Yesterday Rudy Giuliani’s home and offices were raided by the FBI looking for his electronic devices for documentation related to his violation of FARA (The Foreign Agent Registration Act).
After months of being stymied by Trump-appointed leadership at the Justice Department, the federal investigation into Rudy Giuliani escalated with a search of his office and home Wednesday, the New York Times reported, as part of an investigation into his Ukraine-related conduct. A source familiar with the probe confirmed to TPM that a search warrant was executed on Giuliani’s office and home Wednesday morning.
Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello confirmed the searches to the Times and to the Wall Street Journal. Costello told the Journal the warrant was seeking communications that Giuliani had with John Solomon, a journalist who was a conduit in the efforts by Trump allies to smear Joe Biden in 2019. Electronic devices were seized in the search, which began at around 6 a.m. ET, according to Costello’s account to the Journal.
In response Rudy’s son Andrew gave a press conference where he complained that this was a “partisan witch hunt” and his primary ‘proof” of that was the fact the fact of what evidence they didn’t take.
Andrew stated on Newsmax:
"The one thing they did not take, was Hunter Biden’s hard drive. The one thing. I mean, tell me, what is going on here?" he asked. "Is this America anymore?"
He then addressed former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer.
"You and I have been made fun of on 'Saturday Night Live,' this is nothing -- that's nothing compared to this," Andrew Giuliani explained.
Both Rudy and Andrew should know better than this. This warrant was subject to a grand jury empaneled to investigated Rudy’s FARA violation. They have nothing to do with any investigation, which has apparently been ongoing for over two years, of Hunter Biden’s taxes. That investigation is being handled by the IRS and a different FBI team.
That team IS NOT this team. They have nothing to do with each other. It’s not feasible for one group of FBI agents with a warrant for specific devices owned by Rudy Giuliani to just decide “Oh, well since we stopped by” to also take devices — without any warrant — which may or may not relate to a completely different investigation by a completely different set of agents.
Just the very suggestion is frankly bonkers.
Rudy made the same bogus claim on Tucker last night.
Then Tucker goes on to flip the script and argues that truly Hunter Biden is the one who violated FARA because he worked for a Ukranian company and also a Chinese company. This is a misunderstanding for FARA — the issue isn’t that you went overseas and worked for an overseas company. This issue is that you worked for an overseas government, or agents of that government, within the US. It’s a blatant failure to comprehend the law.
Hunter Biden never worked for a foreign Government. Giuliani on the other hand, worked with Ukranian Lev Parnas and as I’ve previous written Parnas had connections to the Ukrainian Government and Ukrainian Mobster Dimitry Firtash.
Parnas stated that Energy Sec. Rick Perry went to Zelensky’s inaugural instead of VP Pence and later met which him and got him to agree to “investigations” but that Giuliani blew his stack when they claimed these were about general corruption. “He has to say the name Biden.”
Parnas was also involved in setting up a deal with Russian Mobster Dimitry Firtash by convincing him that Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova could help with his extradition to the US on corruption charges because they were all good friends with Bill Barr. Firtash hired Toensing and diGenova as his attorneys in exchange for providing Parnas and Giuliani with more Ukrainian dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden most of which has been totally debunked.
Giuliani had attempted to get a visa for Viktor Shokin going through Trump so that he could whine to Lindsay Graham about how Biden had him fired to protect his son Hunter — even though Shokin had formerly been investigating Burisma head Mykola Zlochevsky not Biden — but the visa application was held. They had blamed Yovanovich for his but George Kent at the Ukrainian embassy testified to blocking this visa because he was concerned that Shokin was bitter after being fired.
Kent describes Viktor Shokin, who served as prosecutor general in 2015-2016, as “a typical Ukraine prosecutor who lived a lifestyle in excess of his government salary, who never prosecuted anybody known for having committed a crime and who covered up crimes that were known to have been committed.”
He was fired under pressure from the U.S. State Department, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. His removal, Kent says, became a condition for an IMF loan guarantee.
[...]
Later, a resentful Shokin fed Giuliani the lie that he had been dismissed under pressure from then-Vice President Biden, who allegedly wanted to block an investigation into corruption by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where his son Hunter was on the board of directors.
However, Kent said, it was the State Department’s idea to engage Vice President Biden to push Poroshenko to remove Shokin. Similarly, former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had been pressured to have one of his corrupt allies, lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, resign, Kent said.
Kent specifically mentioned the Shokin visa during his testimony.
“Knowing Mr. Shokin, I had full faith that it was bunch of hooey, and he was looking to basically engage in a con game out of revenge because he’d lost his job,” Kent testified.
Kent said that Rob Blair, the deputy White House chief of staff, called the State Department to see what was going on with the visa request.
“We laid out enough frank detail about U.5. Government engagement and assessment of Mr. Shokin. And Mr. Blair said, thank you very much, I’ve heard enough,” Kent recalled.
Parnas said that Bill Barr had many conversations with Giuliani and was practically a “Member of the Team” as was Devin Nunes who he spoke with at the Trump Hotel in DC and that he had coordinated with Nunes’ staffers Derek Harvey on their efforts who was already fully aware of what they were trying to do with pushing Ukraine into investigations.
Parnas is now a witness for the FBI investigating Giuliani.
During the first Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump in January of 2020 Rep. Sylvia Garcia made the argument that Trump's primary alibi, that he was attempting to pursue a set of legitimate investigations for the benefit of the American people, was shown to be completely and totally bogus.
The nub of the conspiracy theory is that Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to have a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma fired. Biden withheld a U.S. government loan to Ukraine on the condition that the prosecutor be fired; Giuliani and others take this as evidence of bribery.
Relying on footage of testimony from the public portion of the House’s impeachment inquiry and other documentary evidence, Rep. Garcia demolished the theory, pointing out that the timeline does not add up, that Biden pushed for the prosecutor’s firing because it was “consistent with U.S. policy,” and that the loan had to do with shoring up anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Hunter Biden had nothing to do with what happened.
“Vice President Biden’s conduct was uniformly validated by the witnesses in the House investigation who confirmed his conduct was consistent with U.S. policy,” Garcia said. “Every single witness who was asked about the allegations again and said that Biden had nothing to do with it and it was false. They testified that he acted properly and every witness with knowledge of this issue testified that Vice President Biden was carrying out official U.S. policy.”
So what’s on Hunter Biden’s hard drive is completely irrelevant.
This is the weakest form of “whataboutism.”
Here’s another thing, according to the Senate report on Hunter Biden and Barisma corruption — it was Hunter Biden who reported to the FBI that the head of Barisma had apparently paid a bribe to the Ukranian prosecutor to avoid being investigated.
Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma’s board (supposedly consulting on corporate governance and transparency) when Zlochevsky allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to “shut the case against Zlochevsky.” Kent testified that this bribe occurred in December 2014 (seven months after Hunter joined Burisma’s board), and, after learning about it, he and the Resident Legal Advisor reported this allegation to the FBI.
So does it make any sense that Hunter Biden blew the whistle on his own company paying a bribe to this prosecutors office, that he would then ask his dad — which he didn’t — to have that prosecutor removed so that this prosecutor wouldn’t try to investigate him — which he didn’t?
Nope. It makes no sense at all.