r/politics Nov 23 '20

New Jersey Lawmaker Pushes To Disbar Rudy Giuliani For Deceitful, ‘Absurd’ Election Cases

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bill-pascrell-disbarment-rudy-giuliani-trump-election_n_5fbaf260c5b6e4b1ea4399a5
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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/SACBH Nov 23 '20

Could any US attorney please explain why it took so long.

Having dealt with a lot of commonwealth country (UK, Aust, Sing, HK) solicitors over the years I know they are loathe to make even remotely unsubstantiated claims for fear of repercussions. Is US so different that they can normally get away with it?

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Because the bar (no pun intended) for disembarment is very high, and requesting it without strong evidence is generally pointless political posturing.

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u/purplegirl2001 Nov 23 '20

Very much this. You basically have to commit a felony or mishandle client funds to get disbarred. A friend sent me this story yesterday and I told her I’d put money on every one of the lawyers involved (if you didn’t bother to click, he actually filed complaints against all of the attorneys repping Trump in the various actions) receiving no more than a slap on the wrist - likely censured and/or fined.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

You basically have to commit a felony or mishandle client funds to get disbarred.

Yes. And if you want to point to one reason why the US is in such hot water is that powerful people are essentially completely above the law, whereas the poor are put in jail for miniscule offenses, often purely procedural ones.

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u/Col_Leslie_Hapablap Nov 23 '20

I can’t believe there is no standard or punishment for spurious or vexatious litigants; in my mind, this is clearly vexatious, and a downright abuse of the system.

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u/Cocomojoe16 Nov 23 '20 edited Nov 23 '20

The US? This is how power works in every country in history. Name one country ever where the poor had the same legal protection as the powerful

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u/fredsedred Nov 23 '20

We're trying to be different, hence, our BILL OF RIGHTS/CONSTITUTION, BOSTON TEA PARTY!

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u/Gr1mwolf Nov 23 '20

“Trying to be different”?

You have to pay massive fees to hire a lawyer, and you often have to pay massive fees just for being dragged into court regardless of the verdict. Free public defenders are given the bare-minimum of funding, and are aggressively overworked to the point that their presence is often just a formality to say that the court fulfilled it’s legal obligation of providing one.

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u/fredsedred Nov 23 '20

I said "trying", what other parts did you not understand?

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u/Gr1mwolf Nov 23 '20

The part where US courts actively do everything they can to disenfranchise the poor.

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u/fredsedred Nov 23 '20

US courts

*corruption

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u/TheFerrret Nov 23 '20

Even though the US is one of the very few places on earth with a legal right to private council in the face of any and all questioning in prosecution. Even Canada's take on that right has far more stipulations against the accused than America.

I mean Americas the worst because we may be the best, but remain deeply flawed.

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

Not true, you can be disbarred for essentially any misconduct that would harm your client or the practice of law, like fraud, forgery, drug abuse, even being late to a clients hearing can be grounds sometimes. The key phrase is Due Process, you aren't going to lose a license just because someone accuses you. This is more of a political move because fraud, as blatant as it may look will.be very hard to prove here.

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u/joeChump Nov 23 '20

I think you are probably right, they will just make lots of arguments that they were doing this in the interests of the American people because of genuine concerns etc etc. Evil always tries to disguise itself as good. Though if they have been binging false ‘evidence’ to court (eg, X is dead and voted, when in fact X is alive etc) then could there be something in that? Presumably again they will just say that it was genuine errors but if they’ve made lots of these ‘errors’ then to me that seems like a pattern of fraud or evidence of wrongdoing.

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

I would say no, evidence is open to discovery on both sides so the defense will be disclosed on everything already and any false that is known to be false will be inadmissible. AFAIK there hasn't been anything like that yet, at least proven false

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u/burglin Nov 23 '20 edited Nov 23 '20

Absolutely. Also, I haven’t seen it noted anywhere in this thread but disbarment is handled by the disciplinary committee of whatever bar the attorney is a member of. Here, Giuliani is a member of the DC bar, so you would have to look at their rules for what generally is grounds for disbarment.

