WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani, the disgraced former mayor of New York who tried to overturn former President Donald Trump’s election loss, was disbarred in the state of New York on Tuesday, yet another repercussion for the team that spread lies about mass voter fraud after Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.

Giuliani, who faces charges in Georgia and Arizona and is an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case against Trump, had no “good faith basis” to believe the lies he spread about the election, according to an order entered Tuesday. Some of the false statements cited by a New York appeals court were comments Giuliani made at a post-election news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, which took place at the same time some new outlets called the election for Biden.

“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 appeals court decision read.

Giuliani has arguably faced much wider repercussions for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election than Trump himself. He also faces disbarment in Washington, where the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility recently recommended that he be barred.

In May, WABC radio of New York suspended Giuliani and canceled his show for continuing to make false statements about the 2020 election, which could have opened the station up to legal liability.

A jury awarded two Georgia poll workers — Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — $148 million after a federal judge found Giuliani liable for falsely accusing them of election fraud, allegations that had zero factual basis. Because of security video that had spurred conspiracy theorists online, Giuliani had falsely accused the mother-daughter duo of passing around USB drives “like vials of heroin or cocaine,” when, in fact, they were passing a ginger mint. The allegations set off a wave of racist attacks and threats against the pair.

In the course of the New York disciplinary case, Giuliani stipulated to the reality that many thousands of votes were not, in fact, cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia during the 2020 election, as he’d previously falsely claimed. The referee overseeing the proceedings, the order noted, found “16 acts of falsehoods carried out” by Giuliani “were deliberate and constituted a transparent pattern of conduct intended and designed to deceive.”

The decision also accused Giuliani of trying to deceive officials during the disciplinary process.

Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, called the decision “flawed” and “politically and ideologically corrupted.”

Barry Kamins, a former judge and attorney for Giuliani, said that his team is “weighing our appellate options” and that “Mr. Giuliani is obviously disappointed in the decision.”

AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to come back to the economy, but I want to go to the issue of reproductive rights right now and abortion. President Trump takes credit for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which returned the issue of abortion to the states. During last night’s debate, moderator Dana Bash noted the federal government still regulates access to abortion pills, which are used in about two-thirds of all abortions. This was President Trump’s response to whether he would block abortion medication if reelected.

DONALD TRUMP: And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court, and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted. Now, 10 years ago or so, they started talking about how many weeks and how many this, getting into other things. But every legal scholar, throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the states. I did that.

Now the states are working it out. If you look at Ohio, it was a decision that was — it was an end result that was a little bit more liberal than you would have thought. Kansas, I would say the same thing. Texas is different. Florida is different. But they’re all making their own decisions right now. And right now the states control it. That’s the vote of the people.

Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in the exceptions. I am a person that believes. And frankly, I think it’s important to believe in the exceptions. Some people — you have to follow your heart. Some people don’t believe in that. But I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. I think it’s very important. Some people don’t. Follow your heart.

But you have to get elected also and — because that has to do with other things. You’ve got to get elected.

The problem they have is they’re radical, because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth. After birth. If you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, “We’ll put the baby aside, and we’ll determine what we do with the baby,” meaning “We’ll kill the baby.”

What happened is we brought it back to the states, and the country is now coming together on this issue. It’s been a great thing.

DANA BASH: Thank you. President Biden?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done.

The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided. Supported Roe. And that was — that’s — this idea that they were all against it is just ridiculous.

And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We’re in a state where in six weeks, you don’t even know whether you’re pregnant or not, but you cannot see a doctor or have your — and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help.

The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, let each state have a different rule.

Look, there’s so many young women who have been — including a young woman who just was murdered, and he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a — by an immigrant coming in, they talk about that. But here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their — by their in-laws, by their — by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by just — it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they try to arrest them when they cross state lines.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s President Biden and former President Trump. We’re joined by Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University, founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.

Professor Goodwin, your assessment of this discussion of reproductive rights?

MICHELE GOODWIN: Wel, what it exposes is just the chaos that we’re in in the United States in the wake of the Supreme Court dismantling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which protected a woman’s right to be able to terminate a pregnancy. And at that time, there was no need to lean into exceptions in cases of rape, in cases of incest or in cases where a woman might die. But that’s where we are, including before the Supreme Court just yesterday with its EMTALA decision, which was not full, but, rather, something that was technical.

You see Donald Trump pivoting at the end, noting that this is an election season, so he has modified his position, as sending, basically, a signal to others in his party not to go too hard-line. That is to say that Americans support reproductive freedom. Americans want access to contraception. Americans want access to being able to terminate a pregnancy.

