Following the revelation that longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani told federal agents that he found it acceptable to sometimes “throw a fake” — meaning lie in public — the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is now calling for Giuliani’s full disbarment. He’s already been suspended from practicing law in both New York and Washington, D.C., in connection to deception that he spread regarding the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, but the Post-Dispatch noted that “Full disbarment remains a hopeful possibility.” As the newspaper pointedly added, referring to Giuliani: “The legal profession and the nation has had enough of this man’s fake news.”
Giuliani’s admission to federal authorities that he found occasional public lying to be perfectly acceptable did not come in connection to his deception regarding the 2020 election. Rather, Giuliani admitted as much while being interviewed amid an investigation into whether he’d received leaked information from the FBI during the 2016 election cycle. As the Post-Dispatch summarizes it, Giuliani’s “own words lent credence to the suspicion that FBI agents had tipped him off in advance to the decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to reopen an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shortly before the election.” As it turned out, however, Giuliani had not received leaked information — he was lying.
As the Post-Dispatch put it:
‘After his election antics last year, it should be beyond serious debate that Rudy Giuliani is a liar. Even so, it’s startling to read how casually former President Donald Trump’s lawyer admitted to federal agents that he lied to the public during Trump’s earlier election campaign of 2016… An appellate court in June suspended [Giuliani] from practicing law in New York for his promotion of demonstrably false election-fraud lies. Full disbarment remains a hopeful possibility. The legal profession and the nation has had enough of this man’s fake news.’
The paper also noted how Giuliani’s admission that he’s willing to publicly lie could be pointedly relevant to ongoing proceedings in which Dominion Voting Systems — a voting technology company that was a subject of pro-Trump, election-related conspiracy theories — is suing Giuliani for defamation. Giuliani’s admission could help bolster the idea that, in the different but related context of the 2020 presidential election, he was aware of the potentially damaging impacts of his behavior. As the Post-Dispatch put it, Giuliani’s admitted embrace of deception “should also be of interest to plaintiffs suing Giuliani for his flurry of lies on Trump’s behalf during the 2020 campaign, and to professional organizations considering whether he should lose his law license for that behavior.” Read the full article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calling out Giuliani at this link.