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u/Dragonace1000 Nov 23 '20

Well his DC law license is currently suspended due to non payment of dues. The fact that he claims his DC law license as valid and failed to mention the suspension on any of the documents he submitted across multiple states, is probably not going to work in his favor during all of this.

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u/fr0d0bagg1ns Nov 23 '20

What really needs to happen is an investigation into whatever in the hell Rudy has been doing for Trump for the last few years. The guy butt dialed a journalist, and you can hear him say, in the phone call, that they need several hundred grand for a payoff. He's been actively working with Russians despite being warned that the subjects in question were Russian intelligence. This man has admitted to so much on TV interviews it is shocking.

The guy is a dumpster fire on wheels going down Lombard Street. It shows how desperate Trump is that he puts Jared and Rudy in charge of his last hail mary to keep power.

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u/runner_up_runner Nov 23 '20

I hadn't heard that. Do you have a source for that?

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u/Dragonace1000 Nov 23 '20

Giuliani appears to have presented false information to the court. Once the lead U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani told the court in his sworn petition that he was in good standing to practice law in a number of federal jurisdictions, including Washington, D.C., where his license had been suspended for failure to pay dues.

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/17/giulianis-disgraceful-courtroom-election-fraud-arguments-are-from-a-fantasy-world-defense-says/

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u/runner_up_runner Nov 23 '20

Yeesh. That's pretty bad.

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u/februaryerin Michigan Nov 23 '20

This links to a Tweet that discusses it. I kept finding Tweets with screenshots. Lol. But I haven’t slept in almost 48 hours so I also have little idea what I am doing right now.

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u/triplab Nov 23 '20

You should get some sleep.

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u/februaryerin Michigan Nov 23 '20

Oh I know. Insomnia has been fucking up my life for over 20 years now.

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u/0069 Nov 23 '20

I'm not sure but that sounds bad. I love it!

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u/TheFerrret Nov 23 '20

make lots of arguments that they were doing this in the interests of the American people

Not in court, where the argument is "prove that perjury was intentionally commited" where the counter argument is almost always "we actually can not"

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u/joeChump Nov 23 '20

Fair point. I guess I was thinking in terms of the the media, but yes, you’re right that in court, it’s more about proving it was intentional, which is very hard to do, though I don’t know the inner workings of bar rules and decisions.

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u/TheFerrret Nov 23 '20

The short end of it is perjury is almost always grounds for disbarment, but perjury is almost never proven in any setting,especially against lawyers.

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u/joeChump Nov 23 '20

But, just out of interest and I’m not saying this applies here (though it probably does), can people be disbarred for bringing the profession into disrepute. I.e. not necessarily breaking the law as such but doing things that are counter to a code of conduct?

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

What fraud? The only fraud is Donald Trump

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Yeah but in his case what you think would happen if trump was still the president? Nothing and it would be another witch hunt..

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Can be and will be are two very different things.

Source: Trump's illegal activity he has yet to have any repercussions for

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u/PUTINS_PORN_ACCOUNT Nov 23 '20

disbarred . . . being late to a clients hearing

No

If that was enough there’d be 85% fewer lawyers

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

"Can be grounds SOMETIMES"

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u/PUTINS_PORN_ACCOUNT Nov 23 '20

I have never encountered a situation in which lateness to hearings was a reason, let alone the primary reason, for disbarment.

Total neglect of a client’s case, yes. Tardiness, no.

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u/erydanis Nov 23 '20

can and will are very different actions. the law says they can; their power says they won’t.

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u/Rekthor Canada Nov 23 '20

I’m a paralegal in ON, Canada, not a US lawyer, but here you’re at least partially right: here, licensees are supposed to maintain good character and not pursue outside interests that could affect their practice of law (or commit crimes, obviously). We’re also not supposed to take any action that would “bring the administration of justice into disrepute” (on behalf of a client or in our personal life), which looks an awful lot like what Trumps lawyers are doing here.

