New York State Bar Association Launches Inquiry into Removing Rudy Giuliani from Membership

The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) wrote in a scathing letter Monday it had launched an inquiry into removing President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, from its membership.

The bar association launched the inquiry in response to Giuliani’s claims of voter fraud and allegations that he employed incendiary speech before rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The move does not affect Giuliani’s ability to practice law in the state but is a way to admonish the former New York City mayor, Forbes reported.

“Hours before the angry mob stormed the Capitol walls, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, addressed a crowd of thousands at the White House, reiterating baseless claims of widespread election fraud in the presidential election and the Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs,” said the letter, adding, “The president did not act alone.”

The NYSBA, the largest voluntary bar association in the country, cannot license or disbar attorneys.

But the association asserted that because Giuliani aided Trump in riling up the crowd that stormed the Capitol, it received “hundreds of complaints” and cited its own bylaws, which state that the association will not allow a member who “advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States … by force or any other illegal means.”

The letter said Giuliani would be provided due process and would be allowed to respond to the inquiry in front of a professional discipline committee and a House of Delegates consisting of 250 people.

The inquiry comes as the latest reckoning for those who have supported Trump’s election fraud claims and legal challenges, which a bipartisan group of lawmakers has connected to the U.S. Capitol riots.

Wall Street banks have frozen their political donations in the wake of the riots and have threatened pro-Trump lawmakers on Capitol Hill with blacklisting. Trump himself has seen himself barred by multiple social media platforms.