Advertisement

Feds Won’t Indict Giuliani After Raiding Home, Seizing Devices

Advertisement

OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


The Justice Department has made its decision over whether former Trump lawyer and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani will be indicted. More than a year after the FBI raided his apartment and seized a collection of electronic devices, federal prosecutors noted in a court filing in Manhattan that he won’t be facing criminal charges, the New York Post reported.

The outlet noted further that an independent special master had been appointed earlier to look over the materials that were seized. Prosecutors and Giuliani’s defense attorney had submitted letters throughout the process updating a federal judge in Manhattan on where the investigation stood.

On Monday, federal prosecutors filed documents informing U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken, an Obama appointee, that no charges were forthcoming.

“The Government writes to notify the Court that the grand jury investigation that led to the issuance of the above-referenced warrants has concluded and that based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” the prosecutors noted.

Interestingly, there is a Ukraine connection, according to The Post:

Advertisement

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York had been investigating Giuliani’s relationship with a former top prosecutor from Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, a source told The Post soon after his Manhattan apartment was raided. The source said the feds were probing if Giuliani represented Lutsenko — a central figure in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — in some capacity and violated the foreign agents’ registration act. Lutsenko was one of several Ukrainian officials who reportedly fed Giuliani potentially damaging information about Trump’s political rivals.

Trump’s first impeachment was linked to a conversation he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he was accused of withholding military aid until the Ukrainian leader agreed to launch an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. The Senate acquitted Trump.

In late August, Giuliani addressed the raid on his apartment as well as the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier in the month.

“The affidavit they had for my search warrant — although discovered nothing illegal; thank God, everything got sent back to me — but at least it was narrow to electronics,” he told Newsmax TV’s Rita Cosby. “This, I mean, they took [Trump’s] passport. Everything here should be suppressed. In other words, I actually believe this could never be used in a criminal case.

“This is a general search warrant. Search warrants are supposed to be for a specific thing,” he said.

“This is about as illegal search as you’re going to get,” he continued, adding that the Justice Department took its time to seek the raid though officials claimed that the situation at the former president’s estate was urgent.

“A warrant is supposed to be exigent circumstances — emergency — 11 days for an emergency?” Giuliani told Cosby. “And then the FBI took three days off to execute it, and this is important?

“Don’t we do things that are important, fast? Right? Don’t we do things that are unimportant, slow?” he asked.

Advertisement

Giuliani also suggested that the portions of the Trump affidavit that are redacted — which was most of the document released by the DoJ following the raid — are not damning to Trump; otherwise, those sections would not have been hidden.

“The more that’s there, the worse it is, the more general it will be,” he said before mocking the government’s insinuations that the former president had illegally taken presidential documents from the White House.

“He did the packing? That sounds stupid; did they really think he did the packing?” Giuliani asked.

“It’s act four of five of the whole plot they started when they tried to say he was in collusion with the Russians,” he said, going on to predict that the raid will be more politically damaging to the Biden administration than to Trump.

Test your skills with this Quiz!

“Every time they have a bombshell, it turned out almost [to] be favorable to us,” Giuliani said. “This may turn out to be favorable in the long run.”

Following the FBI’s raid last year on his office and Manhattan apartment, Giuliani accused the Biden DOJ of a “corrupt double standard,” adding that the department was “running roughshod over the constitutional rights of anyone involved in, or legally defending, former President Donald J. Trump.”

“Mr. Giuliani respects the law, and he can demonstrate that his conduct as a lawyer and a citizen was absolutely legal and ethical,” the statement added, according to the AP.

Advertisement