Giuliani suspended from YouTube over election conspiracies again, days after returning to platform

Giuliani is facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit from a voting technology company for spreading election conspiracies

Rudy Giuliani, who was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has been suspended from YouTube again for spreading election misinformation.

After the November 2020 elections, the former mayor of New York was one of the high profile allies of Mr Trump who made unsubstantiated voter fraud claims. Mr Giuliani handled the legal challenge to election results with several cases across the US but remained unsuccessful.

It is for the second time in 2021 that the attorney of the former president has been suspended. He was earlier suspended from the video sharing platform in January 2021 for election misinformation.

A YouTube spokesperson said in a statement that they removed content from Mr Giuliani’s channel for violating the “presidential election integrity policy” and promoting nicotine, reported Bloomberg News. The report stated that in videos he had falsely claimed the presidential race was stolen.  

“Additionally, in accordance with our long-standing strikes system, we issued a strike against the Rudy W Giuliani channel, which temporarily restricts uploading or live-streaming,” said the spokesperson.

According to YouTube’s mechanism, a user loses uploading privileges for two weeks if found to be violating the company’s policy for the second time within 90 days.

As a result, Mr Giuliani will now not be allowed to upload new videos for two weeks and if he is found violating the rule again in 90 days, his channel will be permanently shut down.

He is also accused of inciting violence during the 6 January Capitol riots as he told Trump supporters to have “trial by combat” over the election being allegedly stolen from Donald Trump.

Fox News, Mr Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell are facing a $2.7bn (£1.94bn) lawsuit filed by the voting technology company Smartmatic USA after the network ran reports alleging that the firm conspired with Venezuela’s socialist government to steal the 2020 elections from Mr Trump.

Dominion Voting Systems has also sued Mr Giuliani, as well as Ms Powell, for $1.3bn (£935m).