DC Board Takes Action Against Rudy Giuliani’s Law License

Rudy Giuliani speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election at the Republican National Committee headquarters on November 19, 2020. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.)

A professional conduct committee in Washington, DC this week began formal disciplinary proceedings against him Rudy Giuliani in connection with Giuliani’s litigation tactics surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

According to a document filed Monday, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals for Professional Responsibility accused Giuliani of improper litigation Joe Bidens Victory in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to the official record, Biden won in Keystone State by more than 80,000 votes.

The DC disciplinary document states that Giuliani and the two plaintiffs he represents failed to use the proper channels to seek redress for their grievances:

defendant represented Donald J Trump for President, Inc. (the “Trump Campaign”) and Laurent Roberts and David John Henryregistered voters who were citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively “Plaintiffs”).

Neither the Defendant nor the Plaintiffs have contested the November 3, 2020 election results pursuant to the statutory procedures of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for election contests.

Instead, plaintiffs, with defendant’s support, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the Pennsylvania presidential election by an order of a federal district court on alleged violations of the United States Constitution.

According to the Disciplinary Board, Giuliani did not sign the original complaint dated November 9, 2020, nor the attached documents. He also did not sign a subsequently amended complaint dated November 15, 2020, the board said. He was initially not admitted to practice in the required Pennsylvania federal district court, but was admitted “pro hac vice,” or only one case, on November 17, 2020 – fourteen days after the lawsuit was filed.

Giuliani signed another amended complaint on November 18, 2020. Additional documents were filed on November 19, 20 and 21. A federal district court judge dismissed the case with prejudice on November 21, 2022 — meaning it could not be refiled Giuliani appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on November 22; the Third Circuit dismissed the appeal on November 27. By then (November 23, to be precise), Pennsylvania had certified Biden’s win.

The DC Professional Conduct Board said Giuliani’s legal sins included his specific requests for relief – which set high standards for a federal court:

interviewee [and] The plaintiffs asked the district court to invalidate between 680,000 and 1.5 million (out of about 2.6 million) mail-in ballots. These were all votes that had already been counted by Pennsylvania election officials.

The district court wrote that it “has not been able to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such drastic appeal in connection with an election, given the sheer volume of votes to be voided.”

The district court wrote that the “relief sought — the throwing away of millions of votes — is unprecedented,” noting that the plaintiffs “cite[d] no authority for this drastic measure.”

The document then pointed to Giuliani’s claims – and walk-backs – on whether (or not) he was claiming an actual “case of fraud”:

Following these final allegations, the District Court asked the Defendant if he “alleges fraud” by the Defendants, and the Defendant replied, “Yes, Your Honor.”

Following that exchange, the district court reminded the defendant that rule 9(b) of the Federal Code of Civil Procedure requires plaintiffs alleging fraud to specify the circumstances of the fraud, and the defendant acknowledged that plaintiff’s first amended complaint “did not plead for fraud’ and that ‘this is not a fraud case’.

After citing other examples of Giuliani’s alleged legal errors regarding the “election fraud” allegations, the DC Attorney’s Office put it this way: “The defendant had no non-frivolous legal and factual basis to allege in the Circuit Court that the defendants voted.” had committed fraud, let alone a factual basis for the specific showing of fraud as required by Rule 9(b) of the Code of Civil Procedure.”

In other words, Giuliani has not had a fraud case, according to legal authorities, although he has sometimes claimed he did.

Elsewhere, the DC document says Giuliani “misquoted” an “excerpt from the Baker-Carter Commission’s report on 2006 federal election reform on the general potential for mail-in ballot fraud that made no reference to Pennsylvania.”

The document also states that Giuliani’s so-called “evidence” of electoral misconduct was based on nothing more than “false or flawed statistics and analysis.”

The document also says that some of Giuliani’s other claims were flat out wrong under the law:

Defendant also alleged that candidate representative observation limits, i.e., physical barriers to the movement of observers outside designated areas, were evidence of fraud by the defendant counties simply by their very existence, despite the fact that (a) the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania found the boundaries consistent with state suffrage; (b) Plaintiffs never alleged facts showing an improper count of votes; (c) there was no evidence that these limits were not applied equally to the campaigns of the two main candidates; and (d) one or more Republican-controlled counties have also imposed such limits.

Additionally according to the DC document:

The defendant told the district court that he had “either 300 affidavits, affidavits or our own affidavits that we have written” that could prove his allegations of fraud against the defendant counties. The affidavits, statements, and statements he submitted to the circuit court and other bodies were (a) unsupported, (b) unrelated to Trump voters, (c) involve conduct outside of the seven defendant counties, and (d) by their own terms were isolated cases that could not have affected the results of the presidential election by overturning the Biden majority of over 80,000 votes.

The crux of Giuliani’s case, according to the DC attorney’s document, was that the two plaintiffs, Roberts and Henry, “cast false ballots that were duly disregarded by their respective county election officials and never counted as legitimate votes.”

“Rather than requesting that those two ballots be counted, the defendant attempted to use the lawful rejection of two ballots by non-defendant counties to invalidate up to 1.5 million votes already counted,” the document reads , while questions are once again being raised about Giuliani’s legal tactics. “There was no basis in fact or law for the claims of equal protection asserted by the Defendant with respect to the Defendants or for the relief sought by the Defendant, including the invalidation of up to 1.5 million ballots cast in the defendant counties.”

The document alleges that Giuliani violated Pennsylvania Code of Ethics 3.1 (essentially his lawsuit was frivolous) and 8.4(d) (accusing Giuliani of “committing conduct harmful to the administration of justice”).

Giuliani has been a member of the DC Attorney since 1976, the document said. He changed his bar license to inactive (not practicing) status on December 12, 2002. He has been suspended in Washington, DC since July 7, 2021, when a New York court also challenged his license.

Lawyers who work pro hac vice must – even in one case – adhere to the professional regulations of the places where they work. When attorneys are licensed in multiple jurisdictions, their licenses are essentially interrelated: a disciplinary matter in one jurisdiction generally triggers a domino effect of disciplinary action elsewhere.

The document submitted this week is just the first step in that process. An accompanying DC filing states that Giuliani “must” respond to a response within 20 days.

When approached by Reuters for comment on the situation, a lawyer for Giuliani declined immediate comment.

The full DC disciplinary document can be found here:

We have omitted some of the legal citations in the citations listed above. Full citations are in the document.

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