Americans have heard stories after the Dobbs decision about women bleeding out, about girls having to flee one state to another in order to terminate a pregnancy, including a 10-year-old. Americans now know that there are girls going into elementary school and middle school now as mothers after the Dobbs decision. Americans have heard stories about women in Texas, in Tennessee, who wanted their pregnancies but found that they were gestating pregnancies where there was no fetal development, or fetal development but fetuses with no brain, fetuses with no skull, gestating deceased fetuses, and in states where those pregnancies could not be terminated. Americans have heard about Idaho, where doctors have had to put pregnant women on helicopters in order to get them out of the state in urgent situations such that their lives could be spared.

Now, that’s the result of what Donald Trump has boasted about. And as he was running for president, he said he wanted to punish women who wanted to have abortions. What we heard last night is that he’s talked about exceptions and that that’s important to him.

On the other hand, what we’ve heard consistently from the Biden administration is that Roe v. Wade should be codified and that that’s something that Joe Biden would support. There’s legislation in Congress to do that. There are a couple of different bills. The strongest one, that’s received the strongest support, is the Women’s Health Protection Act. And that’s one that he has said that his administration would support.

He has also supported the EMTALA, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, as applying to these urgent health situations that pregnant women find themselves in. That’s what’s been debated before the Supreme Court in a matter of a technicality. The Supreme Court ruled just yesterday that this is a question that should go back to the states, and, as such, the Supreme Court did not dismantle the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The Biden administration said that for patients that are struggling through their pregnancies, this federal law should apply. And indeed it should, because federal law always preempts and trumps state law. But in Idaho, lawmakers there have said that their abortion ban is broad enough to cover EMTALA — that is to say, that their state law should deny pregnant people who are in crisis situations, that their abortion law would not allow them to be spared through this law.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Goodwin, could you respond to President Trump talking about those who are pro-abortion wanting to kill newborn babies, but also President Biden then talking about you’ve got to be able to have a response to immigrants raping women and women being raped by their sisters?

MICHELE GOODWIN: Well, the first is that there is this Republican talking point, which is not new, so it’s something that he’s picked up on. This was starting before his administration, this kind of messaging. And this messaging is that abortions are dangerous, abortions kill the people that have abortions. We know that that is not true. You’re 14 times more likely to die carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. The Supreme Court acknowledged that in 2016 in the case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

But on this point about abortion after birth, it’s been a narrative that’s been pushed by hard-liners. It does not exist. Someone killing a baby after that baby is born, that would be prosecuted. We have no examples of that whatsoever. And, of course, if we did, we would all know about it. It would be promoted by Republicans. We would know the name of the case. We would know the name of the doctors. We would know the name of the individual who sought that abortion after birth. It is not true. But what it does expose is also this loose-baked way in which science and health ends up getting distorted. And Americans have swallowed those soundbites. And so it’s really important that we’re clear that there is no such thing as abortion after birth. There is birth, and if a child is born and then murdered by someone, prosecutors then step in.

On the other hand, what we heard from President Biden about individuals being raped, including being raped by relatives, well, incest does exist. People can be raped and harmed by loved ones, by a brother, a father, an uncle. There are cases of that. There are tragedies associated with that. Right after the Dobbs decision, we heard about a little girl leaving Ohio to get to Indiana in order to terminate a pregnancy, that was not by relative but a close family friend.

President Biden’s messaging did get distracted. And that is distinct from what has been his very firm position of his administration and the messaging of his administration to use everything within their administrative powers in order to protect reproductive health rights and justice for all people. Last night, the messaging got a bit garbled.

AMY GOODMAN: Michele Goodwin, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University, author of Policing the Womb.

When we come back, we’re going to look at immigration and foreign policy in this first presidential debate. Stay with us.

WASHINGTON — Former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell is mostly recovered from the brutal assaults he endured from Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. But not completely. His shoulder still has limited endurance and there are screws and a metal plate holding his right foot together after bone fusion surgery.

Emotional recovery has been more difficult. Gonell struggled when he heard that former Trump visited Capitol Hill last month and received what he called a “hero’s welcome” from the Republican lawmakers Gonell had protected that day, and when Trump falsely told millions of viewers in last week’s debate that many of the violent rioters, his supporters, “were ushered in by the police.”

Trump’s Capitol Hill visit was a “triggering mechanism for my PTSD,” says Gonell, who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries and has recently participated in several campaign events for President Joe Biden. “We did what we had to do to keep those elected officials safe, and instead of siding with us, the officers, they have sided with a person who put their lives at risk.”

Three and a half years after the Capitol attack, Trump still falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen. He has promised that if he wins the presidency again he will pardon his supporters who violently beat police and broke into the Capitol to try and overturn the legitimate results. To counter the misinformation, Gonell and two of his fellow officers who were there that day are working with Biden’s campaign, attending events in swing states to try and make sure that voters don’t forget.

