New Jersey's "progressive fighter," Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) representing the Ninth Congressional District filed legal complaints with bars in five states on Nov. 20. The complaints were filed seeking disbarments against lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and 22 other lawyers in the states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and the Disciplinary Board of Pennsylvania. The various complaints have similar language to the wording in the complaint against Giuliani and the Pennsylvania team.
Pascrell maintains that "our sitting President has refused to accept the outcome of our national election and is attacking the integrity of our electoral system to keep himself in power." He continues, stating that "the pattern of behavior by these individuals to effectuate Mr. Trump’s sinister arson is a danger not just to our legal system but is also unprecedented in our national life."
His push to impugn President Trump began with a Nov. 3 letter to Special Counsel Henry Kerner in which Pascrell claimed that the President and members of his team were breaking laws, including the Hatch act because of their use of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as a campaign “war room.”
According to several legal experts, such complaints are unlikely to cause much more than political damage to the Trump team. Leslie C. Levin, a law professor and associate dean at the University of Connecticut School of Law, said that these matters are usually handled in court, not in disciplinary committees. Giuliani, she continued, most likely would only "face a reprimand" given the "[leniency] of New York disciplinary authorities." She added that Pascrell also filed the complaint in the wrong Judicial Department. He filed it in New York's Second Judicial Department when he should have filed it in the First Judicial Department.
Questions circulated on Twitter regarding disbarment for the Trump lawyers. A lawyer from Oklahoma explained that disbarment is usually reserved for doing something criminal after "having been warned to stop." The state of New York rules for attorney disciplinary matters can be found here.
