Giuliani Faces Disbarment In State Hearing Underway This Week—Sidney Powell, Lin Wood And Other 2020 Election Attorneys Could Be Next

Topline

A disciplinary hearing against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is taking place this week, as the lawyer faces the prospect of being disbarred for bringing litigation trying to overturn the 2020 election—and other attorneys are likely to follow, as more bar complaints and investigations remain ongoing against major 2020 election attorneys like Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and John Eastman.

Attorney Rudy Giuliani conducts a news conference at the Republican National Committee on on ... [+] November 19, 2020, with attorneys Sidney Powell (right) and Jenna Ellis (left).

CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Key Facts

Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani is now facing a hearing by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel—which is part of a multi-step process and will not immediately result in consequences—after a D.C. court and a New York court have already temporarily suspended his law license in both those jurisdictions.

Sidney Powell: Powell, who brought lawsuits in four battleground states alleging election fraud, will go to trial on April 24, 2023, in litigation brought against her by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline at the Texas State Bar, court documents show, which could result in her being disbarred or otherwise punished for professional misconduct.

Lin Wood: Wood, who brought litigation challenging Georgia’s election and also participated in some of Powell’s lawsuits, is under investigation by the State Bar of Georgia, which the bar confirmed to Forbes Tuesday is still pending after its disciplinary board shot down Wood’s attempt to dismiss the complaint against him in August, but no hearing date has yet been set.

John Eastman: Eastman aided former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop Congress from certifying the election on January 6, prompting an ethics investigation by the State Bar of California, which the bar confirmed to Forbes is still underway after being publicly announced in March.

Ken Paxton: The Texas attorney general was sued by the state bar’s disciplinary counsel in May over the lawsuit he filed at the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the election—causing him to retaliate against the bar as a result—and that lawsuit remains pending, though a separate complaint against his deputy attorney general was dismissed in September.

Jeffrey Clark: The former DOJ official, who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the election from within the agency, faces a pending complaint from the D.C. Bar that was brought against him in July, and Clark asked a federal court to block the complaint in October, arguing the D.C. Bar doesn’t have jurisdiction to bring the complaint.

What To Watch For

Giuliani’s hearing that’s now ongoing is scheduled to wrap up by the end of next week, at which point the hearing committee at the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility will issue a non-binding recommendation on what punishment Giuliani should face. The case will go on to ultimately be decided by the D.C. Court of Appeals, a process that the Washington Post notes could still take months to go through. Under the bar’s rules for disciplinary action, Giuliani could face a range of punishments, from being permanently disbarred to just being formally censured or reprimanded or being put on probation. His law license in Washington, D.C., is still suspended, the D.C. Bar’s database shows, but that suspension is only temporary, so the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary process will determine whether Giuliani could have his license revoked permanently or if he could be allowed to practice law again.

Chief Critic

Giuliani has continued to defend his actions as a lawyer in testimony over the first two days of his hearing against him and decried the attempt to punish him for his post-election litigation. “I am shocked and offended this is happening to me,” Giuliani said on Tuesday. Other post-election lawyers have similarly remained defiant despite the action being taken against them, with Powell telling Forbes in June that the action being taken against her by the Texas State Bar “should concern every practicing lawyer because now any lawyer can be subjected to the extraordinary harassment and expense of lawfare directed specifically at his or her law license whenever the other side disagrees with a filing.”

What We Don’t Know

Which other 2020 election attorneys will face investigations and disciplinary proceedings. Activist group The 65 Project, which is dedicated to taking action against lawyers who helped efforts to overturn the election, is targeting 111 lawyers in 26 states, and has filed ethics complaints with state bars in an effort to have the attorneys punished. Those complaints have been filed as recently as October, so it may take months before they result in public reports of any concrete action. Among those who have had complaints brought against them—but have not yet been announced as being actively under investigation or sued by disciplinary committees—are Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis; Cleta Mitchell, who participated in Trump’s call asking Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn the election; Boris Epshteyn, who continues to advise Trump on legal issues; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who pushed Trump’s false claims of election fraud and offered to represent the Trump campaign in post-election cases at the Supreme Court.

Key Background

Giuliani and many of the other right-wing attorneys now facing consequences were behind more than 60 lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election that broadly challenged results in battleground states, which were nearly all unsuccessful except for one minor lawsuit in Pennsylvania. The disciplinary actions being brought by state bars are part of a broader range of consequences those attorneys have faced for their actions in the two years since the election, which have so far also included lawyers such as Powell and Wood being sanctioned in federal court in Michigan and a series of defamation lawsuits brought by voting machine companies that Powell and her allies accused of fraud. The ethics complaint against Giuliani, which was brought by the bar after his D.C. license had already been suspended, was largely focused on the lawsuit the Trump campaign brought in Pennsylvania challenging its results, with Giuliani representing the campaign. That litigation failed in court multiple times, with a district judge declaring the campaign’s legal argument was “not how the Constitution works.”

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