FBI raids Guiliani’s apartment, seizes electronics
Federal agents carried out a search warrant of Rudy Guiliani’s Manhattan home office on Wednesday.
Guiliani is the subject of an ongoing probe led by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York regarding his dealings in Ukraine during the Trump presidency. Sources told ABC News that electronic devices, including Giuliani’s cellphone, were confiscated during the raid.
Giuliani began serving as President Donald Trumps attorney in 2018 in connection with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Prior to working in the White House, he was Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He became a prominent public figure in the 1980s as the top federal prosecutor attorney in Manhattan, where he put leaders of five New York Mafia families in prison and successfully prosecuted Wall Street’s “junk bond king,” Michael Milken.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, confirmed the raid and told The Wall Street Journal the search warrant was seeking any communications between Giuliani and people including John Solomon, a columnist for Just The News who was in communication with Giuliani about his efforts to get information regarding a possible investigation by Ukraine into Biden.
“What they did today was legal thuggery. Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City, and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States,” Costello said.
“This is a seismic moment in the investigation,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
“It’s a big deal to execute a search warrant concerning an attorney because of issues of attorney-client privilege,” she added. “It’s a bigger deal to execute a search warrant of an attorney who worked for the former president.”
The investigation into Giuliani appears to be related to charges against two of his former business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The FBI arrested Parnas and Fruman on unrelated campaign finance charges in 2019. An indictment by a Manhattan grand jury alleged, in part, that they participated in a scheme to oust the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch “at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”
Foreign lobbying laws require individuals to tell the Justice Department if they’re lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of foreign entities.
This is a developing story.