“I’m a living primary source about an important day in American history,” says Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who became a recognizable face shortly after the attack when a video of him being crushed between two doors went viral. “So I try to make that count, and make it so that people hear the truth from someone who was there.”

Along with former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Hodges and Gonell are telling audiences about what they went through that day and trying to lay out the contrast between Biden and Trump. It’s an unusual transition for law enforcement officers who once protected members of Congress and are used to keeping their political views to themselves.

“I’m really an introvert, and I’m not someone to seek a microphone or an audience,” says Hodges, who testified along with Gonell and Dunn at the House Jan. 6 panel’s first hearing in 2021. “But I’m in this unique position where people will listen to what I say about an important issue. So I feel a moral obligation to do so.”

At recent events in Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, they stood with local officials and said that Trump is a danger to the country after trying to overturn Biden’s legitimate election.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” Dunn recently told a group of voters in Arizona, flanked by a handful of politically active Democratic veterans in Phoenix. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

The officers have also aggressively pushed back on Trump’s comments at the debate, where he falsely said that there were a “relatively small” group of protesters and that the police let them enter the Capitol. More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot, and police were bloodied and injured — some seriously — as they struggled to prevent more from getting in.

Dunn, who recently lost his own bid for a congressional seat in Maryland, said after the debate that Trump’s comments were “a slap in the face, but it’s what we have come to expect from Donald Trump.”

And the officers said they are still supporting Biden, even after he failed to push back on many of Trump’s false claims about Jan. 6 and received widespread criticism for his weak showing at the debate.

“He could have been a little more forceful, but I’ll take the person who doesn’t send a mob to kill me and my colleagues over the other person,” said Gonell, who published a book last year about his experience. “Every single day I’m reminded of that horrible day. Every time I put my shoes on, I see my scar.”

Gonell was caught in the worst of the fighting on the Capitol’s west front as Trump’s supporters protesting his defeat violently tried to push past him and his fellow officers. At one point he was pulled under the crowd and lost oxygen to the point that he thought he would die.

Hodges was nearby, trapped in the heavy golden doors in the center of the Capitol’s west front as rioters beat him bloody. A video of his guttural scream as he tried to escape went viral and was played at Democrats’ impeachment trial in the weeks after the attack.

Dunn, who has said he was targeted with racial slurs by Trump’s supporters during the fighting, says it has been good to travel out of the Washington area, his hometown, and talk to people who may not be watching cable news every day as he campaigns for Biden. There’s a lot they don’t know about what happened on Jan. 6, he says.

“Being able to have somebody who was there bring firsthand experience and facts retelling the story, it’s very beneficial,” Dunn said,

The officers were widely praised after Jan. 6, but their criticism of Trump in recent years has made them less popular with some Republicans. When Gonell and Dunn visited the Pennsylvania legislature this spring, some Republicans booed them.

But they are unbowed by the criticism, and have continued to try and bring more attention to their stories. Gonell was outside the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices ruled on whether Trump has immunity for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and criticized the justices for sending the federal case back to a lower court. The decision effectively ends any prospects that Trump could be tried before the November election.

On Friday, the court limited a federal obstruction law that has been used to charge some Capitol riot defendants.

“Every single time that the Supreme Court or any other court says that some of these people shouldn’t be held accountable, it’s a disgrace,” Gonell said.

___

Associated Press writer Jonathan Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix.

A raspy President Joe Biden repeatedly sought to confront Donald Trump in their first debate ahead of the November election, as his Republican rival countered Biden’s criticism by leaning into falsehoods about the economy, illegal immigration and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

The debate, featuring deeply personal attacks by both men, came at a pivotal juncture in their unpopular presidential rematch and a critical moment to make their cases before a national television audience. Biden’s uneven performance risked crystallizing voter concerns that at age 81 he is too old to serve as president, while the 78-year-old Trump’s rhetoric offered a perhaps unwelcome reminder of the bombast he launched daily during his tumultuous four years in office.

Biden repeatedly tore into Trump in personal terms, bringing up everything from the former president’s recent felony conviction to his alleged insult of World War I veterans to his weight and golf game. Initially focusing many of his answers on illegal immigration, Trump in the latter half of the debate lapsed into familiar grievances. Each man called the other the worst president in history.

The current president and his predecessor hadn’t spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his loss that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by his supporters.

Trump equivocated on whether he would accept the results of the November election, saying he would accept them if the vote was “fair” and “legal,” repeating his baseless claims of widespread fraud and misconduct in his 2020 loss to Biden that he still denies.

Justin Sullivan

Pressed on his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was unapologetic.

