Guiliani Suspended from Practicing Law

JayUtah said:
That's where the President can say, "No, I pardon Giuliani for that charge." In that way Giuliani can continue to defame the plaintiffs in defiance of a court order.
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I'm assuming Trump would have to pardon him each and every time the judge ruled he defamed the plaintiffs, correct? He can't just issue a blanket pardon of Guiliani that allows him to defame them until the end of time no matter what he says? Perhaps there is no answer that and it would have to get fleshed out in court, but I don't see Trump really caring that much.
 
Correct: pardons cannot be prospective. There was even some amusement on that point from Pres. Biden's pardon of his son Hunter, which was signed on a day and pardoned him for crimes up to that day. Read strictly, it would seem to pardon him for crimes Hunter could have committed in the few hours remaining. A pardon can happen any time after the allegedly illegal actions take place. You don't have to wait for an indictment, buy you do have to wait for the person to actually do the thing you're pardoning him for. You can pardon someone for any and all federal crimes committed from the dawn of time up until the ink is dry on the pardon document.

I don't see Donald Trump caring that much, up to and including not paying Giuliani for legal fees purportedly owed. But inasmuch as a pardon is a relatively low-effort thing, Trump could just sign one every Friday as a precaution. I doubt he'll do much to help Giuliani. We've seen that Trump's loyalty goes ruthlessly only in one direction.

Along those lines there has been idle talk of Pres. Biden issuing a blanket pardon for all the officers in his administration that might be subject to vindictive prosecution from a Trump administration. For obvious reasons I think that's a bad idea.
 
What I fear is, reading the below, posted here next year sometime:

This is outrageous. No way should the appeals judge have issued that ruling. It's totally illegal. This is going to be four crazy years!
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Viktor Orban -- a hero to the American right -- has said, The law doesn't matter if you have the judges. :(
 
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Either way, Trump can't just pardon Gulliani for anything he says about the plaintiffs. They can sue him again and get more money until he's sanctioned through the teeth and can't do business with anyone, anywhere. Criminal charges aren't the only means of assuring justice is done.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Would that have been true in the case of Ford's pardon of Nixon?

Or is this a matter of assuming Nixon did whatever he did that may have been indictable?
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The House had already voted to impeach Nixon, which is the political remedy. Nixon avoided that by resigning from office. But Nixon's actions in covering up and interfering with the investigation and prosecution of a criminal action (the Watergate Hotel break-in) could have made him an accessory to it and separately criminally liable for obstruction of justice. This was, of course, before the Supreme Court lately granted all but monarchical immunity to the President. Therefore Nixon had every right to fear being prosecuted criminally for those activities.

On Sept. 8, 1974, then-President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon using this language :—
As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor.
* * *
Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.​
(emphasis in original) Ford laid out his belief that Nixon was about to face criminal indictment and pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed during a period of time you might recognize as corresponding to his term in office. All the contemplated actions occurred before the pardon was issued, so the pardon is not prospective. The fact that the President doesn't even need to know if any crimes were actually committed and can just issue a blanket pardon is understandably controversial.
 
Actually the Constitution itself does not place any limits on the temporal effect of the pardon power. That comes from ex parte Garland, a post Civil War Supreme Court case that decided a lot about the Constitution in the aftermath of war and thus having to deal with actual insurgents and rebels. The only Constitutional limit on the power is to prevent it from undoing an impeachment. The Garland court imposed additional limitations it proposed as natural and logical, but there is no textualist justification for them.

There is the general legal doctrine of ripeness, but there is no reason to suppose that the Supreme Court today would rule that it prohibits prospective pardons prior to the commission of the offense, since the ripeness doctrine applies only to courts and not to the President. The fact that amnesties, pardons, and reprieves have historically happened only after the commission of the offenses thus excused could end up just being another normative practice that Trump will upend.
 
JayUtah said:
And no, you can present new facts on appeal only in extremely narrow circumstances. If you knew about them at trial and did not present them, they are not admissible on appeal. The appeals process can rule that facts at trial were inappropriately allowed or denied, and then the remedy there is to remand to the trail court for proceedings consistent with the court's ruling on the admissibility of the evidence. And certain errors at the trial level allow the appeals court to perform a de novo review of the facts presented at trial. But ordinarily you can't just try a different factual case on appeal.
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Below is what Judge Beryl Howell wrote last December 2023 at the hearing where the jury announced the $148 million judgement against Giuliani.

Judge Howell said she expects an appeal, based on Giuliani’s failure to share evidence in the case under a process called discovery. "The reservations in Giuliani’s stipulations make clear his goal to bypass the discovery process and a merits trial − at which his defenses may be fully scrutinized and tested in our judicial system’s time-honored adversarial process − and to delay such a fair reckoning by taking his chances on appeal, based on the abbreviated record he forced on plaintiffs," Howell wrote. USA Today article link
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She seems to be implying Giuliani has a strategy worked out to overturn the original court's findings via the appeal process. Being it's Giuliani it's probably not a very good plan.

If he could just figure out a way to have her hear the appeal.

