Rudy's squirming

And I assume getting his passport papers in order. 

Rudy Giuliani gave his first interview on Thursday following the FBI searches of his home and office, telling Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the DOJ had “spied on me.”

During a sprawling interview, the former lawyer to the former president spun a yarn in which the DOJ was engaged in a multi-year, politically motivated prosecution.

[...]

Giuliani said twice during the show, however, that he had a way out: since exiting the New York City mayoralty in 2001, he had inserted into his contracts with various foreign businessmen and governments a provision that declared that, whatever he was doing for them, it wasn’t lobbying.

  TPM

LOLOLOL

“I never, ever represented a foreign national,” Giuliani said. “In fact, I have in my contracts a refusal to do it because from the time I got out of being mayor, I did not want to lobby.”

Giuliani added that “I’ve had contracts in countries like Ukraine, in the contract there is a clause that says I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation.”

“I don’t do it because I felt it would be too compromising,” the former mayor said.

The FBI warned Rudolph W. Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President Biden politically ahead of last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter.

The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials.

[...]

Defensive briefings are given to people to alert them that they are being targeted by foreign governments for malign purposes, former officials said. But they’re also used “to see how they respond to that,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. “They’re now on notice.”

[...]

The warning, made by counterintelligence agents, was separate from the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal probe, but it reflects a broader concern by U.S. intelligence and federal investigators that Giuliani — among other influential Americans and U.S. institutions — was being manipulated by the Russian government to promote its interests and that he appears to have brazenly disregarded such fears.

Despite the alert, Giuliani went forward in December 2019 with a planned trip to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where he met with a Ukrainian lawmaker whom the U.S. government later labeled “an active Russian agent” and sanctioned on grounds he was running an “influence campaign” against Biden. That operation, officials said, involved Ukrainian officials and political consultants who the U.S. intelligence community has since concluded were acting as Russian proxies not only to smear Biden and derail his candidacy but also to curtail U.S. support for Ukraine.

[...]

The FBI last summer also gave what is known as a defensive briefing to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who ahead of the election used his perch as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to investigate Biden’s dealings with Ukraine while he was vice president and his son Hunter Biden held a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, recalled receiving a vague warning from FBI briefers in August, but he said Thursday that there was no substance to their cautionary message and that he did not view the meeting as a “defensive briefing” on his oversight of the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.

  WaPo

Dirtbag.   [See *Update below]

Johnson and staffers to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), another Trump ally in the Senate who aided Johnson with his probe, said that in separate briefings earlier in 2020, FBI officials assured them there was no reason to discontinue their inquiry into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. It is not the bureau’s place to tell lawmakers what to investigate or not, or whether to stop or start an investigation, former FBI officials said.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Jesus Christ, the man is a lawyer, ffs.*

UPDATE:

Oooh, boy.  I'm guessing the investigators have this just about sewed up. 

*UPDATE:

/2 First let's review what a federal search warrant means. It means that the feds provided a sworn affidavit to a magistrate judge showing that there is probable cause to believe these specific locations have evidence of a specified federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/4 Federal magistrate judges are, in my experience, **decent** at reviewing search warrant applications, particularly for problem locations like a lawyer's office. That means they are not as rubber-stampy as they might be in other circumstances and sometimes turn it down....

/5 ....at least in part, for instance, by rejecting a particular location or a request to look for a particular set of items or documents, or not allowing it to be done at night. Sometimes they make the feds go back and rework it a bit.

/6 This is in sharp contrast to state judges, who in my experience will sign a warrant even if the entirety of the probable cause statement is "you have beautiful thighs."

/7 So ANYWAY, we know that a federal magistrate judge was convinced there's probable cause that Rudy's home and office had evidence of a federal crime. But which crime, and based on what?

/8 Well, RUDY knows better than we do -- because RUDY now has a copy of the warrant -- the document saying "you can search these locations for this evidence of violation of these laws." Note that's NOT the affidavit -- he doesn't get that unless someone screws up.

/9 If we see the warrant -- someone leaks it, or Rudy hands it out because he's legally incontinent -- we'll see what specific federal laws they think were broken, which will tell us something about the investigation. We should also see what they searched for, which tells more.

/10 Rudy will also get a receipt of the things taken. Again, if that gets leaked or dropped by Rudy, we'll see the feds' (usually unhelpfully vague) descriptions of what they took.

/11 We can also tell things from the fact that there was also a search warrant for Victoria Toensing's home, apparently for her phone. That helps us narrow down what the search could be about.

/12 All of this may be corroborated by grand jury subpoenas (if they are leaked or publicized by people who get them), which will further detail what docs are being sought and what statutes are allegedly violated.

/13 Because Rudy is a lawyer, technically, we also know that the warrant required high-level approval. This could not be just some local AUSA power tripping. This went up the chain and got approved.

/14 Beyond that, we enter into the realm of (a) speculation (b) statements by unnamed sources of uncertain reliability and (c) talking head bullshit. /end

Toensing is widely presumed to have elicited federal interest viz. the Giuliani investigation due to her own representation of Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash and other Ukrainian nationals who played a role in attempting to disseminate information deemed harmful to then-candidate Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

“This makes sense because, during the Ukraine impeachment investigation, we obtained draft retainer agreements between a Ukrainian official and Toensing and diGenova that Giuliani brokered,” Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel for the House impeachment inquiry, said on Twitter.

Firtash himself is currently under a federal indictment, but the role played by Toensing and diGenova is believed to go a bit further than a typical attorney-client relationship.

  Law & Crime

UPDATE: So here's an article regarding the specifics of the search warrant, according to "people familiar with the matter" :

The search warrants executed by federal investigators on Wednesday at Mr. Giuliani’s New York City apartment and office sought evidence related to Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whom Mr. Giuliani pushed to oust in the spring of 2019, as well as communications with any U.S. government officials or employees regarding the former ambassador or her position, the people said.

[...]

The warrants also sought communications with or regarding associates who worked with Mr. Giuliani to push for Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster and for an investigation by Ukrainian authorities into the Biden family’s activities in the country, the people familiar with the warrants said.

[...]

The warrants specifically sought evidence related to former Ukrainian prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko, former Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the people said.

[...]

The warrant also sought evidence related to three Giuliani associates who were arrested in 2019 on campaign-finance charges— Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and David Correia—as well as two lawyers close to Mr. Giuliani, Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, and conservative columnist John Solomon. Investigators on Wednesday executed a search warrant for Ms. Toensing’s phone.

[...]

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman have pleaded not guilty to the campaign-finance charges and are tentatively scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Mr. Correia pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in February to a year and a day in prison for lying to federal election authorities and for duping investors in a fraud-insurance company.

  WSJ

*UPDATE:

UPDATE 9/11/21:

Igor Fruman found guilty in Trump campaign charge

UPDATE 10/24/21:

Lev Parnas found guilty in Trump campaign charge