Probe of Giuliani focuses on US ambassador’s firing
Authorities seeking communications about Yovanovitch
Two years ago, Rudy Giuliani finally got one thing he had been seeking in Ukraine: The Trump administration removed the U.S. ambassador there, a woman Giuliani believed had been obstructing his efforts to dig up dirt on the Biden family.
Giuliani’s push to oust the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, not only became a focus of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, but it has now landed Giuliani in the crosshairs of a federal criminal investigation into whether he broke lobbying laws, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The long-running inquiry reached a turning point this week when FBI agents seized telephones and computers from Giuliani’s home and office in Manhattan, the people said. At least one of the warrants was seeking evidence related to Yovanovitch and her role as ambassador, the people said.
In particular, federal authorities were expected to scour the electronic devices for communications between Giuliani and Trump administration officials about the ambassador before she was recalled in April 2019, one of the people added.
The warrant also sought his communications with Ukrainian officials who had butted heads with Yovanovitch, including some of the same people who at the time were helping Giuliani seek damaging information about President Joe Biden, who was then a candidate, and his family, the people said.
At issue for investigators is a key question: Did Giuliani go after Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Trump, who was his client at the time? Or was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her removed for their own reasons?
It is a violation of federal law to lobby the United States government on behalf of foreign officials without registering with the Justice Department, and Giuliani never did so.
Even if the Ukrainians did not pay Giuliani, prosecutors could pursue the theory that they provided assistance by collecting information on the Bidens in exchange for her removal.
One of the search warrants for Giuliani’s phones and computers explicitly stated that the possible crimes under investigation included violations of the law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.
Giuliani has long denied that he did work at the behest of the Ukrainians, or that he accepted any money from them, and he has said that he did not expressly urge Trump to fire the ambassador.
Giuliani’s work to oust Yovanovitch was part of a larger effort to attack Biden and tie him to corruption in Ukraine, much of which played out in public.
But intelligence officials have long warned that Giuliani’s work in Ukraine had become ensnared with Russia’s efforts to spread disinformation about the Biden family to weaken Trump’s election rival.
The FBI stepped up its warnings about Russian disinformation before the 2020 election, including giving a defensive briefing to Giuliani, cautioning him that some of the information he was pushing on the Biden family was tainted by Russian intelligence’s efforts to spread disinformation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The FBI’s defensive briefings are given by its counterintelligence officials and are separate from the criminal inquiry of Giuliani’s activities. The defensive briefing was reported Thursday by The Washington Post.
But the warnings to Giuliani are not surprising. Senior officials had warned Trump in late 2019 that Giuliani was pushing Russian disinformation, and the intelligence community had warned the American public that Moscow’s intelligence services were trying to hurt Biden’s election chances by spreading information about his family’s work in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, after FBI agents seized his devices, Giuliani again denied any wrongdoing. He said the search warrants demonstrated a “corrupt double standard” on the part of the Justice Department, which he accused of ignoring “blatant crimes” by Democrats, including Biden.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, said his client had twice offered to answer prosecutors’ questions, except those regarding Giuliani’s privileged communications with the former president.
The warrants do not accuse Giuliani of wrongdoing, but they underscore his legal peril: They indicate a judge has found that investigators have probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that the search would turn up evidence of that crime.
The investigation grew out of a case against two Soviet-born businessmen, who had helped Giuliani search for damaging information about Biden and his son, Hunter. At the time, Hunter Biden served on the board of an energy company that did business in Ukraine.
In 2019, the businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were charged in Manhattan, along with two others, with unrelated campaign finance crimes. A trial is scheduled for October.