“On Jan. 6, we were respected all over the world, all over the world we were respected. And then he comes in and we’re now laughed at,” Trump said.

After he was prompted by a moderator to answer whether he violated his oath of office that day by rallying his supporters seeking to block the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory and not acting for hours to call them off as they raided the Capitol, Trump sought to blame then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Biden said Trump encouraged the supporters to go to the Capitol and sat in the White House without taking action as they fought with police officers.

“He didn’t do a damn thing and these people should be in jail,” Biden said. “They should be the ones that are being held accountable. And he wants to let them all out. And now he says that if he loses again, such a whiner that he is, that this could be a ‘bloodbath’?”

Trump then defended the people convicted and imprisoned for their role in the insurrection, saying to Biden, “What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The former president has allied himself with Jan. 6 rioters and sometimes opens his rallies by playing a rendition of the national anthem performed by people jailed on riot-related charges.

Biden began the night with a raspy voice and a halting delivery as he tried to defend his economic record and criticize Trump. A person familiar with the matter said Biden was suffering from a cold during the debate, adding that he tested negative for COVID-19.

Biden appeared to lose his train of thought while giving one answer, drifting from an answer on tax policy to health policy, at one point using the word “COVID,” and then saying, “excuse me, with, dealing with,” and he trailed off again.

“Look, we finally beat Medicare,” Biden said, as his time ran out on his answer.

Biden began to give clearer answers as the debate progressed, still with a rasp, and attacked Trump’s record on issues like fighting climate change.

“The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it,” he said.

Trump and Biden entered the night facing stiff headwinds, including a public weary of the tumult of partisan politics and broadly dissatisfied with both, according to polling. But the debate was highlighting how they have sharply different visions on virtually every core issue — abortion, the economy and foreign policy — and deep hostility toward each other.

Their personal animus quickly came to the surface. Biden got personal in evoking his son, Beau, who served in Iraq before dying of brain cancer. The president criticized Trump for reportedly calling Americans killed in battle “suckers and losers.” Biden told Trump, “My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”

Trump said he never said that — a line attributed to Trump by his former chief of staff — and slammed Biden for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, calling it “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.”

Trump himself agreed to the withdrawal with the Taliban a year before he left office.

Biden directly mentioned Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money trial, saying, “You have the morals of an alley cat,” and referencing the allegations in the case that Trump had sex with a porn actress.

“I did not have sex with a porn star,” replied Trump, who chose not to testify at his trial.

Trump retorted that Biden could face criminal charges “when he leaves office,” evoking his familiar threats of retribution. Though there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, Trump said, “Joe could be a convicted felon with all the things that he’s done.”

Pressed to defend rising inflation since he took office, Biden pinned it on the situation he inherited from Trump amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden said that when Trump left office, “things were in chaos.” Trump disagreed, declaring that during his term in the White House, “Everything was rocking good.”

Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

By the time Trump left office, America was still grappling with the pandemic and during his final hours in office, the death toll eclipsed 400,000. The virus continued to ravage the country and the death toll hit 1 million over a year later.

Trump repeatedly insisted that the three conservative justices he appointed to the Supreme Court helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and returned the issue of abortion restrictions to individual states, which is what “everybody wanted.” Biden countered that abortion access was settled for 50 years and that Trump was making it harder for women in large swaths of the country to get access to basic health care.

At one point, Trump defended his record on foreign policy and blamed Biden for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, suggesting the conflicts broke out when the aggressors felt free to attack because they perceived Biden as weak.

“This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him,” Trump said.

“I never heard so much malarkey in my whole life,” Biden retorted.

Trump was asked what he would do to make childcare more affordable. He used his answer to instead boast about how many people he fired during his term, including former FBI Director James Comey and criticized Biden for not firing people from his administration.

Trump has promised sweeping plans to remake the U.S. government if he returns to the White House and Biden argues that his opponent would pose an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.

Aiming to avoid a repeat of their chaotic 2020 matchups, Biden insisted — and Trump agreed — to hold the debate without an audience and to allow the network to mute the candidates’ microphones when it is not their turn to speak. The debate’s two commercial breaks offered another departure from modern practice, while the candidates have agreed not to consult staff or others while the cameras are off.

Both men abided by the rules and didn’t speak out of turn. Near the end, Biden also appeared to question Trump’s weight — leading Trump to respond while his mic was muted, making his answer partly inaudible — and the two squabbled about their golf handicaps.

“Let’s not act like children,” Trump replied.

Heading out of the debate, both Biden and Trump will travel to states they hope to swing their way this fall. Trump is heading to Virginia, a one-time battleground that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.

Biden is set to jet off to North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the largest yet rally of his campaign in a state Trump narrowly carried in 2020.