US Presidential Elections 2024: Rudy Giuliani disbarred in Washington DC over election interference by US court

The November 5 US presidential election is approaching fast. And yet, ripples of the last presidential elections in 2020, which culminated into an insurrection and spawned a number of election deniers, are still being felt.

In the latest development, a federal appeals court on September 23 disbarred Rudy Giuliani in Washington DC for the efforts the attorney made to discredit the 2020 election results and prevent the transition of power after the then-president Donald Trump lost the elections.

The decision was made by a panel of three District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals judges. They all ruled that Giuliani, a long-time Trump ally, should lose his licence to practice law, The Hill reported. The decision by the judges followed a recommendation given in May by the disciplinary board associated with the DC Bar to disbar Giuliani.

“We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief,” the disciplinary board wrote in May.

The judges specifically pointed to Giuliani’s involvement in overturning the electoral result in Pennsylvania even though he had “no objectively reliable evidence that any such scheme existed.”

Giuliani was involved in other efforts alongside Trump to alter the electoral results. The attorney, along with Trump, faces election interference charges in Georgia and Arizona. Furthermore, he has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election subversion case against the former president.

For his efforts to keep Trump in power in 2020, Giuliani was disbarred in New York earlier this year.

The infamous attorney filed for bankruptcy earlier last December after being ordered to pay a fine of $148 million to two Georgia election workers he disparaged, accusing them of fraud without any evidence. But that bankruptcy was ultimately dismissed; his appeal of the defamation verdict is ongoing, according to The Hill.

Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s political adviser, spoke of his disbarment, calling it a “total miscarriage of justice.”

“Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision,” Goodman said. “The people coming after Mayor Giuliani can’t take away the fact that he remains the most effective prosecutor in American history, who did more to improve the lives of others than almost any other American alive today.”