NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Rodolfo GiulianiThe former New York mayor, federal prosecutor and legal adviser to Donald Trump was expelled from the state on Tuesday after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
A New York appeals court in Manhattan ruled that Giuliani was “prohibited from practicing law, effective immediately and until further order of this Court, and his name removed from the rolls of attorneys and counselors in the State of New York.”
Giuliani’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said they were “obviously disappointed” but not surprised by the decision. He said they “made a great effort” to avoid expulsion, but “we saw the writing on the wall.”
The court said in its ruling that Giuliani “essentially admitted” most of the facts supporting the alleged acts of misconduct.
Instead, the ruling said, he argued that he “had no knowledge that the statements he had made were false and that he had a good faith basis for believing the allegations he made to support his claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from your client.”
The court said it concluded that Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed during the 2020 presidential election that thousands of votes were cast in the names of people killed in Philadelphia, including a ballot in the name of the late boxing great Joe Frazier. He also falsely claimed that people were taken from the nearby town of Camden, New Jersey, to vote illegally in the Pennsylvania town, the court said.
The order states that Giuliani, who already had a New York law license suspended for false statements he made after the election, he must “desist and refrain from practicing law in any form,” including giving another opinion on the law or its application or any advice” or “holding himself out in any way as a lawyer and legal advisor.”
Before pleading Trump’s case in November 2020Giuliani, a former mob prosecutor, had not appeared in court as a lawyer since 1992, according to court records.
He was the main spokesman for Trump’s false claims of voter fraud following the 2020 vote, ranking a press conference in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside Philadelphia on the day the race was called for Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Trump and saying they would challenge what he claimed was a vast conspiracy by Democrats.
Lies surrounding the election results helped push an angry mob of pro-Trump protesters into storm the US Capitol on January 6 in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.
