Giuliani’s Chapter 11 case, exacerbating his ongoing financial debs that include paying a massive civil defamation penalty to two Georgia election workers.