Federal Investigators Raid Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan Apartment

By Kelly McLaughlin and Sonam Sheth, Business Insider

28 April 21

ederal investigators raided former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan apartment on Wednesday and seized his electronic devices, The New York Times reported. The Associated Press has since confirmed the news.

Investigators executed the raid after obtaining a search warrant, and it was part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Giuliani's foreign dealings in Ukraine, sources told The Times. The outlet reported that investigators had been trying to secure a search warrant against Giuliani for months but that former President Donald Trump's Justice Department quashed their efforts.

The investigation into Giuliani, who serves as Trump's personal lawyer, resumed in earnest last month, and the Justice Department lifted its objection to the warrant after Merrick Garland was confirmed as attorney general.

Prosecutors have been scrutinizing Giuliani's activities in Ukraine since at least 2019 and are said to be examining if he broke foreign lobbying laws while working as Trump's lawyer. The FBI's investigation also includes a counterintelligence aspect that veteran prosecutors said suggests the FBI may see Giuliani as a national security threat.

Two sources familiar with the investigation told The Times that investigators are looking into Giuliani's role in the recall of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, who was a foreign service officer for 33 years before being abruptly removed from her post in spring 2019.

In October 2019, Yovanovitch appeared for a nine-hour, closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill related to the first impeachment inquiry into Trump. In her opening statement, she said that then-Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told her she "had done nothing wrong" but that there was a "concerted campaign" to oust her, and that the department had been "under pressure from the President to remove [her] since Summer of 2018."

Shortly before news of the investigation into Giuliani broke, two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested — also in October 2019 — on suspicion of trying to funnel foreign money into a pro-Trump super PAC and other entities to gain leverage in US political circles. Prosecutors also allege Parnas and Fruman tried to influence US-Ukraine relations.

CNN reported that investigators from the Manhattan US attorney's office approached Kevin McCallion, an attorney in New York, earlier in 2019 to ask about Giuliani's link to Parnas and Fruman.

Giuliani has admitted that he sought dirt on political adversaries, including President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, along with Yovanovitch, and had contact with former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. He has also been instrumental in amplifying the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election — a bogus talking point that was started by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

And last year, The Washington Post reported that US officials warned the White House that Russian intelligence services were using Giuliani to funnel disinformation to Trump.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) stipulates that American citizens notify the Justice Department of any contacts they have with foreign governments or officials, and if they interact with the US government or media at the direction of those officials.

Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.