Rudolph Giuliani has been stripped of his law license in New York for aiding former US president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, the latest blow to the once celebrated federal prosecutor and New York mayor.
Disbarring the 80-year-old attorney was “amply supported by the record,” a New York appeals court held in an order on Tuesday, finding that he “flagrantly misused his prominent position as the personal attorney for former [US] President Trump and his campaign” and “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”
“The seriousness of respondent’s misconduct cannot be overstated,” the five-member panel wrote.
Photo: Reuters
Giuliani “not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” it said.
Giuliani’s attorney Barry Kamins in an e-mail said that his client “is obviously disappointed in the decision” and that they are weighing options to appeal.
Though not unexpected, Giuliani’s disbarment caps a stunning fall from grace for a man who made his name as a hard-charging federal prosecutor in Manhattan before becoming New York’s mayor and winning praise for his leadership after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. After he left office, his services as a lawyer were in such great demand that a firm he joined adopted his name for a time.
His fortunes declined after he spearheaded the Trump campaign’s legal challenges to US President Joe Biden’s wins in battleground states in the 2020 election.
He is separately fighting disbarment in Washington, where two panels of attorney regulators have recommended that he lose his license to practice for his work after the election.
The city’s highest court has not ruled yet.
Other top legal advisers to Trump, including former US Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and law professor John Eastman, are facing state disbarment proceedings, but no court has entered final rulings in those cases.
Giuliani’s law license has been suspended in New York since 2021.
Giuliani has faced significant legal fallout for promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020. He is fighting criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona and was ordered to pay US$148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers. He is appealing that verdict.
In Tuesday’s order, the New York appeals court rebuffed Giuliani’s claim that he had a “good faith basis” for his fraud claims after the election.
“There is nothing on the record before us that would permit the conclusion that respondent lacked knowledge of the falsehood of the numerous statements that he made,” the court wrote. “The 16 acts of falsehoods carried out by respondent were deliberate and constituted a transparent pattern of conduct intended and designed to deceive.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS