Government

NY Bar Association Giving Rudy The Boot

Incitement: Just Don't Do It.

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer and the future star of every legal ethics exam for all eternity, is being shown the door by his home state bar association.

“NYSBA’s bylaws state that ‘no person who advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States, or of any state, territory or possession thereof, or of any political subdivision therein, by force or other illegal means, shall be a member of the Association,’” the New York Bar Association wrote in a statement released today on its website. “Mr. Giuliani’s words quite clearly were intended to encourage Trump supporters unhappy with the election’s outcome to take matters into their own hands. Their subsequent attack on the Capitol was nothing short of an attempted coup, intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power.”

Just two hours before the mob breached the Capitol building howling to “Hang Mike Pence!” they were whipped into a frenzy by Giuliani exhorting them to “trial by combat.” Encouraging violation of the law, particularly when that violation is the violent overthrow of the United States government, is rather bad form for a lawyer. Some might even consider it conduct unbecoming an officer of the court!

Indeed, the New York State Bar Association takes a dim view of Giuliani’s participation in the events of January 6. While condemning President Trump as ultimately responsible, the NYSBA notes that “[T]he president did not act alone. Hours before the angry mob stormed the Capitol walls, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, addressed a crowd of thousands at the White House, reiterating baseless claims of widespread election fraud in the presidential election and the Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs.”

But baseless claims are kind of Rudy Giuliani’s thing. Which is why just today the Treasury dropped sanctions on even more of his Ukrainian pals for “repeated public statements to advance disinformation narratives that U.S. government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.” That would be “disinformation narratives” about Joe Biden and his son which Giuliani spent two years flogging, right up until he switched to disinformation narratives about a rigged election. Momentarily he’s taken a dogleg into
“disinformation narratives” about the real rioters being antifa radicals in disguise, but you’ll have to watch that video on his website, since YouTube removed it.

Truly, the man contains multitudes! His output is prodigious. And yet, the NYSBA remains unimpressed.

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NYSBA has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results. As widely reported, these efforts included the commencement and prosecution of court actions in multiple states without any evidentiary basis whatsoever. In each and every instance, these actions were appropriately dismissed by the courts in which they were brought.

Citing the organization’s “responsibility to defend and protect the rule of law,” NYSBA President Scott M. Karson will undertake an inquiry to determine if Giuliani should be expelled from the rolls. Which won’t result in his disbarment in the state of New York — but it’s hardly a plus on the resume either.

“Mr. Giuliani will be provided due process and have an opportunity – should he so choose – to explain and defend his words and actions,” the bar association promises.

Currently he’s “proving” that the attack on the Capitol was an inside job because no one at the Trump rally knew how to climb walls, which he describes as “a separate narrative, which you will not be shown on any of the censored media that run as an organ of the Democrat party and of Joe Biden, almost as if they were part of the Soviet Union government, or the Nazi government, or current Venezuela, or current China.”

That Bar hearing is going to be absolutely bonkers.

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New York State Bar Association Launches Historic Inquiry Into Removing Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani From Its Membership [NYSBA]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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