If Trump’s Legal Team Continues to Lie in the Senate Trial, They Should Be Disbarred

Nothing — I mean nothing — can stop Donald Trump from lying. He has clocked in as president more than 15,000 false or misleading claims per fact checkers and that number rises almost every time he tweets or talks.

But Trump’s lawyers are another matter completely. Lawyers — and I am one — are officers of the court and we are held to a higher ethical standard than the average person. (I’m sure some are laughing but that’s true.) There are established “Rules of Professional Conduct” that govern our actions as attorneys, and if we violate them, we can be disciplined by the state’s we are licensed to practice in, ranging from public reprimands to being disbarred.

One rule of professional conduct is that lawyers are prohibited from lying about material facts relating to a case. That goes for statements to the media or to any third party: “In the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly: (a) make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person.”

And when dealing with the courts, there’s a more specific rule that heightens that responsibility, demanding lawyers show, “Candor to the tribunal.” This rule of professional conduct states plainly, “a) A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.”

This is Day One lawyer stuff: You can’t lie to the court. But despite that we have seen a few Trump defense lawyers make statements that either show they are lying to the tribunal or they simply don’t know the facts. But given how high profile of case this, it’s truly difficult to believe they simply aren’t prepared.

And we aren’t talking about lawyering, where a lawyer explains facts in the light most favorable to a client or leaves out information that would hurt their client. This is not even about Alan Dershowitz flip-flopping on his views from Clinton’s impeachment trial to Trump’s, now claiming that a crime is necessary for impeachment. That hurts Dershowitz’s credibility but lawyers do argue positions inconsistent from the past depending on the client they are defending.

I’m talking lying. And if a lawyer does that to the court, or in this case the Senate, it could — and if repeatedly done, should — result in disciplinary action.

What we’ve seen from both White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow raises red flags as fact checkers have deemed several of the statements they made in the trial as “false and misleading.” For example, as FactCheck.org writes, on Saturday, “Cipollone falsely suggested Republicans were barred from the closed-door depositions conducted by the House intelligence committee.” As they detail, in reality, “members of three committees — both Democrats and Republicans — participated.” How could Cipollone not know that basic fact?

Then there’s Sekulow, who declared on the floor of the Senate Saturday a claim deemed “false” by Factcheck.org. Here, Sekulow stated, “During the proceedings that took place before the Judiciary Committee, the president was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses … the right to access evidence and … the right to have counsel present at hearings.”  But the actual facts are that the “committee chair invited Trump and his lawyers to participate, but they declined.” Again, how could Sekulow be unaware of that?

And then on Monday, Sekulow served up another statement that does not line up with the facts. He told the Senate jurors that Ukrainian officials were not aware of the pause on military aid “until late August.”  In reality, Defense Department official Laura Cooper testified in November as part of the impeachment inquiry that Ukraine officials “were asking about the delay of a U.S. military aid package to their country as early as July 25 — the same day as President Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.”

Lawyers who have lied to the court or even to fellow lawyers have been disciplined. For example, in 2019 a Connecticut lawyer was publicly reprimanded by Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee that governs ethics complaints against lawyers for not showing candor to a tribunal.

Other lawyers, meanwhile, have been suspended for simply lying to fellow lawyers about a case.

Cipollone and Sekulow have been around long enough to know that not one client — not even the president — is worth destroying your career over. But if they continue down this path, they should be investigated for possible ethics violations.

And if either were disbarred, Trump can’t help them. His pardon power only applies to federal crimes, not violation of state’s rules concerning lawyer’s conduct. That means their careers as lawyers will be over, forcing them to search for a new way to make a living — while Trump will continue doing what he’s doing. Is it really worth it?

Dean Obeidallah, a lawyer, hosts SiriusXM radio’s The Dean Obeidallah show and is a columnist for the Daily Beast and a CNN.com Opinion Contributor.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.