Last year the FBI raided Giuliani's home. A year later he's still under investigation
It's been exactly one year since federal agents searched the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, the former lawyer for President Trump and a key Trump ally.
In the 12 months that followed, Giuliani has not been charged with any crimes, but there is no indication the high-profile probe is winding down.
Earlier this month, Giuliani was reported to have helped investigators by unlocking several devices. Meanwhile, a retired judge appointed by the court spent months reviewing Giuliani's claims of privilege over seized materials.
While prosecutors have said little about their work, Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, indicated in a court filing last August that investigators are focused on Giuliani's activities in Ukraine in 2018 and 2019, when he was a key player in an effort to gather materials harmful to the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden. Costello's filing specifically mentions former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was the target of a smear campaign amplified by Giuliani.
Giuliani told the New Yorker for an article in December 2019: "I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."
Giuliani had been under investigation by prosecutors in New York since about 2019 when they charged two of his associates
Giuliani had been under investigation by the Southern District of New York since at least 2019, when prosecutors from the same office Giuliani once ran charged two associates of Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with campaign finance crimes (they have since been convicted.) Subpoenas issued at the time and reviewed by the Wall Street Journal indicated prosecutors were simultaneously examining Giuliani's overseas business dealings.
Also that fall, the House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry against President Trump for "soliciting the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States presidential election to his advantage."
A parade of witnesses described Giuliani playing a key role in that effort, with the help of Parnas and Fruman. Giuliani refused to be interviewed by investigators.
Trump was impeached, but acquitted in his Senate trial.
The following year, Giuliani represented Trump, this time in his effort to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani promoted baseless claims there had been widespread fraud. He has since been sued by voting technology companies Smartmatic and Dominion, and by elections officials in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Giuliani's lawyer described the FBI's move as "legal thuggery"
In 2021, Giuliani suffered a series of setbacks. In January, The Washington Post reported that Trump was no longer covering Giuliani's legal expenses. The following month, a Trump aide, Jason Miller, said Giuliani was no longer representing Trump as an attorney.
Since then, courts in New York and Washington, D.C., have suspended Giuliani's law licenses.
On the morning of April 28, FBI agents showed up at Giuliani's Manhattan home with a warrant to search the apartment and his office. They seized 18 electronic devices. Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, described the move as "legal thuggery."
As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, Giuliani built a media-friendly profile, staging "perp walks" and taking on prosecutions of mob bosses and Wall Street figures.
In 1993, New Yorkers elected him mayor. Giuliani further built his tough-on-crime reputation with aggressive policing policies. In September 2001, in the final months of Giuliani's second and final term as mayor, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. Giuliani projected calm while connecting with people's pain. Oprah dubbed him "America's Mayor."
In the years that followed, Giuliani built a business giving speeches and lending his imprimatur to policing and security projects around the world. A campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination for president fizzled, but he continued to make speeches, endorse products and work for international clients.
In 2016, Giuliani became a prominent surrogate for the Trump campaign. In 2018, President Trump took him on as his personal attorney to respond to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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Transcript
A MARTINEZ, HOST:
It's been exactly one year since federal prosecutors in Manhattan raided the apartment of the man who once led the U.S. attorney's office there. And that's Rudy Giuliani. For the past 12 months, lawyers have been sifting through the evidence gathered that day. And that's not the only challenge, in and out of court, that Giuliani faces. NPR's Andrea Bernstein has been covering the legal drama. Andrea, take us back to last April. What happened back then?
ANDREA BERNSTEIN, BYLINE: So good morning. A year ago today, FBI agents paid a 6 a.m. call on the former prosecutor and New York mayor. They took cell phones and computers. They were looking to see if there was evidence that Giuliani had illegally lobbied on behalf of parties in Ukraine or if he tried to get the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, fired because of that lobbying. And while we still don't know exactly the basis of the search warrant, we do know that prosecutors had to have a high degree of certainty they'd find what they were looking for in order to even do this raid. It was a remarkable turnaround for the former U.S. attorney, Rudy Giuliani. I mean, his picture still hangs on the wall in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, along with all the other former U.S. attorneys.
MARTINEZ: Is it unusual for the office to take so long to take any action after a raid?
BERNSTEIN: So prosecutors who've worked in that office tell me no. They say there's been a lot of digital evidence to parse through. There was also a so-called special master appointed this year to see if there were any issues of privilege. So to them, this seems like a normal amount of time.
MARTINEZ: OK. Now, this isn't the only legal difficulty for someone who was once the personal attorney to former President Trump. Is it?
BERNSTEIN: No, not at all. About two months after that raid - and embarrassing for Rudy Giuliani - his license to practice law was suspended in New York and then later in Washington. The New York court found, quote, "uncontroverted evidence" that Giuliani communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large regarding the 2020 election. In fact, after the election, Giuliani personally argued a case himself in Pennsylvania. It was one of the first times he'd been in a courtroom in front of a judge in that way in a quarter century and as it turned out the last time before the license suspensions.
MARTINEZ: Yeah, false accounts about voter fraud got him slapped with another lawsuit, this one by Dominion Voting Systems. Tell us about that one.
BERNSTEIN: Yeah, this is a defamation suit. And Dominion is suing Giuliani and others for $1.6 billion, accusing the defendants of harming their business through their post-2020 election lies that Dominion had stolen votes and fixed the election. This case is really going to be a test of whether, as a lawyer representing a client, your claims have to be true. And so far, Dominion's case has survived a motion to dismiss, which means that their lawyers get to demand more evidence from Giuliani.
MARTINEZ: And there's another case in which two election workers are also accusing Rudy Giuliani of defamation. What's that one about?
BERNSTEIN: So this one stems from the same thing. It's lying about alleged stolen ballots in Georgia. But this time it's not a huge company with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts at stake. It's two elections workers, working people who were harassed after being baselessly accused of election fraud. One of them had to flee her home after she got death threats.
MARTINEZ: And how does the House committee investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol fit into all of this?
BERNSTEIN: Yes. So we know that they're asking about what Giuliani was doing that day and about his contacts with the former president. While there's no indication that the Justice Department is looking at Giuliani's actions, we do know the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said he will follow those riot cases as far as they lead. Now, Giuliani and his attorneys have denied wrongdoing in all the matters we've discussed today.
MARTINEZ: If Rudy Giuliani is no longer practicing law, what is he doing?
BERNSTEIN: So even before his law license was suspended, Trump's spokesperson said Giuliani was no longer working for Trump. So for now, he's podcasting. He's campaigning for his son, Andrew Giuliani, who's running for governor in New York. And most recently, he was unmasked from the Jack in the Box costume on the TV show "The Masked Singer."
MARTINEZ: That's NPR's Andrea Bernstein. Thanks a lot.
BERNSTEIN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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