The efforts to discipline attorneys who aided former President Donald Trump’s legal gambits to undermine the 2020 election take a major step forward Monday with the start of key disciplinary proceedings in Washington, DC, that will look into whether Rudy Giuliani violated attorney ethics rules.

A hearing committee for the Board on Professional Responsibility will hear testimony from witnesses – including from Giuliani himself – as it weighs whether the lawsuit the former New York City mayor brought on behalf of Trump’s 2020 campaign put him in violation of attorney ethics rules.

Giuliani is one of several attorneys who have been targeted in professional sanctions proceedings. His law license was already suspended in New York by the state bar there, which said that the former Manhattan US attorney “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large” in his work for the Trump campaign.

Now the DC Bar’s disciplinary counsel has brought ethics charges against Giuliani that are focused on a November 2020 lawsuit seeking to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes in Pennsylvania.

[Giuliani’s legal practice ended years ago, except for his work for Trump. He makes his living as a consultant. — Ed]