Rudy Giuliani: Federal Agents Search Home of Trump's Former Personal Attorney

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer faces an investigation into the so-called Ukrainian plot

Photo: Rey Del Rio / Getty Images

The Justice Department on Wednesday drastically stepped up an investigation into the former president’s longtime lawyer and confidante Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, executing search warrants at his Manhattan home , reported CNN .

Giuliani’s housing registry is part of a long-running investigation into Giuliani with a dark cast of characters in Ukraine during the Trump presidency, reported POLITICAL .

Giuliani has been the focus of an investigation into his activities in Ukraine , including if he conducted illegal lobbying for Ukrainian officials while was conducting an investigation related to the princ Trump’s ipal political rival, President Joe Biden.

Giuliani has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.

The FBI also arrived Wednesday morning at the home in the DC area from another lawyer who had dealings with Ukrainians and remains close to Giuliani and Trump, Victoria Toensing , and took his cell phone in accordance with a search warrant, a person familiar with the episode told POLITICO. Toensing’s home was not searched and authorities indicated that she is not the focus of the investigation, that person said.

The raids carried out today are a very unusual intrusion into the inner circle of a former president and a rare case

Searches by federal agents appeared to mark the end of a months-long disagreement between federal prosecutors. in Manhattan and officials at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington on whether to step up the Giuliani investigation.

Giuliani and Ukraine

Rudy Giuliani has spent years at the center of a saga involving relations between wealthy Ukrainians and American politics.

While Trump was president, Giuliani worked with the Ukrainians to find and distribute material about the relationship between a scandal-plagued Ukrainian energy company and Hunter Biden, Biden’s son.

Trump told the new president of Ukraine , Volodymyr Zelensky, in July 2019 to contact Giuliani, part of a transcript that the Trump White House released while seeking, and failed, to activate that controversy.

Trump advisers later reported that the president would withhold military aid from Ukraine unless his President promised to publicly announce an investigation of the company in question.

That episode triggered the first impeachment process against Trump , q It resulted in a House vote in favor of impeachment, but an acquittal in much of the party line in the Senate.