DC Bar ruled Giuliani violated legal ethics: He should be disbarred

In a society governed by the rule of law, nothing matters more than holding accountable those who violate the rules. Otherwise, the lawless rule, and the rule of law is an empty promise.

Those precepts apply not only to bank robbers and bitcoin embezzlers, but especially to former presidents and their lawyers. Particularly when the misconduct is not private but in the public square.

And even more so when it threatens to corrupt our constitutional republic through spreading misinformation and sowing distrust of elections.

On Thursday, the District of Columbia bar’s disciplinary committee preliminarily ruled that Rudolph Giuliani, in his role as former president Donald Trump’s lawyer, violated its ethical rules.

Next up: What sanction to impose? Disbarment, Hamilton “Phil” Fox, the chief D.C. disciplinary counsel argued, is the only appropriate one.

We agree.

Back in May, a New York court suspended Giuliani’s license there, pending further proceedings. There has been no report of any New York action against “America’s Mayor” since. Full disclosure: Both of us signed the New York disciplinary complaint against Mr. Giuliani.

The legal profession is vital to our defense against both anarchy and tyranny. The public’s trust in lawyers is permanently damaged whenever people as prominent as Giuliani abuse their status as attorneys, including misusing that status as a shield from accountability.

The former mayor’s disbarment would be the powerful and appropriate shot heard ‘round the legal world.

As a former United States Attorney in New York, Giuliani knows as well as anyone the value to prosecutors — including bar prosecutors — of having the most serious sanctions imposed on the most visible transgressors of society’s guardrails.

Others of Trump’s legal aiders and abettors also face disciplinary investigations. Indeed, Fox said that “[t]here was a conspiracy, and he was the head of it.”

No member of the Trump legal team is better known than Giuliani. His conduct, we believe, was egregious. As Fox stated, he “weaponized his law license …violating the basic oath we all take to support the constitution and to try to undermine the legitimacy of the election.”

According to Fox, “It was a fundamental harm to the fabric of the country that could well be irreparable.”

The D.C. disciplinary counsel charged Giuliani with bringing a frivolous legal action and engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

Recall not only that Giuliani was a manager of the many groundless lawsuits that Trump and his campaign brought trying to overturn the 2020 election, but also that they (and their allies) lost more than 60.

In addition, Giuliani personally argued and lost the Pennsylvania case before federal district court judge Matthew Brann. In tossing Trump’s claim, Brann called it a “Frankenstein’s monster.”

Similarly, the three-judge panel on the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals took Giuliani to task for offering no evidence at all: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. . . [C]alling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

As the D.C. Bar’s chief counsel put it, with Giuliani, “it was shoot first, ask questions later. Lawyers can’t do that.”

Based on an untenable equal protection claim about different procedures in different counties in Pennsylvania, Giuliani “sought the invalidation of up to 1.5 million ballots cast” in the state. We imagine his client Donald Trump must wish elections were so easy to steal!

The D.C. disciplinary board, consisting of three lawyers, will soon decide what the sanction should be. Giuliani’s attorney, John Leventhal, is seeking minimal punishment. A serious sanction such as disbarment, he argued, would “chill” the work of other lawyers.

Nonsense.

Lawyers know you can’t make up facts or allege fraud without evidence. If lawyering that reckless is chilled, that’s a win for the legal system, not a loss.

Disbarment is the just and proper route to accountability for egregious misconduct that undermines the sacred right to vote and the republic that it makes possible.

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and a professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Both authors signed the New York disciplinary complaint against Mr. Giuliani.