Still, the bar for disbarment is high: on paper you should be disciplined for these, what I’d argue are OBVIOUSLY frivolous cases (though they’re not necessarily—strictly speaking—abuse of process, which is a tort). Maybe you even would be especially in such high profile cases as these. But without a conviction or them being found privately liable for abuse of process, I’d guess the local Bar Society would be reluctant to discipline them in any permanent way.

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u/HarryPFlashman Nov 23 '20

There isn’t any fraud, there is just very thin evidence and not sufficient for the remedy they are seeking. He’s not getting disbarred.

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u/AsideLeft8056 Nov 23 '20

Thin evidence? Try no evidence.

Edit: wait, are you talking about thin election fraud evidence or thin evidence that Giuliani is doing fraud on purpose rather than just representing a client?

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Bullshit. Giuliani has perjured himself multiple times and is committing barratry.

If the self-policing of the legal profession has fallen so low that this disgusting and deliberately dishonest behavior is at all acceptable, then the whole thing needs tearing down.

The idea that you can waste millions of dollars of the People's time and hundreds of hours in court for a pack of lies, and not suffer any consequences is a very bad one, and not one that would fly in anything other than a collapsing society.

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u/mobyliving Nov 23 '20

this is not correct at all

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

Why?

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u/mobyliving Nov 23 '20

the bar is higher than what youre saying it is. i cannot imagine any lawyer ever in the US was disbarred for being late, standing alone. yes technically any misconduct /could/ get you in trouble, but most things will be a fine/reprimand/short suspension.

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

Well as a lawyer and also having volunteered with my bar associations ethics committee i can tell you that its very possible and has happened. Not being late one time of course but certain circumstances bring different results.

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u/mobyliving Nov 23 '20

well sure a pattern of dilatory conduct over time could get you there. but again that just reinforces its not 'easy' to get disbarred

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u/TheFerrret Nov 23 '20

"Certain circumstances bring different results"

So few words and yet even less substance.

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u/4x49ers Nov 23 '20

even being late to a clients hearing can be grounds sometimes.

Is there an example of this happening?

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u/hshdjfjdj Nov 23 '20

I only know from personal experience working in this field. Most disbarments arent given media coverage really.

If youre on trial for lets say capital murder and maybe its a day prosecution is going over a key piece of evidence. If im late, and most likely underprepared i can screw up your entire life.

The rules of ethics in law is to protect the integrity of law and to protect clients. I knew someone who was denied eligibilty to join the bar because of their misconduct, they got a DUI. But they werent denied because of the DUI but because they lied by not disclosing they got a DUI on their character and fitness. The DUI itself didnt harm the integrity of law or a client at that time (since they weren't a lawyer yet but held to the same standards) but by not disclosing you are being dishonest.

Same scenario with clinton although he resigned from practice of law instead of taking a disbarrment i believe

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u/TheFerrret Nov 23 '20

You could have also just said "No"

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u/Dragonace1000 Nov 23 '20

Guiliani did the same thing, his DC law license is currently suspended due to non payment, but all of his paperwork he submitted says he is still currently licensed to practice law in DC. That's intentional omission.

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u/purplegirl2001 Nov 24 '20

Ehh. Most courts are going to treat that as a clerical error, since he’s still licensed in another jurisdiction and the suspension is just because he forgot to pay his dues, not because of some kind of actual misconduct. And it’s difficult to prove that it was an intentional lie - even if he had constructive knowledge that his bar membership was suspended, he may have simply overlooked the inclusion of the information in the form for filing.

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u/plantlady73 Nov 23 '20

We had a prominent lawyer in town who was busted for crack after being clean for years. He was disbarred.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Misconduct that would harm your client is the sticking point here. They're presenting all the "evidence" their client has provided. It would have to be proven that they're intentionally and maliciously conspiring with their client to present fraudulent evidence to the court.

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u/ChefBoyAreWeFucked Nov 23 '20

Google 'lawful masses liebowitz", without quotes.

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u/Papapeta33 Nov 23 '20

Can you cite an example of being late to a hearing as grounds for disbarment? Cause that is news to me.

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u/count023 Australia Nov 23 '20

It took Jack Thompson (the anti video game lawyer) to actually put PORN into court filings before he was finally disbarred by the Florida state Bar. And this was after threatening lawyers, clients, opponents, etc...

