Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is facing an ethics charge as a result of a case brought against him by the District of Columbia office that regulates attorneys.
According to Business Insider, the District of Columbia bar is alleges that Giuliani —who was also an ally and personal attorney to former President Donald Trump— "pushed baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election in a Pennsylvania court and accused him of violating two professional conduct rules in the state."
The court documents filed on Friday, June 10, also highlight Giuliani's support of a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania by the Trump campaign seeking to overturn the results of the state's election. The latest debacle with the D.C. bar comes one year after Giuliani's one-year suspension from practicing law in the state of New York. Now, his law career is in jeopardy in the District of Columbia as he may also be forced to refrain from practicing law in that district.
Following Trump's election loss in 2020, the Pennsylvania lawsuit argued that more than 1.5 million mail-in ballots were invalid because they were not in compliance with state election law. The filing notes that Giuliani was the attorney to seek an emergency ruling in hopes of blocking the certification of the presidential election. He also had a hand in filing other orders to have the Pennsylvania assembly select its own electors and deem Trump the winner of the state's election.
According to the court filing, 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 lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania was dismissed.
The D.C. Bar argues that 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 affected the presidential election's results by offsetting the Biden majority of over 80,000 votes."
A hearing will now be scheduled and Giuliani will have an opportunity to respond.
