Warrant executed on Guiliani
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I have been a long critic of Rudy Giuliani going back years, including interviews and press conferences that I have condemned for making unsupported statements (as well as comments inimical to his client’s interest). However, Giuliani may have a valid point. The Biden Administration sent FBI agents to raid his home and other lawyers to seize “electronic devices.” According to Giuliani, this included computers and cell phones containing electronic files. However, the agents reportedly refused to take hard drives that Giuliani said contained material related to Hunter Biden, the son of our President. If the warrant did call for the seizure of computer and electronic devices, that makes no sense at all, particularly in accepting the word of the target of the search as to the contents of the devices. As a defense attorney, I often question the scope of seizures in such searches as excessive or overly broad. I have never run into a search where agents refused to take evidence that is ordinarily defined within the scope of the warrant. We have yet to see the warrant itself but this is a curious omission given the seizure of computers.
However, it is this statement that stuck out for me:
“At the end of the search, when they had taken about, I would say, seven or eight electronic items of mine … they weren’t taking the three hard drives, which of course, are electronic devices. They just mimic the computer. I said, ‘Well, don’t you want these?’ And they said, ‘What are they? I said, ‘Those are Hunter Biden’s hard drives. And they said ‘no, no, no.”
On one hand, the FBI could argue that they already have that evidence because the laptop was previously seized. However, how do they know that hard drives contained the same information? The search warrant was premised on the claim that Giuliani was a risk for evidence destruction. Yet, the agents took his word for what was on the devices? For all the agents knew, Giuliani could have taken all of his incriminating FARA evidence and just slapped a “Hunter Biden Stuff” label on the outside.
Another explanation could be that the search warrant was narrowly written. The Justice Department could exclude hard drives out of concern for privileged communications. However, I have not seen that type of limitations in prior searches. In prior cases, the Justice Department minimizes such searches through filtering teams as opposed to leaving some storage devices. It would also make no sense since the current cellphones or laptops may not have records from the critical period. Moreover, the agents could claim that the search warrant is limited to Giuliani’s records, not those of clients or third parties. However, how would they know what was on the hard drives?
It is also possible that the FBI could say that Giuliani is lying and there was no such hard drives offered. Yet, if that were the case, one would expect the agents to return for the claimed hard drives missed in the prior search.
I have previously written about the Hunter Biden laptop and the virtual news blackout of the story, including the strikingly reluctant coverage after the release of his book. I frankly do not see why the FBI would reluctant to have this evidence since it is likely duplicative of evidence already held by prosecutors. I am not assuming that this was an effort to protect Biden. I am just honestly confused by the decision of the agents if this warrant did call for the seizure of electronic devices and material.
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I have been a long critic of Rudy Giuliani going back years, including interviews and press conferences that I have condemned for making unsupported statements (as well as comments inimical to his client’s interest). However, Giuliani may have a valid point. The Biden Administration sent FBI agents to raid his home and other lawyers to seize “electronic devices.” According to Giuliani, this included computers and cell phones containing electronic files. However, the agents reportedly refused to take hard drives that Giuliani said contained material related to Hunter Biden, the son of our President. If the warrant did call for the seizure of computer and electronic devices, that makes no sense at all, particularly in accepting the word of the target of the search as to the contents of the devices. As a defense attorney, I often question the scope of seizures in such searches as excessive or overly broad. I have never run into a search where agents refused to take evidence that is ordinarily defined within the scope of the warrant. We have yet to see the warrant itself but this is a curious omission given the seizure of computers.
However, it is this statement that stuck out for me:
“At the end of the search, when they had taken about, I would say, seven or eight electronic items of mine … they weren’t taking the three hard drives, which of course, are electronic devices. They just mimic the computer. I said, ‘Well, don’t you want these?’ And they said, ‘What are they? I said, ‘Those are Hunter Biden’s hard drives. And they said ‘no, no, no.”
On one hand, the FBI could argue that they already have that evidence because the laptop was previously seized. However, how do they know that hard drives contained the same information? The search warrant was premised on the claim that Giuliani was a risk for evidence destruction. Yet, the agents took his word for what was on the devices? For all the agents knew, Giuliani could have taken all of his incriminating FARA evidence and just slapped a “Hunter Biden Stuff” label on the outside.
Another explanation could be that the search warrant was narrowly written. The Justice Department could exclude hard drives out of concern for privileged communications. However, I have not seen that type of limitations in prior searches. In prior cases, the Justice Department minimizes such searches through filtering teams as opposed to leaving some storage devices. It would also make no sense since the current cellphones or laptops may not have records from the critical period. Moreover, the agents could claim that the search warrant is limited to Giuliani’s records, not those of clients or third parties. However, how would they know what was on the hard drives?
It is also possible that the FBI could say that Giuliani is lying and there was no such hard drives offered. Yet, if that were the case, one would expect the agents to return for the claimed hard drives missed in the prior search.
I have previously written about the Hunter Biden laptop and the virtual news blackout of the story, including the strikingly reluctant coverage after the release of his book. I frankly do not see why the FBI would reluctant to have this evidence since it is likely duplicative of evidence already held by prosecutors. I am not assuming that this was an effort to protect Biden. I am just honestly confused by the decision of the agents if this warrant did call for the seizure of electronic devices and material.
@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
It is also possible that the FBI could say that Giuliani is lying
Surely not!
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@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
I wonder if The Big Guy approved it, or it was just the AG.
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@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
I wonder if The Big Guy approved it, or it was just the AG.
@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
I wonder if The Big Guy approved it, or it was just the AG.
If he didn't know about a raid on that high profile of a target, he's an incompetent fool.
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@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
@george-k said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
I wonder if The Big Guy approved it, or it was just the AG.
If he didn't know about a raid on that high profile of a target, he's an incompetent fool.
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Apparently, there was an "unidentified source" that WaPo, NYT, NYPost, CNN, NBC News, and others quoted which claimed that Giuliani was warned by the FBI before he went to Ukraine that the Russians might be mounting a disinformation campaign. Turns out that was false.
The newspapers retracted/corrected that part of the story:
But, as the saying goes, a lie makes it around the world before the truth gets its trousers on. And in this case, the truth doesn't stand a chance:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/corporate-news-outlets-again-confirm
In preparation for writing this article, I spent the day notifying close to a dozen of these media luminaries that their false tweet remained up and asked whether they intend to take it down and/or correct the false tweet. Only one — NBC White House Correspondent Geoff Bennett — responded. He did so by blocking me on Twitter, while leaving the false tweet up, uncorrected. Put another way, this NBC News journalist is well aware that he lied to close to 200,000 followers when he falsely told them that “Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson were warned in late 2019 that they were targets of a Russian operation intended to damage Joe Biden politically” — a story (as it pertains to Giuliani) which even his own outlet has retracted — but simply refuses to note that it was false or to remove the false posting. This NBC News reporter is knowingly spreading Fake News all over Twitter.
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Time to change the libel laws.
It's going to be the only thing that curtails this silliness.
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Time to change the libel laws.
It's going to be the only thing that curtails this silliness.
@jolly said in Warrant executed on Guiliani:
Time to change the libel laws.
Yes, for many reasons.
It's going to be the only thing that curtails this silliness.
This silliness, I don't think, rises to the live of "libel." Let's just call it what it is - a lie, rather than a mistake. WaPo and others issued their retractions (probably on page 24) to their credit, but this clown's tweet is still out there, and he blocked Greenwald for pointing out the falsehood.