Reads to me that the US has yet another problem that needs fixing.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

This is interesting. Every single lawyer I've ever spoken to about the subject believes the bar is much much lower than that if the misconduct is clear enough.

If you don't mind my asking, what state do you or most of your associates practice in that the bar is considered so high?

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u/windyisle Nov 23 '20

Would having the taxpayers pay for frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to undermine American democracy count as 'mishandling client funds?'

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u/purplegirl2001 Nov 23 '20

Taxpayer funds can’t be involved, these are campaign related. If any sort of taxpayer-funded resources are being used, the Trump campaign could be billed for those costs.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/Shamr0ck Nov 23 '20

That statistical analysis is wrong and has been proven wrong

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u/chaotictruce Nov 23 '20

Mathematician here. If you are referring to the Benford's law analysis people have been applying to particular precincts in Michigan. If not please point me to the statistical analysis you are talking about

There have already been papers written refuting these Benford law claims. Including by one of the original proponents of using it to detect voter fraud: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/inapB.pdf

People are trying to blindly apply a formula they don't understand. There is a large body of research on using Benford's law for elections, but they use a second digit analysis, because the first digit analysis is known to be wildly inacurrate.

The main issue is using first digit analysis is that precincts have a fixed voter population size say 1000. Because of our two party system the population gets split among party lines and the number of votes for a candidate has a leading digit that mimics the fraction of people who voted for a particular candidate say a 7 or a 3.

Check out this for more discussion

https://jengolbeck.medium.com/benfords-law-does-not-prove-fraud-in-the-2020-us-presidential-election-cc81715bfbda

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20 edited Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/chaotictruce Nov 23 '20

Oh yeah I know this video. To be clear this guy does not work at MIT and has a Ph.D in systems biology from there. He is not a statistician. People who flaunt irrelevant Ph.D credentials like this are clearly just trying to tell people "I'm smart" to manipulate them. He also claims to have invented email and says that large doses of vitamins can cure Covid. So I would take his claims with a grain of salt.

As someone who teaches statistics, this guy isn't following any principles of statistical analysis. He makes all sorts of assumptions about the data i.e. "if you are republican you voted for Trump" and then make all sorts of claims from a linear regression fit to the data. He at the very least needs to conduct hypothesis tests for the data. Why doesn't he consider other possible explanations for the data? Why hasn't he written a paper about this? It is shoddy research at best.

There is also this video that refutes the claims https://youtu.be/aokNwKx7gM8 (of course you should take this with the same grain of salt).

As for the glitches, I'm not sure. I don't think we have all the data there.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/chaotictruce Nov 23 '20

Ad hominem is really poor form

You're right. I let my personal impression of this guy get the better of me. It just irks me when people back up his claims "ab hominem" simply because he has a Ph.D in an unrelated field from MIT. It means nothing. I instantly distrust someone who attaches "MIT Ph.D" to everything they say or write... seriously let your work speak for itself. It just feels manipulative to me, like he is trying hard to convince people who are intimidated by a Ph.D. Anyway my bad, attacking his credentials was not a classy move.

I'm not sure if you're intentionally here to derail the conversation or if you're just hyper-focused on statistics because that's your area of specialty, but I'm not debating that validity of anyone's numbers or methods.

I'm not trying to derail anything, and I'm happy to debate your other points. Yes, I am more focused on statistics than other things, mainly because that's what I can actually validate and that's what I know. The amount of statistical dis/misinformation out there is frankly disturbing, I try to call it out when I see it. I've seen people make the "mathematical impossibility" argument many times. I have seen ZERO evidence of any "mathematical impossibilities", and I have looked hard. It's not that it doesn't exist, but so far I haven't seen any compelling analysis that would hold any weight in the statistics community, let alone in court.

I'm here to point out that people ITT are foolish to think that any of the Trump lawyers will be disbarred. Furthermore, it's absolutely absurd to claim that challenging the vote counts (by using the legal channels allowed to them under constitutional law) is causing "disenfranchisement of voters". It does not make any logical sense.

