Appellate judges based their decision on New York’s ruling earlier this year to bar him from practicing law in the state.
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Rudolph W. Giuliani has two weeks to appeal the decision by the D.C. Court of Appeals.
A panel of judges on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Thursday barred Rudolph W. Giuliani from practicing law in Washington because of false statements he made about the 2020 election results while he was former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer.
The court said it acted after Mr. Giuliani failed to respond to a request to state why he should not be disbarred.
A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, Ted Goodman, said the disbarment decision is “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice.”
“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,” Mr. Goodman said.
Mr. Giuliani served as the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and then as New York City’s mayor, accomplishments he hoped would one day put him in the Oval Office.
He was admitted to the D.C. bar in 1976 when he worked as a senior official in the Justice Department during the Ford administration.
The decision in Washington follows similar action by the New York bar earlier this year. In that case, the court said Mr. Giuliani “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”
The New York ruling continued, “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.”
His law license in Washington had been temporarily suspended in 2021 until there was an outcome in the New York case. Mr. Giuliani has two weeks to appeal the decision.
Mr. Giuliani continues to face other legal troubles related to his efforts to help Mr. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election results. He has pleaded not guilty to state criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona.
In the past year, he was found liable for $148 million in damages for lies he spread about two Georgia election workers in 2020. He filed for bankruptcy protection, but his case was dismissed because he refused to cooperate with basic disclosures.
The Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, have taken steps to seize his assets if he does not liquidate his multimillion dollar condos in New York and Palm Beach.
Eileen Sullivan covers breaking news, the Justice Department, the trials against Donald J. Trump and the Biden administration. More about Eileen Sullivan
See more on: U.S. Politics, Rudolph W. Giuliani
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Source: nytimes.com
