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NEW YORK (AP) — Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, federal prosecutor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, was disbarred in the state on Tuesday after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.
A New York appeals court in Manhattan ruled that Giuliani, who had already had his New York law license suspended in 2021 for false statements he made after the election, is now “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.”
Giuliani’s attorney Arthur Aidala said they were “obviously disappointed” but not surprised by the decision. He said they “put up a valiant effort” to prevent the disbarment but “saw the writing on the wall.”
The court said in its decision that Giuliani “essentially conceded” most of the facts supporting the alleged acts of misconduct during hearings held in October 2023. Instead, the decision said, he argued that he “lacked knowledge that statements he had made were false and that he had a good faith basis to believe the allegations he made to support his claim that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from his client.”
The court said it found that Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed during the 2020 Presidential election that thousands of votes were cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia, including a ballot in the name of the late boxing great Joe Frazier. He also falsely claimed people were taken from nearby Camden, New Jersey, to vote illegally in the Pennsylvania city, the court said.
The order states that Giuliani must “desist and refrain from practicing law in any form,” including “giving to another an opinion as to the law or its application or any advice” or “holding himself out in any way as an attorney and counselor-at-law.”
Giuliani is also facing criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
He’s charged in Georgia with making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phony paperwork and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office to appoint an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors.
The Arizona indictment accuses Giuliani of pressuring Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraging Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in December 2020.
He was the primary mouthpiece for Trump’s false claims of election fraud after the 2020 vote, infamously standing at a press conference in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside Philadelphia on the day the race was called for Democrat Joe Biden over the Republican Trump and saying they would challenge what he claimed was a vast conspiracy by Democrats.
Lies around the election results helped push an angry mob of pro-Trump rioters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.
In May, WABC radio suspended Giuliani and canceled his daily talk show because he refused to stop making false claims about the 2020 election.