In a development that would have been shocking just a couple of years ago, the Biden Department of Justice has raided the home and office of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Federal agents served warrants at Giuliani’s Madison Avenue apartment and Park Avenue office Wednesday, seizing computers and cell phones. The raids were part of an escalating federal investigation into Giuliani’s dealing in Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.
A total of three warrants were served Wednesday in connection with Giuliani. The two warrants authorizing the searches and seizures at the former New York mayor’s home and office “required approval from the top levels of the Justice Department,” according to the AP, and “signify that prosecutors believe they have probable cause that Giuliani committed a federal crime — though they do not guarantee that charges will materialize.”
On the third warrant, the AP reported:
A third search warrant was served on a phone belonging to Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and close ally of Giuliani and Trump. Her law firm issued a statement saying she was informed that she is not a target of the investigation.
And Daily Mail reports:
Toensing represented Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch under indictment in the United States whose help Giuliani sought. She is married to attorney Joseph diGenova and the couple were on the legal team — led by Giuliani — that challenged the 2020 election results on Trump’s behalf.
Giuliani released a statement through his own attorney, Robert Costello, asserting that this action on the part of the the Biden DOJ has all the hallmarks of a witch hunt. The statement says that the DOJ is “running rough shod over the constitutional rights of anyone involved in, or legally defending, former President Donald J. Trump” by applying a “corrupt double standard” — an obvious reference to the lack of a DOJ investigation into Hunter Biden’s illegal activities in Ukraine, which Giuliani had worked to expose. Costello said the raid was the result of “Trump derangement syndrome” and accused agents of ignoring Hunter Biden’s hard drives during their search.
“It is outrageous that the Trump Derangement Syndrome has gone so far that hatred has driven this unjustified and unethical attack on the United States Attorney and Mayor who did more to reduce crime than virtually any other in American history,” Costello said in his statement.
Giuliani’s son Andrew was equally pointed in a statement he gave in the wake of the raids, saying, “The only piece of evidence that they did not take up there today was the only piece of incriminating evidence that is in there — and it does not belong to my father, it belongs to the current president’s son.”
The hard drives in question are copies of Hunter Biden’s hard drive that appear to contain damning evidence of criminal activity. Giuliani claimed that he came into possession of the materials from Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election.
Not only did the agents “ignore” those drives, but did so because Giuliani told them what the drives were. “Keep in mind that the agents could not read the physical hard drives without plugging them in, but they took Mr. Giuliani’s word that the hard drives were copies of Hunter Biden’s hard drive and did not contain anything pertaining to Mr. Giuliani,” Costello said, adding, “Their reliance on Mr. Giuliani’s credibility tells you everything you need to know about this case.”
Indeed.
After all, if those agents — or their superiors — did not see Giuliani as both credible and trustworthy, they would certainly have seized those drives to determine what was on them. But it appears that once they knew what was on them, they did not want to take possession of them and have them included in the body of evidence.
The clear politicization of the DOJ under Biden’s administration is a stark reminder of previous Democrat administrations. Clinton and Obama both treated the DOJ (and the IRS, for that matter) as their own personal attack dogs. But — as bad as that was — it pales in comparison to this. For the DOJ to go after Biden’s political and personal enemies with such vigor is a bridge too far. It smacks of what despotic dictators — from Lenin and Stalin to Hitler and Mussolini — were famous for.
Former President Trump was quick to denounce the raids as “unfair,” “a double standard,” and an example of “corruption” in the Biden administration. Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria, “It’s like so unfair and … it’s like a double standard like I don’t think anybody’s ever seen before,” the president said early Thursday. “It’s very, very unfair. Rudy is a patriot who loves this country.”
“I don’t know what they’re looking for or what they’re doing,” Trump went on to say. “They say it had to do with filings of various papers and lobbying files. Well, did Hunter [Biden] file? Did [President] Biden file? Because they did a lot of work with other countries. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, they didn’t file.”
He added, “It is so terrible when you see the things going on in our country with the corruption and the problems and then they go after Rudy Giuliani. It’s very said, actually.”
But of course the Biden administration is dealing in double standards; If it weren’t for double standards, Democrats would have no standards at all. And as Democrats become even more emboldened where corruption and politicization of federal law enforcement is concerned, Americans can likely expect more of this type of behavior moving forward.