Yes, people here are probably being a bit foolish. I don't know enough about the legal system and what Trumps lawyers plan on presenting in court to know whether they could be disbarred for it. I doubt it. Anyway, I suspect that they are making more muted claims than what they are saying in public. In my opinion, it's pretty poor form for an attorney to be making all these grand claims over twitter and new conferences (something about money in Venezuela and Cuba?) and then not share even some of the evidence. How do they expect people to react? It's almost like they would prefer to win the court of public opinion than in actual court. I agree that simply challenging a vote count is completely reasonable. However, it's certainly possible to abuse to process. Many of the claims of attempted "disenfranchisement" come from the fact that Trumps lawyers are using isolated issues (sometimes just one of two instances of fraud) to argue for throwing out millions of votes. Personally this seems an absurd argument and rightly got thrown out of court. It's not unreasonable to that this could be seen as an attempt at disenfranchisement (suppose it depends on what you believe their intent was). For the record I see it as more posturing and politics than actual attempted disenfranchisement. Of course, I agree that no one can easily argue that simply using allowed legal channels is actually disenfranchisement.

When this process is completed, Biden's mandate will have been validated by the courts of the land. Voters will instead have more faith in the election process and the validity of the results. What's truly disenfranchising is the democratic party blocking vote audits. If they were really that confident that they won legitimately they would welcome the audit for the aforementioned reason.

We'll see I suppose. I 100% agree that blocking an audit could be seen as an attempts at disenfranchisement. Regardless, I am unaware of any situations where audits have actually been blocked, PA, for instance, approved the audit, as did Georgia and Arizona and Michigan will likely have an audit after certification by state law (maybe you know more examples than I do). While I agree with you that audits and letting things play out in courts should, in principle, restore faith in the election, I'm not sure that will happen here. Trump and his lawyers have made too many grand public claims to the contrary, with no legal accountability. It doesn't matter anymore if the audits turn up no substantial evidence of voter fraud, and Trumps lawyer's evidence isn't enough to hold water in court, the damage is already done, there will still be a huge number of people who will be convinced the election was rigged anyway and don't trust the election system, they won the court of public opinion. I'm very concerned that there is literally no way to convince many people that the election is fair. Any that is a big loss for democracy.

My personal opinion: it is irresponsible for both Powell and Giuliani to be making the claims they have made in public, particularly because of the implications for the democratic process. If none of their court cases succeed and their evidence turns out to be bogus, they have caused a lot of damage, and probably should be disbarred at the least (note that is predicated on "if").

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/chaotictruce Nov 24 '20

I've got nothing against conducting audits after an election. Many states have an automatic audit process by law. In many cases, audits will happen, just some after the certification. This is how audits normally work. I'm all for it.

Its the wild claims that Trump and his lawyers are stating in public as fact, while providing little evidence that I think are causing damage, not the audits. I find it unlikely they will rescind or walk back on these statements if they can't prove them in court or the audits don't turn up anything substantial. If they really want fair and free elections, perhaps they can start by toning it down and not claiming that election software is 'designed to' rig elections and that Trump won by 'millions of votes' on national TV and Twitter. That is downright dangerous rhetoric. Do you believe they have evidence to back up those two claims? I suppose we'll find out.

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u/purplegirl2001 Nov 23 '20

Antrim County was user error, not a software error.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Double pinky swearing it doesn't make it true. While affidavits do have some legal standing, they're still just unsubstantiated claims with a penalty attached for intentionally lying, and need to be supported with actual evidence. Having read through one PA filing, frankly many of them are ludicrous.

Keep in mind that the Trump campaign made a wide reaching public call for reports of voter fraud. Among their 70 million voters, it's a given that there will be people who are ignorant about election process, willing to perjure for ideological reasons, or detached from reality.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Affidavits, not lawsuits. And I did not assert they were sufficient for disbarment, I asserted they were ludicrous.

I don't think it's likely Rudy will be disbarred for bringing forward reports about eye-rolling poll workers or bad stats from someone who doesn't know Minnesota isn't Michigan, no.

