Uh, oh. Rudy Giuliani is in trouble, again. It appears that when the New York federal prosecutors raided his home and office, they hit the jackpot. For a former New York mayor and the former head of the prestigious Southern District of New York (SDNY), he keeps hitting big bumps in the road and an abundance of potholes. Of course, eventually, that happens to all the people around Donald Trump.
The investigators found far more than Giuliani or they admitted after they raided his home and office. It appears that there were email and iCloud accounts with messages from two Ukrainian government officials. Not only that, the prosecutor’s investigators also retrieved a cell phone and iPad that belonged to a Ukrainian businessman. Why would Giuliani even have these devices?
The Ukrainians in question were former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, former head of the Ukrainian Fiscal Service Roman Nasirov, and businessman Alexander Levin.
A letter to the court had been unsealed, and of course, it was redacted. Except, CNN did a cut-and-paste job and managed to create a separate document, because it seems, the redaction process was faulty. By doing so, the news organization found that far more information was had been seized than previously thought.
The Business Insider reported that the letter implicated Donald Trump and a treasure chest full of politicians. It provided a wealth of details about SDNY’s ongoing Giuliani investigation.
That information linked Trump, other high White House officials, and members of the Senate and the House to the communications about the Ukraine investigation.
The newly redacted letter that CNN obtained indicated that regarding Giuliani and another Trump attorney Victoria Toensing:
‘[Federal prosecutors have] historical and prospective cell site information.’
Attorney for the Ukrainian businessman Lev Parnas, Joseph Bondy, had filed the letter representing all of the defendants’ lawyers in this case, and it was supposedly redacted. The businessman used to support Giuliani, but eventually, the ex-mayor was on this own. The purpose of that letter was to request a federal judge provide for a “status conference” that would give them the status of all the materials the investigators seized.
Bondy claimed that these materials from Toensing and Giuliani’s residences and businesses were vital to all the attorneys’ cases.
That letter conveniently included a chart, which allowed the federal prosecutors to have a list of the entire depth and breadth of the materials they were wanting to obtain and did so beginning in late 2019 and all the way through early 2021.
Bondy wrote that this collected evidence probably contained emails, texts, and even encrypted data in messages among “Giuliani, Toensing, former President Donald Trump, and former Attorney General Bill Barr:”
‘[And] high-level members of the Justice Department, Presidential impeachment attorneys Jay Sekulow, Jane Raskin and others, Senator Lindsey Graham, Congressman Devin Nunes and others, relating to the timing of the arrest and indictment of the defendants as a means to prevent potential disclosures to Congress in the first impeachment inquiry of then-President Donald. J. Trump.’
Previously, the prosecutors revealed:
‘[They had] seized 18 electronic devices from Giuliani in late April and had covertly searched his iCloud account in 2019; they also acknowledged they took Toensing’s cell phone during the April searches.’
A spokesman for The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office did not provide a comment. Parnas’ attorney, Joseph Bondy, refused to comment. An attorney for the former mayor was unavailable for comment.
