On Friday, the office that oversees attorneys in the District of Columbia issued an ethics charge against Rudy Giuliani for making misleading statements regarding election fraud.
The DC bar’s disciplinary branch claimed Giuliani made false assertions about election fraud in 2020 in a Pennsylvania court, accusing him of breaking two professional conduct standards in the state.
The charge puts Giuliani on the verge of losing his right to practice law in the district, a year after he was barred from doing so in New York due to allegations of election fraud.
The filing on Friday details Giuliani’s support for a Trump campaign lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania.
According to the lawsuit, up to 1.5 million Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots should be rejected because they did not follow state election laws.
According to the DC Bar accusations, the assertions had “no legal basis.”
According to the brief, Giuliani requested an emergency order prohibiting the presidential election from being certified, as well as other orders allowing the state assembly to choose its electors and declare Trump the winner in Pennsylvania.
Giuliani “brought a proceeding and asserted issues therein without a non-frivolous basis in law and fact for doing so” and “engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice,” the court filing said.
According to the document, the former New York City mayor told a district court that he had 300 statements and affidavits that may corroborate his fraud charges.
The affidavits were “(a) unsupported, (b) unrelated to Trump voters, (c) involve conduct outside the seven Defendant Counties, and (d) by their own terms were isolated incidents that could not have influenced the presidential election’s results by offsetting Biden’s majority of over 80,000 votes,” according to the DC Bar charges.
The complaint from Pennsylvania, which was brought just days after the 2020 election, was eventually rejected.
Giuliani was admitted to the DC Bar in 1976, but his standing lapsed in 2002 when he became inactive.
The disciplinary process will now proceed to a hearing stage, during which Giuliani will have the opportunity to respond to the claims.