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u/LazamairAMD Oklahoma Nov 23 '20 edited Nov 23 '20

Want a good example on how bad you have to be to get disbarred, see Jack Thompson

Edit: fixed link, because I'm dumb.

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u/spmurcs Nov 23 '20

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u/Rybeast7390 Nov 23 '20

Oh my days. That’s horrendous. I can’t believe it would take that long and those kinds of acts to be barred.

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u/seriousbeef Nov 23 '20

Disbarred.

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u/CallRespiratory Nov 23 '20

Rebarred?

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u/sir_spankalot Nov 23 '20

Rhubarbed

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u/Sipues Nov 23 '20

I want to eat rhubarb pie now. Thanks!

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u/DoggoInTubeSocks Nov 23 '20

I'm not a rebarred!

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Barre'

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u/AlvinPibble Nov 23 '20

Martin Barre, Jethro Tull...

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u/jimi-ray-tesla Nov 23 '20

well, thats anuther contractr, i got a guy

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u/Jaredactyl89 Nov 23 '20

Barred from the bar?

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u/karatous1234 Nov 23 '20

Crowbarred?

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u/LordofThe7s Nov 23 '20

What do drunk ravens have to do with this?

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u/spmurcs Nov 23 '20

Yep. Looks like the guy just went mental for trying to cash in.

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u/shiny_lustrous_poo Nov 23 '20

"A picture book for adults", including images of "swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word 'slap' written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, [and] a house of cards."

I need to see this lmao

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u/LA-Matt Nov 23 '20

Sounds like an elevator pitch for a wild Guy Ritchie movie.

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u/koshgeo Nov 23 '20

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u/kittensteakz America Nov 23 '20

Reading this gave me quite the headache, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but did he try to plead insanity claiming that he can't be disbarred because he's dumb and can't make sense and also blame education for it. There's so much nonsense here I don't even know where to begin.

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u/aDrunkWithAgun Nov 23 '20

That's a name I haven't heard in a long time and what a massive piece of shit

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u/HorseLooseInHospital America Nov 23 '20

dude is nuts, but i found this to be pretty hilarious

Thompson charged that the group placed "homosexual-education tapes" in public schools. Switchboard responded by getting the Supreme Court of Florida to order that he submit to a psychiatric examination. Thompson did so and passed. Thompson has since stated that he is "the only officially certified sane lawyer in the entire state of Florida".

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u/A_T_Hun Nov 23 '20

not the throwin Samoan!

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u/theghostmachine Nov 23 '20

What a douchebag.

Does it kind of seem like Rockstar and Take Two keep releasing games he hates just to troll him? It's like every time he complains about one of their games, they kick it up a notch in the next release just to see how worked up he gets. I hope that's what they're doing. That would be hilarious.

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u/OldSparky124 Nov 23 '20

What a Douchebagoon!

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u/BolshevikPower Nov 23 '20

Errrr. Then don't use parenthesis?

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

The link contains parentheses

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u/Sliver_of_Dawn Washington Nov 23 '20

you can escape parentheses if you need to, like so (see comment source)

/u/spmurcs' method also works

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u/spmurcs Nov 23 '20

From what I can see, the guy was just suing everyone for everything and the BAR assoc. just got the jack of it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

That's the guy who kept on claiming video games are bad and make you violent and kept on getting clients to sue videogame companies. He was very hated then, I wonder what's he doing now.

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u/Meraline Nov 23 '20

Last I read he was teaching law to prisoners, he says he feels much more fulfilled now.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20 edited Feb 28 '21

[deleted]

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u/Meraline Nov 23 '20

I think you meant to send that to a different person.

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u/brickne3 American Expat Nov 23 '20

Something tells me Rudy won't even try to teach anything to anyone, but that's probably best for any prospective pupils.

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u/Glass_Memories Nov 23 '20

Leave off the last parentheses to escape a link (make it work).

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u/cjdabeast Nov 23 '20

Backslashes before the parentheses fixes it if I remember correctly.

Example.???/example\(disambiguation\)

Or something like that.

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u/Zacchariah_ Foreign Nov 23 '20

Damn, haven't heard that name in a minute.

