Federal agents in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudy Giuliani, stepping up a criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices, according to The Times.
As noted in the report, “Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president, and it marks a major turning point in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani.”
Federal authorities have been largely focused on whether the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping Giuliani search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals, including President Biden, who was then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The US Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI had for months sought to secure a search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s phones. But senior political Trump appointees in the Justice Department repeatedly sought to block such a warrant, slowing the investigation as it was gaining momentum last year, The New York Times reported.
The Justice Department lifted its objection to the search After Merrick B. Garland was confirmed as President Biden’s attorney general, The Times reports.
Read more at The New York Times.
