Rudy Giuliani disbarred in Washington, D.C. after losing New York law license

WASHINGTON — Former New York City Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred from practicing law in Washington, D.C., according to an order filed Thursday by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Giuliani, previously a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, was first suspended from the bar in D.C. in July 2021 and two boards had previously recommended that his law license be permanently revoked over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Both panels had pointed to Giuliani trying to get thousands of votes won by President Joe Biden tossed out in the battleground state of Pennsylvania that year.

The D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility said in a report in June that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Giuliani “violated Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct” and therefore “should be disbarred.” A disciplinary board for the D.C. Bar Association made a similar argument in a lengthy decision last year, writing that Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it.” The board said, “His utter disregard for facts denigrates the legal profession.”

“Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” the board wrote. “His malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage and are antagonistic to the oath to “support the Constitution of the United States of America” that he swore when he was admitted to the Bar.”

In a statement to NBC News, Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman said Thursday that the decision by the appeals court is “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice” and said that members of the legal community “should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision.”

“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,” Goodman said.

Giuliani also lost his law license in New York in July over his actions to disseminate lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Separately, he faces charges in Arizona and Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in those states.