Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal attorney to Donald Trump, was disbarred Tuesday in New York over his false statements about the 2020 election.
“The seriousness of respondent’s misconduct cannot be overstated,” a state appeals court said in a ruling, adding that Giuliani “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”
Giuliani was already suspended from practicing law in New York, where he was admitted to the bar in 1969.
The court ordered Giuliani to be “disbarred from the practice of law, effective immediately, and until the further order of this Court, and his name stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York.”
A spokesman for Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, criticized the decision and said he would appeal it.
“Members of the legal community who respect the rule of law in this country should immediately come forward and speak out against this politically and ideologically corrupted decision,” the spokesman, Ted Goodman, said in a statement.
Giuliani said in a social media post that he was “not surprised” he was disbarred. He argued that the case against him was “based on an activist complaint, replete with false arguments.”
Giuliani could be disbarred in Washington, D.C., where he has also been suspended from practicing law.
Giuliani has faced a storm of legal problems over his leading role in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection defeat. He has been indicted on criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over alleged schemes to subvert the 2020 election in each state. Last year, he was ordered to pay $148 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia poll workers.
Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York after the defamation case.
The decision Tuesday came from the First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court. The ruling found Giuliani “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements” about the 2020 election — “some of which were perjurious” — to courts, the public and state lawmakers.
“In so doing, respondent not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” the ruling said.
The disbarment case focused on a slew of statements that Giuliani made during post-election news conferences and media appearances. One of them was the notorious news conference that he gave days after the election outside a landscaping business in industrial Philadelphia.
For example, the court found Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed that a ballot was cast in Philadelphia in the name of the late boxing legend Joe Frazier. The court also said Giuliani falsely asserted that “tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of non-US citizens voted” in Arizona.
John Catsimatidis, the owner of a New York radio station where Giuliani was abruptly taken off the air in May over his comments about the 2020 election, said in a text message to The Washington Post that the court’s decision was “very sad” for Giuliani.
Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.