Appeals Court Rules Against Rudy Giuliani As Downfall Accelerates

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Prominent Trump ally Rudy Giuliani has now lost an attempt to get his law license re-instated in Washington, D.C., where local authorities suspended him from practicing law shortly after authorities in New York took the same step. Giuliani faced these suspensions because of his promotion of lies regarding the integrity of last year’s presidential election, which former President Donald Trump and others, including Giuliani, have falsely claimed was somehow rigged for Joe Biden. Giuliani undertook public advocacy on behalf of these false claims, but in his capacity as a lawyer, he also presented oral arguments as part of a Trump court case in Pennsylvania. That case, like every other potentially election outcome-altering court case, ended in abject failure for Trump.

The D.C. Court of Appeals delivered its rejection of Giuliani’s attempt to get his D.C. law license restored via a July 26 order. That D.C. court noted that the “New York court found uncontroverted facts establishing a basis for suspending [Giuliani] to protect the public.” Meanwhile, Giuliani’s lawyers revealed the existence of a formal D.C. investigation into Giuliani’s conduct in a prior filing in which they sought the opposite conclusion from the D.C. court. The office of Hamilton “Phil” Fox III, who serves as leader of the D.C. disciplinary counsel’s team, asked Giuliani late last year to respond to “certain allegations about his conduct and claims made regarding the 2020 presidential Pennsylvania election in the case Trump v. Boockvar,” according to that filing from Giuliani’s lawyers, referring to that Trump case in which Giuliani presented oral arguments.

D.C. authorities imposed the suspension of Giuliani’s law license on what is known as a “reciprocal” basis, meaning that they put the measure in place in response to the New York proceedings against Giuliani rather than in direct connection to the investigation in D.C. Besides the D.C. Court of Appeals’s recent rejection of Giuliani’s effort to get his local law license reinstated, the court also “allowed the D.C. ethics investigation to continue,” according to Reuters. “Bar regulators in D.C. are weighing statements Giuliani made in November on behalf of Republican then-U.S. President Donald Trump in an election-related case in Pennsylvania federal court,” Reuters adds, based on records that the outlet was able to review. (The case was Trump v. Boockvar.)

No legitimate evidence has ever emerged in support of fraud claims that Giuliani and others have made regarding last year’s presidential election, although Giuliani — a former New York City mayor, who’s also under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors for his overseas dealings — went around the country to push the claims.