President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, filed an application for pro hac vice admission to serve as an attorney on Trump’s legal team in one Pennsylvania election lawsuit.
It wasn’t long before people pointed out that this would mark Giuliani's first time serving as an attorney in a court case since 1992, nearly 30 years ago.
Has it really been that long since Giuliani has been an attorney in court?
THE QUESTION
Was 1992 the last time Rudy Giuliani was an attorney in a court case?
THE ANSWER
According to online records from the government’s PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), yes.
WHAT WE FOUND
An advanced search (there’s a small fee for such a search) on PACER for parties involved in cases bring back four cases in which Giuliani served as an attorney, all between 1987 and 1992.
His biography as mayor for New York City on its website shows that this lines up with the timeline of his career. In 1983, he became the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York before he eventually left to run for mayor of New York City in 1989. He lost his first campaign and was an attorney at a private practice before he ran for New York City mayor again in 1993 and won.
Following his tenure as mayor, various online summaries of his career say he was part of a consulting firm before competing in the 2008 Republican presidential primary. He failed to win the primaries and later became Trump’s personal lawyer.
According to the Cornell Legal Information Institute, "pro hac vice is a legal term for adding an attorney to a case in a jurisdiction in which he or she is not licensed to practice in such a way that the attorney does not commit unauthorized practice of law."
Giuliani has requested to appear in court pro hac vice before -- in a 2018 case where a personal assistant was charged in an insurance fraud case. In an interview with the Miami Herald at the time, he said he “came to show the court she is just a young woman who made a mistake, like a character witness if you wish.”
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