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I don't see where the Judge implies any new evidence though. I'm reading it in a way that implies he held back evidence and wants to use the minimal evidence he did turn over as the basis for his appeal. It kind of reads to me that the Judge is calling out his game plan as useless.
 
The bigger picture around the judge's statement is that Giuliani apparently intends to argue First Amendment protection on appeal. That would be a decision on a matter of law, which is within the appeals court's jurisdiction. This is purportedly why he stipulated to the statements and avoided discovery. By carefully controlling the fact pattern presented at trial, he can supposedly make the First Amendment excuse look like the better conclusion of law. I don't think it's likely to succeed because there's enough evidence of actual malice.
 
Thanks.

Like I wrote, it's a Giuliani plan so it's likely not a very good one!
 
Or, as Frank Caliendo/George W. Bush would have described it, it's "planification."
 
JayUtah said:
The bigger picture around the judge's statement is that Giuliani apparently intends to argue First Amendment protection on appeal. That would be a decision on a matter of law, which is within the appeals court's jurisdiction.
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Did he make the 1st amendment argument at trial?
 
I think Giuliani's defense was not a typical one. His trial defense was geared towards setting up his appeal. The Washington Post reported in July 2023 (paywalled)

Rudy Giuliani, who served as a lawyer for former president Donald Trump, is no longer contesting as a legal matter that he made false and defamatory statements about two former Georgia election workers — but argues in a new court filing that what amounted to false claims about vote-rigging in the 2020 presidential election was constitutionally protected speech and did not damage the workers.

“Rudy Giuliani did not acknowledge that the statements were false but did not contest it in order to move on to the portion of the case that will permit a motion to dismiss,” [Giuliani adviser Ted] Goodman said. “This is a legal issue, not a factual issue. … This stipulation is designed to get to the legal issues of the case.”
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Note Giuliani did not contest he made false statements. Instead, he raised free speech issues and maintained the two plaintiffs were not harmed by his speech but in a court filing not from the witness stand. Apparently this was to support a motion to dismiss the case.
 
Yes, Giuliani argued in two motions to dismiss that his allegedly defamatory statements were opinion protected under the First Amendment. Both motions were denied in all respects at the trial level and are preserved for appeal. Thus the argument to the appeals court would be that the trial court erred in applying the appropriate legal standard and thus erred as a matter of law in failing to dismiss plaintiffs' claims. Naturally in order to argue that one's statements are protected opinion, one must stipulate to having made those statements.

The speculation is that Giuliani stipulated to the statements and ignored discovery to force a swift resolution of the trial, knowing that he would lose. The limited information obtained in discovery also presents a limited factual case to the appeals court. If the appeals court must judge the discretion of the trial court solely on the basis of the facts that Giuliani allowed at trial, then he can hope that he has shaped the facts in his favor.

I believe a few legal principles make this unlikely. First, a jury in a civil trial is allowed to draw adverse inferences from a party's unwillingness to provide compelled evidence. Specifically, they are permitted to know that Giuliani disobeyed discovery rules and they are permitted to infer that the reason he did so was to withhold evidence that disadvantaged him. Second, accusing someone of committing a heinous crime without evidence is defamation per se. Giuliani has a steep uphill climb to show that it was merely an opinion. Even believing you have good evidence doesn't help you because then you're alleging fact, not presenting opinion.
 
I have heard on local New York newscasts, the idea that a big part of Giuliani's strategy in the civil trial was to stay off the witness stand in order to avoid being cross-examined by the plaintiff's attorneys. That the questions he would have been asked and the answers he would have been forced to provide went to issues Giuliani preferred NOT be part of the case record.

JayUtah said:
First, a jury in a civil trial is allowed to draw adverse inferences from a party's unwillingness to provide compelled evidence. Specifically, they are permitted to know that Giuliani disobeyed discovery rules and they are permitted to infer that the reason he did so was to withhold evidence that disadvantaged him.
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Having served on civil case juries in New York, I'm sure the jurors did infer the bolded part above and rightfully so. I know I would have.
 
Giuliani may have to surrender his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida as part of satisfying the judgement against him. Giuliani says the problem with that is, the Palm Beach condo is his primary residence and he has nowhere else to go. Judge Lewis Liman is expected to rule: "And...?"

Take the quote below with a grain-of-salt -- it's from the New York Post -- but things are not looking too good for the Gman.
A federal judge is signaling that Rudy Giuliani’s contempt hearing next Friday might not end so well for the former New York City mayor and onetime personal lawyer for President-elect Donald Trump as two Georgia election poll workers try to collect a $148 million defamation award they won against him. Judge Lewis J. Liman in Manhattan issued an order Friday in which he was dismissive of what he described as attempts by Giuliani and his lawyer to dodge providing information to the election workers’ lawyers. And he said the litigants should be ready at the contempt hearing to explain why he should not grant a request by lawyers for the two election workers that he make adverse inferences from evidence in the case that would put Giuliani’s Palm Beach, Florida, condominium in danger of being surrendered to satisfy the defamation award. New York Post article link
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Meantime his former attorneys -- Kenneth Caruso and David Labkowski -- have said they asked the court to allow them to drop out of the case, because of Giuliani refusing "to share records and access to cellphone as part of a defamation lawsuit against him."
 
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