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- The FBI raided Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan apartment Wednesday in connection with a probe into his Ukraine dealings.
- Giuliani's attorney said it is a "corrupt double standard" that feds didn't execute a search warrant against Hunter Biden as well.
- The DOJ greenlighted a search warrant against Giuliani following Merrick Garland's confirmation as attorney general.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's attorney said federal investigators raiding his Manhattan apartment is a "clear example of a corrupt double standard" in a statement he released Wednesday night.
Federal investigators executed a search warrant and seized electronic devices from Giuliani's home earlier Wednesday in connection with a criminal probe into Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, The New York Times reported.
In October 2019, Prosecutors accused two of Giuliani's associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman helped dig up dirt on Biden and his father, current President Joe Biden, ahead of the 2020 election. Parnas and Fruman were both arrested on charges of campaign finance violations as part of a conspiracy to funnel foreign money into US elections.
A federal criminal investigation into Giuliani resumed last month, and the Justice Department approved the search warrant against Giuliani following Merrick Garland's confirmation as attorney general. Sources told The Times that Justice Department under former President Donald Trump previously thwarted efforts to secure a warrant against Giuliani, who serves as Trump's personal lawyer.
In a statement released in response to the raid, Giuliani's lawyer Robert J. Costello said there was a "corrupt double standard" and pointed out that investigators did not execute a search warrant against Hunter Biden, who had been under GOP scrutiny due to his ties to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
"This contrasts with multiple proven incidences of failure to file as a foreign agent contained on the Biden hard drive which the FBI and the Department of Justice has ignored," Costello wrote in the statement. "You have not seen the home of Hunter Biden raided by the FBI with search warrants."
"This behavior of the justice department, enabled by a compliant media, running roughshod over the constitutional rights of anyone involved in, or legally defending, former President Donald J. Trump is becoming the rule, rather than the exception," Costello continued.
Costello said investigators "left behind the only electronics that contain evidence of crimes, the Hunter Biden hard drives," which Giuliani had offered the FBI on "several occasions," but agents declined. Giuliani's son Andrew Giuliani also told reporters earlier Wednesday that the hard drives were left in the apartment.
Hunter Biden was under GOP scrutiny following a disputed article by The New York Post about a laptop purportedly belonging to Biden. Intelligence experts said they believed the story has "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/3vscNyu
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