While honesty has never been Rudy Giuliani’s most defining characteristic, it’s something he seems to be trying on for size (albeit accidentally) while battling the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel — by basically admitting that he’s a terrible lawyer.
On Monday, “Two Watches” Giuliani was called as the first witness in the ethics case brought against the former New York City mayor, whose law license was revoked in Washington, D.C. as a result of his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Specifically: a lawsuit brought in Pennsylvania that baselessly claimed there was election fraud and that Donald Trump suffered an election loss because of it. But as Raw Story notes, Giuliani — who was called as the first witness in the hearing — seems to be making the case that he didn’t willfully violate any ethics laws… he’s just really bad at his job.
“What this case is about is that Mr. Giuliani was responsible for filing a frivolous action, asking a federal court to deprive millions of the people in Pennsylvania of their right to vote,” said Phil Fox, the prosecuting attorney for the Disciplinary Counsel, per Raw Story. “There was no precedent for this. In addition to the fact that there was no precedent, there was no factual basis [for the suit].”
Giuliani, who admitted that he only wrote a paragraph or two of the original complaint (Ron Hicks, a Pennsylvania-based attorney did the bulk of the work), seemed more concerned with being “persecuted” by federal investigations. As for whether or not it was “frivolous,” Rudy’s argument was basically that you have to go with whatever info you’ve got — and hope to find the real proof later.
“The only thing we had at this stage of the litigation was that in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, we had a number of ballots that were being counted without any inspection by an independent party,” he said. “You have to plead fraud with specificity with what you have, with what is available. But in discovery, you get additional information. This was specific enough for this stage of the pleading. That’s why it’s evidence and not a conclusion.”
The Disciplinary Counsel did not seem impressed with this explanation, nor did at least one outside legal expert. Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and Politico columnist, who tweeted that Giuliani is proving that he’s not just a “bad lawyer,” but a “dishonest” one, too.
Rudy Giuliani’s defense in his bar discipline case is that he was a bad lawyer who was just sloppily throwing allegations out there … even though he was trying to help the President overturn the election.
He’s half right—he *is* a bad lawyer. But he’s also a dishonest one. https://t.co/9UR2NH21B7
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 5, 2022
(Via Raw Story)