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One question that has arisen is whether there will be serious professional consequences for Trump’s legal team repeatedly making unsubstantiated claims that they cannot appear in court. Jan Wolfe has analyzed this for Reuters and the answer is probably not.
Representative Bill Pascrell on Friday he asked Rudy giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team will be stripped of their legal licenses for filing “frivolous” lawsuits, but legal ethicists say discipline from lawyers is relatively rare, especially in politically charged disputes.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have rules of legal ethics for attorneys that are derived from standards published by the American Bar Association.
An ABA rule says lawyers should only enforce a claim in court if “there is a legal and factual basis for doing so that is not frivolous. Separately, there are rules that prohibit lawyers from making false statements to third parties and engaging in misleading conduct.
Giuliani has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims at press conferences and media appearances about voter fraud..
During a court hearing on November 17, he initially told a judge in Pennsylvania that the election had been marred by fraud. But when questioned by Judge Matthew Brann, Giuliani walked away from this unproven claim, acknowledging that “this is not a case of fraud.”
Other members of Trump’s legal team have generally made more limited allegations in court. Viviane Scott, an attorney for Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz in New York, said there is a reason for this dissonance between what the campaign says in and out of court.
“We as attorneys are officials of the court,” Scott said. “We have an obligation to make statements that have a basis of truth.”
On Twitter and in media appearances, Giuliani and the lawyer Sidney Powell it appeared to have violated rules that prohibited them from making dishonest statements, said Brian Faughnan, a Tennessee attorney and ethicist. Since then, the Trump campaign has said that Powell no longer represents him.
Faughnan said Giuliani acted unethically by tweeting on November 22 that there were “GHOST VOTERS” in the Detroit area. That tweet appeared to refer to an affidavit from a cybersecurity analyst, filed in court, that had a major flaw: it was confusing Minnesota data with Michigan data.
Two days earlier, the attorney who filed the affidavit, Lin Wood, admitted that it was wrong and needed to be corrected.
Giuliani knew his tweet was false, or should have reasonably known that it was false, Faughnan said. “By the time he tweeted that, the blunder had already been publicly discussed,” Faughnan said. President Donald Trump also subsequently released this erroneous affidavit on social media..
Despite these apparent ethical lapses, Faughnan said he did not expect action against Giuliani and Powell.. Faughnan said investigators have limited resources and will focus on simpler violations, such as attorneys stealing from clients.
Faughnan said investigators would also be wary of disciplining lawyers when it comes to politics. “When it comes to a politically charged case, you know the first line of defense will be ‘you’re only doing this to us because of our policy,'” Faughnan said.
