Giuliani defends 2020 election challenge at D.C. Bar hearing

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday that it was his "obligation" as a lawyer to try to overturn the results of 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania on behalf of then-President Donald Trump, his client at the time.

Giuliani was the first witness called during a hearing Monday in front of the D.C. Bar Board of Professional Responsibility to determine whether he violated attorney ethics rules with the federal court challenge he launched in Pennsylvania to subvert Joe Biden's 2020 victory in that state.

During his testimony, Trump’s ex-lawyer echoed one of the former president’s favorite refrains, claiming he has been “persecuted” by federal investigations over the course of the last four years. He also claimed he wrote only one or two paragraphs of the initial complaint that was filed, leaving the majority of the work to local Pennsylvania attorney Ron Hicks, who withdrew from the suit before it was rejected by both federal district and appeals courts.

In his opening statement, D.C. disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox described Giuliani’s legal challenge as “frivolous,” and said the former president's attorney “weaponized his law license” in an effort to “undermine the Constitution to which he, like all members of the District of Columbia Bar, took an oath to support.”

D.C. Bar investigators subpoenaed each of the law firms involved in the unsuccessful filing, Fox said, obtaining every possible fact that Giuliani used to support election-related filings. In the end, it fell “woefully short” of Giuliani’s proposed remedy: overturning the election in Pennsylvania.

Giuliani attorney John Leventhal sought to refute the idea that the filing was frivolous. Giuliani was coordinating litigation in several states during a “chaotic” time, Leventhal said, and joined the Pennsylvania litigation “at the eleventh hour.” Giuliani, he said, “had a reasonable basis to rely on the information he was provided” by third parties, particularly because of the time constraints imposed by the impending election certification, which occurred the same month the filing was dismissed.

The hearing grew increasingly antagonistic as the day wore on. Early on, Fox called Giuliani out for sidestepping questions.

“I’m asking you what time it is, and you’re telling me how to make a watch,” Fox said.

Later, Robert Bernius, the retired lawyer who was presiding over the hearing, reprimanded both Giuliani and Fox.

“I would be eternally grateful if Mr. Fox would ask questions, and Mr.Giuliani would answer questions,” Bernius said. “It’s getting a tad argumentative on both sides.”

Last year, Giuliani was suspended from the New York bar for similarly making "false and misleading" statements on behalf of Trump about the 2020 election. This hearing, which is expected to last multiple days, is the just first stage in the disciplinary process to determine whether Giuliani will be barred from practicing law in D.C. as well. Once witness testimony is complete, the hearing committee will send a report to the full bar disciplinary board before it’s passed to the D.C. Court of Appeals to arbitrate. Witnesses for Giuliani — including a number of prominent election deniers — are set to give testimony on Wednesday.