Rudy Giuliani disbarred in New York

Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred in New York for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

“The seriousness of [Giuliani’s] misconduct cannot be overstated,” a state appeals court wrote in a unanimous, unsigned opinion .

Giuliani “flagrantly misused his prominent position as the personal attorney for former President Trump and his campaign,” the court found.

He “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public … and this Court concerning the 2020 Presidential election, in which he baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process,” the five-judge appellate panel said.

The panel found that a long list of efforts by Giuliani to sow doubt about the election results were based on flimsy or misleading evidence. Giuliani is also facing disbarment proceedings in Washington, D.C., where he has been suspended pending a final determination by the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The decision is a remarkable rebuke of the former mayor of New York City who rose to prominence as a hard-nosed tough-on-crime prosecutor before gaining national fame for his leadership of the city after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Giuliani has more recently become known for his efforts to defend and boost Trump, becoming the point-man on his legal team to challenge the election results in 2020. His efforts laid the groundwork for Trump’s campaign to pressure election officials to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in a handful of swing states. Special counsel Jack Smith labeled Giuliani one of Trump’s co-conspirators in a national attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

Giuliani indicated Tuesday he plans to challenge the disbarment ruling.

“We will be appealing this objectively flawed decision in hopes that the appellate process will restore integrity into our system of justice,” Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman said in a statement.

The judges on the state appeals court, formally known as the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, ran through some of Giuliani’s increasingly desperate claims about the 2020 election results — claims that ballots were smuggled from Long Island to Pennsylvania, that voters were bused from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, that thousands of dead people cast ballots, that thousands of felons voted in Georgia, that surveillance footage in Atlanta captured election workers committing fraud. In each case, they agreed that Giuliani had misrepresented evidence of the claims.

Two Atlanta election workers who Giuliani had previously accused of committing fraud won a $148 million defamation judgment against Giuliani last year. A week later, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, with his finances under extreme public scrutiny.