On Wednesday, the U.S. feds raided the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, noted flask with legs and former personal attorney to ex-President Donald Trump. According to one of Giuliani’s neighbours at his Upper East Side apartment building, the agents in question seized and “were bringing out a lot of stuff.”
Witness to the FBI raid of Rudy Giuliani’s apartment: “They were bringing out a lot of stuff.” pic.twitter.com/t3nbRnpX1p
— The Recount (@therecount) April 28, 2021
Search warrants require investigators to provide a judge with sufficient reason to believe a crime may have been committed, and the bar is higher when the target is an attorney, even one of Giuliani’s… stature.
Gizmodo called and texted a phone number that Giuliani has used in the past to determine whether or not the search warrants executed on Wednesday were related to, as the New York Times reported, the suspicion that he was picking up a little illegal scratch on the side by working for Ukrainian officials or businesses that shared Trump’s interest in removing U.S. ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch. Curiously, we didn’t hear back!
Trump wanted Yovanovitch out of the way because she was perceived as an obstacle to his efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating Joe Biden — one that Giuliani spearheaded, and was the subject of Trump’s record-setting second impeachment. The Times wrote the feds have been interested in Rudy’s simultaneous discussions to take on hundreds of thousands in consulting business with Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, who also wanted Yovanovitch removed and has repeatedly attracted the attention of authorities. The paper suggested the investigation may centre around the Foreign Agents Registration, which prohibits influencing or lobbying the U.S. government in coordination with foreign officials without disclosure to the Justice Department.
(Giuliani says he turned down the deal, but Giuliani says a lot of things, sometimes while farting and literally melting. After an exhilarating series of failed legal efforts to have courts overturn the 2020 election results, Trump reportedly refused to pay and fired him.)
This afternoon, Giuliani tweeted that he would address the situation in a 3:00 p.m. statement on his 77 WABC radio show, but the hour was instead dedicated to “special programming” on the NYC mayoral election by substitute host Dominic Carter. Rudy then deleted the tweet, making it clear that the famously chatty attorney might actually be listening to his own attorneys this time or is otherwise, uh, indisposed.
No formal charges have been announced against Giuliani.
It’s also possible that the feds are interested not only in Giuliani’s Ukrainian dealings, but theoretically the dozens of other felonies it’s reasonable to suspect he’s committed over the years. According to Los Angeles Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman, other Trump/Giuliani associates with ties to Ukraine were raided on Wednesday. CNN reported, “investigators seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices,” but Rudy should have nothing to worry about because he’s a self-declared cybersecurity expert.
Anyhow, we’d really appreciate it if Giuliani and/or the FBI could pick up their phone and get back to us. We’re sure this is all a little mixup that can all be cleared up right away. We’ll even take an arse-dial.