Re: Rudy Giuliani
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:12 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.htmlFederal agents execute search warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s home
Rudy Giuliani set out to Ukraine to vindicate the president. Instead, he helped set an impeachment scandal in motion.
By Shayna Jacobs, Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey April 28, 2021 at 7:25 p.m. UTC
NEW YORK — Federal agents executed a search warrant Wednesday at the Manhattan home of Rudolph W. Giuliani, seizing his electronic devices as part of a long-running investigation into whether the one-time New York mayor and attorney for former president Donald Trump acted as an unregistered foreign agent, according to people familiar with the matter. Such a search involving a high-profile lawyer marks a dramatic step forward in the probe, which has centered around Giuliani’s activities involving Ukraine and whether he sought to influence U.S. policy toward that country. Giuliani, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, could not immediately be reached for comment. Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, confirmed via text message that a search warrant for Giuliani’s devices had been executed. A spokesman for Trump did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and a lawyer for the Trump organization declined to comment. Spokesmen for the FBI and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. The development was first reported by the New York Times.
The investigation into Giuliani revolves around his interactions with Ukrainian figures ahead of last year’s presidential election, as he sought information that might prove politically damaging to then-candidate Joe Biden and pressed for the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine. Two of Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were charged with campaign-finance violations in 2019. Both men, Soviet emigres who aided Giuliani’s efforts to look for political dirt on Biden, have pleaded not guilty in the case brought by federal prosecutors in New York. Joseph Bondy, an attorney for Parnas, declined to comment on the development in Giuliani’s case. Parnas and David Correia, another defendant originally charged in the alleged campaign-finance scheme, were indicted on additional charges in September. Prosecutors have accused them of defrauding at least seven investors in Fraud Guarantee, a defunct insurance start-up for which they raised more than $2 million in investments, saying it was not a functional entity. Giuliani was hired as a consultant for Fraud Guarantee and paid $500,000 in October 2018, according to court papers, which do not identify him by name. Correia has pleaded guilty for his role in the corporate “risk management” scam and was sentenced in February to a year in prison. All charges are still pending against Parnas, who has pleaded not guilty.
For much of 2019 and 2020, Giuliani was a source of great consternation within the Justice Department, as officials questioned whether he was acting at times on behalf of Trump or on behalf of Ukrainian interests, according to former officials who, like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive and ongoing investigation. Wanting to distance the department from the president’s personal lawyer while Giuliani was enmeshed in a criminal investigation, then-Attorney General William P. Barr set up a separate channel for Giuliani to offer authorities information about Biden and his family. At the time, Trump and Giuliani were urging the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who worked on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father oversaw the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. As part of that pressure campaign, Trump personally appealed to his Ukrainian counterpart in a July 2019 phone call, leading to the first of Trump’s two impeachments. The Democratic-controlled House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was later acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.
How the impeachment inquiry has revealed a long and murky campaign to oust a veteran U.S. ambassador
For more than two years, Giuliani wove back and forth between American and Ukrainian politics, trying to paint a portrait of Democratic officials engaged in corrupt bargains with Ukrainian leaders, often leading to criticism that he was the one engaged in an improper influence campaign. Parnas and Fruman helped connect Giuliani with former Ukrainian officials who claimed it was their country rather than Russia that had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and that a Ukrainian government investigation into Hunter Biden had been quashed under questionable circumstances. In so doing, Giuliani became a fierce critic of Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
One of Yovanovitch’s biggest adversaries was Yuri Lutsenko, Ukraine’s former prosecutor-general. Giuliani met with Lutsenko in New York in 2019 to discuss the possibility that Ukraine would open a new investigation into the 2016 U.S. election or Burisma, the energy company whose board of directors included Hunter Biden. Notes from Lutsenko’s meeting with Giuliani that were turned over to the State Department’s inspector general and submitted to lawmakers show that Lutsenko also discussed Yovanovitch. Giuliani’s displeasure with Yovanovitch appears to have grown when State Department officials declined to issue a visa to another Ukrainian, former prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who wanted to travel to the United States to meet with him. Trump recalled Yovanovitch from Ukraine in April 2019, as his pressure campaign for a Biden investigation ramped up. Her dismissal played a significant role in Trump’s impeachment hearings.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping is making the most of the news about Rudy Giuliani, trolling him over latest developments from the federal criminal investigation he faces.
Investigators executed a search warrant of Giuliani’s apartment on Wednesday, confiscating several of his electronic devices for their probe into his alleged violations of U.S. lobbying laws. The news instantly made waves among the political media, and the former Donald Trump personal attorney responded to the search by denouncing it as “legal thuggery.”
Reporters swiftly converged on Giuliani’s apartment in Manhattan to carry the story, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping used it for their own ends on Twitter as they mockingly commented “Wrong apartment. We kicked him out months ago.”
But Giuliani deleted the tweet within minutes, and once the time came for his radio hit, he was nowhere to be seen or heard.
Instead, Dominic Carter, a regular WABC Radio host, stepped in to fill the 3 p.m. slot.
Adding to the confusion, Carter was under the impression all along that he was going to stand in for Giuliani.
“It’s about to go down. Special *Debate* coverage for NYCMayor starts in minutes at 3 p.m. I’m in for Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” Carter tweeted at 2:30 p.m.
Volkonski wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:43 pm Rudy W. Giuliani
@RudyGiuliani
Tune in to http://WABCradio.com at 3 PM EST for a live statement from Rudy Giuliani.
Eh. Michael Cohen said much the same thing when his office was raided. It's pretty typical defense rhetoric in the wake of a search warrant (especially in a political case) to accuse the investigators of acting vindictively or in bad faith.sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:11 pm A legally issued and executed search warrant is "legal thuggery" but what he did was hunky dory. Got it.
IIRC this Costello fellow and another lawyer paid a visit to Cohen saying they could help him out.fierceredpanda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:21 pmEh. Michael Cohen said much the same thing when his office was raided. It's pretty typical defense rhetoric in the wake of a search warrant (especially in a political case) to accuse the investigators of acting vindictively or in bad faith.sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:11 pm A legally issued and executed search warrant is "legal thuggery" but what he did was hunky dory. Got it.
Bernie Kerik on behalf of Rudy fucking Giuliani - the two men who practically invented the "perp walk" and thought that mass arrests constituted an effective policy for ending homelessness - wants us to know that the Feds have really gone too far in publicly besmirching a soon-to-be defendant and misusing law enforcement resources.“I find it extremely concerning that the mayor has been attempting to cooperate through his attorney, Mr. Costello, for almost two years and they ignored those attempts, only to show up today to execute a search warrant for materials and all they had to do was ask for it, which raises the question as to why the search warrant was executed,” Kerik said. “Why did they send seven people to his house?"
Four Seasons Total Landscaping is making the most of the news about Rudy Giuliani, trolling him over latest developments from the federal criminal investigation he faces.
Investigators executed a search warrant of Giuliani’s apartment on Wednesday, confiscating several of his electronic devices for their probe into his alleged violations of U.S. lobbying laws. The news instantly made waves among the political media, and the former Donald Trump personal attorney responded to the search by denouncing it as “legal thuggery.”
Reporters swiftly converged on Giuliani’s apartment in Manhattan to carry the story, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping used it for their own ends on Twitter as they mockingly commented “Wrong apartment. We kicked him out months ago.”