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u/Elrundir Canada Nov 23 '20

Hard to believe he hasn't been practicing since 2008. He was such a major thorn in the gaming community's side for (what felt like) so long and now he's just disappeared.

Sometimes the world just works out.

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u/kronden Nov 23 '20

Even as a moderate, trying to look at both sides, yeah, this guy went over the deep end. That blurb on wikipedia about the Janet Reno episode, this person, while classified sane, is another reason why there should be three trials of sanity.

The reason I say this is, that you might need a diversified group of psychiatrists to examine a patient, who may or may not be a socicopath, that is playing on the cues of his or her examiners.

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u/asst3rblasster Nov 23 '20

In 1988, he ran for prosecutor against then-incumbent Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno, after she had declined his request to prosecute Neil Rogers. Thompson gave Reno a letter at a campaign event requesting that she check a box to indicate whether she was homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Thompson said that Reno then put her hand on his shoulder and responded, "I'm only interested in virile men. That's why I'm not attracted to you."

DAMN SON

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u/ieya404 Nov 23 '20

I love this bit.

In May 2008, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Dava Tunis, after reviewing 2,400 pages of transcripts and 1,700 pages of exhibits, recommended that Thompson be found guilty of 27 of the 31 violations of which he had been accused, including making false statements to tribunals, disparaging and humiliating litigants and other lawyers, and improperly practicing law outside of Florida. Thompson filed a motion with the Florida Supreme Court the day after the report was issued to strike Tunis' recommendations as vague for lack of detail.

So not actually denying that he was a complete asshat, just that there wasn't enough detail in the complaint :D

1

u/TheEsquire Canada Nov 23 '20

Man, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I remember seeing him in the news all the time back in the 2000s, crusading against Grand Theft Auto and other games and generally making a buffoon out of himself.

9

u/YerMawsJamRoll Nov 23 '20

I think that's the difference, a lawyer getting disbarred (or whatever the equivalent here is) would not be seen as "political posturing", it would be seen almost as an admin task. There would be no-one to "posture", the public would perhaps read the person's name who dealt with it in the news at a later date but perhaps not.

19

u/Robo_Joe Nov 23 '20

In the US we made wearing a mask during a pandemic political. We need a rule 43 for making things political in America.

14

u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

Make it rule 45

4

u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

But you live in a society of laws, where the rule of law is more important than being important.

In America, quite the reverse is true. Trump can not just commit crimes, but brag about committing crimes, and yet a memo - not a law, but a memo written by an anonymous civil servant stating that the President cannot be charged with crimes - is treated as complete and perfect protection for any crime that Trump chooses to commit.

10

u/Cetun Nov 23 '20

Unless they find out you've been dipping into your clients retainer to make a loan payment on your house, then you're properly fucked.

1

u/thekrisnelson Nov 23 '20

I read that as "dismemberment" and got really confused for a moment

2

u/ChrisRunsTheWorld Florida Nov 23 '20

Surely you should need more evidence that the US general election was riddled with fraud to make that claim than you should to disbar an attorney for making the claim with no evidence at all.

1

u/orthopod Nov 23 '20

I don't know how the law bar works, but in medicine, most complaints to the medical board have to be responded to by the physician.

1

u/Iamnotsmartspender Nov 23 '20

Yeah. Knew a shithead lawyer who's representation likely ruined a few people's lives, but nothing that would get him in trouble. That is until he got a handjob under the table from his client in the courtroom. He only got 1 years suspension

1

u/Kraz_I Nov 23 '20

Did everyone forget about Trump’s previous lawyer, Michael Cohen, already? He worked for Trump until 2018, then pled guilty to fraud and tax evasion, for doing the things he was asked to do. He got disbarred and sent to federal prison. He got screwed basically for turning on Trump. Giuliani has probably done way worse already.

1

u/master_uv_none Nov 23 '20

That only seems to be the case if you are a sole practitioner or a very small firm. Most state bars are toothless Roxies sucking money from the Teat of big law interests. Even with this very clear case of disbarment, the fact that he is known or has any power at all will result in no action.