Rudy Giuliani disbarred in DC over his efforts to throw out millions of votes in 2020

The ex-NYC mayor, who is still on the hook for nearly $150 million for election lies, lost his license to practice

By Griffin Eckstein

News Fellow

Published September 26, 2024 11:15AM (EDT)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends a remembrance ceremony on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center at Ground Zero, in New York City on September 11, 2024. (ADAM GRAY/AFP via Getty Images)
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends a remembrance ceremony on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center at Ground Zero, in New York City on September 11, 2024. (ADAM GRAY/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s a bad day to be a New York City mayor.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor and Trump attorney, was disbarred in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, adding to the list of jurisdictions where the once-venerated figure cannot practice law.

In a one-page order citing New York state’s disbarment, the three-judge D.C. Appeals Court panel affirmed a D.C. bar disciplinary committee’s July 2023 finding that Giuliani attempted “unjustifiably and without precedent to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters, and ultimately sought to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

“Mr. Giuliani's misconduct was calculated to undermine the basic premise of our democratic form of government: that elections are determined by the voters,” the committee said.

Giuliani, a chief legal architect of the Trump campaign’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election in numerous states, has been criminally charged in Arizona and Georgia. The ex-Trump advisor is also an unindicted co-conspirator in Jack Smith’s federal election probe, per The Hill.

The disbarment comes as Giuliani faces a bruising bankruptcy case, stemming in part from a massive judgment awarded to two Georgia election workers that Giuliani defamed in 2020. The pair, who Giuliani owes $148 million, won a fight to kick the ex-mayor out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July, paving the way for the court to liquidate his assets.

While Giuliani has yet to address his own disciplinary woes, he did take a moment Thursday morning to defend New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday night, in a post to X, writing that Adams “is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”


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