The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called for the disbarment of Rudy Giuliani and other lawyers who claimed, along with former President Trump, that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
The editorial, which was published Saturday and titled “Giuliani should be disbarred, as should all lawyers who pushed Trump’s big lie,” came after Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York for making “demonstrably” false statements to courts and the public while leading Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court suspended Giuliani’s license earlier this week while a disciplinary action is under consideration.
“Giuliani’s permanent disbarment should follow, and other Trump lawyers who participated in that dangerous sham should face the same sanction,” the board wrote.
Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, was one of several attorneys overseeing Trump’s legal battle to challenge the election results in a handful of swing states. Trump and his associates often pushed false or unsupported claims that the election was tainted by widespread voter fraud.
However, both state and federal elections officials, including former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, stated at the time that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
The New York Court determined that Giuliani engaged in “incredibly serious” misconduct, which posed “an immediate threat to the public.”
The editorial board lamented the false claims Giuliani spread about the election, writing, “Attorney just plain lied — again and again and again — to judges and to the public, in a quest to overturn a valid election.”
The board also ripped Giuliani for claiming in an interview on Newsmax that his statements did no harm. The board then pointed to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“No one believes the insurrectionists of Jan. 6 were whipped up solely by that day’s rally near the Capitol,” the board wrote. “Their attack on democracy was fueled by months of steady lies from Trump and his cohorts, Giuliani chief among them.”
“There’s no way to prevent politicians from lying,” the board wrote. “But a thorough purge from the profession of attorneys who furthered Trump’s big lie would send a strong message to other political lawyers about their duty to the truth,” the board wrote.
Hours before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump repeated claims of widespread voter fraud on the National Mall and encouraged his supporters to march to Congress and demand it halt the certification of the 2020 election.