The Deep State isn’t through with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani just yet.
Giuliani continues to be the subject of scrutiny as the U.S. Department of Justice carries out a probe of the longtime Trump lawyer just days after he was suspended from practicing law in the state of New York.
The DOJ inquiry, which had not previously been reported but for which Giuliani and his legal team have been fielding questions for almost a year, is looking into possible foreign lobbying for Turkish interests.
The probe seeks to determine whether Giuliani acted for Turkey when he pressed the Trump administration in 2017 to drop money-laundering charges against gold trader Reza Zarrab and deport exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
The Turkish investigation is not criminal, though a simultaneous investigation into Giuliani’s work in Ukraine is.
As Bloomberg reports:
Giuliani has denied lobbying for either Turkish or Ukrainian interests, and the government has not accused him of wrongdoing in either matter. In the Turkey inquiry, if the government decides that Giuliani acted for a foreign interest, it could issue a determination letter requiring him to register as a lobbyist and also disclose all details of contacts he had with U.S. and Turkish officials concerning Zarrab and Gulen.
In April, federal investigators executed search warrants at Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment and office, requesting “all electronic devices.”
The stakes of the former mayor’s ordeal have only heightened with the revocation of his law license, although some observers are confident the move will not be permanent. Among them is lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
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The suspension was “done without due process,” Dershowitz asserted on Newsmax. “He didn’t have a hearing. He didn’t have an opportunity to prove either what he said was true or that, if it wasn’t true, that he didn’t know it. That’s number one. Number two, the criteria under which he was essentially disbarred, because they basically said ‘this will be permanent later on,’ the criteria is so vague it says anybody who says anything to a third party that turns out not be true, I mean, my God, there’d be no lawyers left.”
“I taught legal ethics for 35 years in Harvard, I’ve never seen a case like this,” Dershowitz added.
A court filing stated that there was “uncontroverted evidence” that Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large” in relation to his effort to prove that voter fraud was what cost Donald Trump the 2020 presidential election.
“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the ruling read, adding that Giuliani’s “conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee.”
In an op-ed published at The Hill, Dershowitz further argued that Giuliani’s suspension is “unconstitutional,” emphasizing the fact that the Trump ally’s election-related statements were First-Amendment protected and made outside any court of law.
“Giuliani clearly is the victim of selective suspension based on the political content of his public speech, rather than on neutral principles,” Dershowitz wrote, arguing that he disagrees with the actions taken against the former mayor despite himself being a liberal Democrat who voted for Biden and believes he won the presidential race legitimately.
“Whether one is a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican, everyone should be concerned when any lawyer — whether one approves or disapproves of their conduct — is suspended without a hearing based on vague criteria that curtail freedom of speech,” he asserted.
Even as the Giuliani probes play out, the nation’s attention remains fixated on the Arizona audit. On Monday, it was reported that Maricopa County was withholding from the Arizona Senate critical information and materials, possibly referring to Dominion routers and administrative passwords.
On Monday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors released a statement announcing that they will replace all voting machines that were turned over to the state Senate for the audit because that equipment may have been compromised by the firm conducting the audit under the direction of the Republican lawmakers.
It remains to be seen whether Rudy Giuliani will ultimately be vindicated for his stance on the election.
