Federal Investigators Search Rudy Giuliani's Apartment Over Ukraine Ties
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Rudy Giuliani's apartment as part of a probe into the former New York City mayor's activities involving Ukraine, his attorney told NPR.
Updated April 28, 2021 at 2:11 PM ET
Robert Costello said the FBI conducted the raid at Giuliani's apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan at around 6 a.m. and seized electronic devices. He said the search warrants are connected to an investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act tied to Giuliani's Ukraine-related work.
The news was first reported by The New York Times.
The activities of the former mayor and prosecutor, who later became the personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump, was the focus of attention during Trump's first impeachment trial in 2020 related to the Ukraine scandal.
Giuliani also played a key role in amplifying falsehoods about the 2020 election and orchestrated many of Trump's attempts to overturn the results. Those efforts led to Trump's second impeachment trial after he left office.
The raid amounts to a dramatic change of fortune for a man who made his name as the top federal prosecutor in New York City, pursuing Wall Street insiders who broke the law for personal profit in the 1980s.
Two of Giuliani's business associates have already been indicted on counts that include campaign finance violations and false statements.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are accused of illegally funneling foreign money to a U.S. congressman for help in ousting the woman who then was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Parnas and Fruman also helped introduce Giuliani to influential people in Ukraine as he tried to dig up unflattering information in 2019 for use against now-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter as Biden was launching his presidential campaign.
Costello said subpoenas indicate investigators are seeking Giuliani's communications with a long list of individuals, including Parnas and Fruman, as well as the journalist John Solomon, who helped amplify Giuliani's claims tied to Ukraine.
Giuliani's involvement took place before, during and then after the core events of the Ukraine affair in 2019 in which Trump ordered assistance be frozen to extract concessions from Ukraine's government.
Ultimately the aid was released, and Ukrainian officials did not give Trump the political ammunition he wanted — but Democrats nonetheless called the exchange an abuse of power and impeached Trump.
Hunter Biden's payments by a Ukrainian company at the time his father was vice president have embarrassed the family, but investigators have concluded that no laws were broken.
America's former mayor
Giuliani, a two-term mayor of New York, rose to international prominence after he steered the city through tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes piloted by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center.
His later efforts to win higher office, in the U.S. Senate and the Republican nomination for the White House, floundered.
In recent years, Giuliani monetized his reputation for security and policing into lucrative side ventures. But it's his close association with Trump and his financial dealings with foreign governments that drew American law enforcement scrutiny. [Copyright 2021 NPR]
