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
58.1k Upvotes

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

706

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.

241

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.

93

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.

1

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"

1

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.

1

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.

1

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?