#trumpswindle | #WhatItComesTo
“We recognize that disbarment has not been imposed in other frivolous litigation cases, but none of those cases involve the aggravating factors presented here .... No prior disciplinary cases involving frivolous litigation are remotely comparable to this case. We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief.”
―D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility
What is unbelievable about what it comes to is the fact, in and of itself, of what it comes to. A former U.S. Attorney and beloved celebrity known as “America’s Mayor” is to be disbarred in the District of Columbia for improper behavior in the course of trying to overturn an election. The unanimous Board, under Chair Bernadette C. Sargeant, observed that Giuliani “alleged that the elections boards in seven Pennsylvania counties were engaged in a deliberate scheme to change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in Pennsylvania by counting mail-in ballots that should not have been counted”, and “urged a federal judge to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters even though he had no objectively reliable evidence that any such scheme existed, or even that any illegal mail-in ballots had been counted”. Under any circumstances, it ought to be difficult to challenge an election result; the standard should be high. But Rudy Giuliani, who has already faced disciplinary action in other jurisdictions, is among more than a dozen lawyers suffering particular consequences of their extraordinarily stupid schemes to overturn an election.
“A reasonable lawyer,” the Board explains, would have concluded that there was not a faint hope of success” about the conspiracy theory Giuliani brought before the Middle District of Pennsylvania; he “alleged a scheme to steal the Pennsylvania election without the slightest factual basis.” It is difficult to explain, but near the heart of certain conspiracy theories is a pretense of ignorance far too large to disbelieve; e.g., attorneys such as Christina Bobb or Marco Rubio somehow not knowing basic procedural language or circumstance. Part of what Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others tried to promote required that the attorneys complaining about how the elections worked have no idea how elections work. Given the stakes, the appeal to ignorance really ought to be unbelievable. Like the Wednesday Putsch itself, we are to believe these are rebels without a clue.
____________________
Image note: Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, waves to people during White House Sports and Fitness Day on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, D.C., 29 May 2018. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)
Board on Professional Responsibility. In the Matter of: Rudolph W. Giuliani, Respondent. District of Columbia Court of Appeals. 31 May 2024.
This Is 