Biden insists he had no idea Rudy's home and office was being raided and claims the DOJ was more politicized under Trump after Giuliani's son said the FBI 'ignored evidence on Hunter'
President Joe Biden said he was not given a head's up that federal agents were going to carry out a raid on Rudy Giuliani's apartment and office in New York City and that he learned about it at the same time as the public.
'I give you my word, I was not,' Biden said told NBC's Craig Melvin at the White House Thursday morning in an interview that will air Friday on the 'Today Show.'
'I made a pledge,' Biden continued. 'I would not interfere in any way — order or try to stop any investigation the Justice Department had in their way. I learned about that last night when the rest of the world learned about it.'
Federal prosecutors have been looking at Giuliani and his work in the Ukraine for nearly 1-1/2 years. Wednesday's morning raid - where Giuliani's electronics were seized - came after prosecutors stepped up their investigation into the former New York City mayor after it was put on hold last summer out of concerns it was too close to the election.
And Giuliani's son Andrew accused the Department of Justice of raiding his father's New York apartment and office for political reasons - and claims agents didn't want to take allegedly incriminating evidence involving Hunter Biden.
'Any American, whether you are red or blue, should be extremely disturbed by what happened here today, by the continued politicization,' a furious Andrew, 35, told reporters in the Upper East Side on Wednesday.
'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,' he added.
It's not clear what he was referring to. Giuliani claimed he obtained the materials from a laptop of Hunter Biden during the 2020 election and he also visited the Ukraine in December 2019.
President Joe Biden said he had no idea federal agents were going to carry out a raid on Rudy Giuliani's apartment and office
The White House posted a behind-the-scenes picture of the interview
Giuliani claimed Biden's son made millions of his work on the board of a gas company in the Ukraine and pushed Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens for corruption. The Bidens have not been charged with that crime. Hunter Biden is being investigated for his taxes.
Both Giuliani's lawyer and his son accused Biden's Justice Department of politicization, a charge made often against the department in President Donald Trump's administration when Trump would publicly pressure his attorneys general to follow his wishes on legal matters. Top DOJ officials would have had to approve the raid.
But Biden told NBC News he has not been briefed on Giuliani nor any other federal investigation.
Asked if he's been briefed about any other investigation, Biden said: 'No, and I'm not asking to be briefed — that's the Justice Department's independent judgment.'
He went on to criticize the Trump administration's handling of the DoJ, saying officials 'politicized the Justice Department so badly, so many of them quit, so many left.'
'That's not the role of the president to say who should be prosecuted, when they should be prosecuted, who should not be prosecuted. That's not the role of the president. The Justice Department is the people's lawyer, not the president's lawyer,' Biden said.
Meanwhile, Giuliani's lawyer Robert Costello blamed the investigation on 'Trump derangement syndrome' and also accused agents of ignoring Hunter's hard drives during their search.
'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 in a statement.
'Their reliance on Mr. Giuliani's credibility tells you everything you need to know about this case,' he added.
'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.
The Giuliani team took a page from the Trump playbook, fighting the accusations with charges of their own against a political rival.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that Giuliani, who was universally hailed for his leadership after the September 11th attacks, 'has come unhinged.'
'It's a sad thing to have to say about a predecessor,' de Blasio said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.' 'But Rudy Giuliani has just come unhinged in every sense. He attached himself to Donald Trump but then went even farther and decided to be one of the most extreme voices in the Trump world.'
Andrew Giuliani blasted accused President Joe Biden's Justice Department for playing politics after agents raided his father's apartment and office
The federal investigation centers on whether Rudy Giuliani, who was Donald Trump 's personal attorney, acted as an unregistered federal agent and lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs
The federal investigation centers on whether Giuliani, who was Donald Trump's personal attorney, acted as an unregistered federal agent and lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs.
Giuliani's lawyer Robert Costello blamed the investigation on 'Trump derangement syndrome' and also a accused agents of ignoring Hunter's hard drives during their search
Those were the same group of people who were helping Giuliani search for dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company, during the 2020 election in an effort to help Trump politically.
Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, it is a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the US government at the request or direction of a foreign official without disclosing it to the Justice Department.
The United States Attorney's office in Manhattan and the FBI had wanted to execute the warrant on Giuliani's Upper East Side home and office for months but had been stymied by the political leadership put in place at the Justice Department by President Trump.
To obtain the search warrant, investigators would have needed to convince a judge they had sufficient reason to believe that a crime was committed and the search would turn up evidence of that. It does not indicate guilt.
The warrant was originally sought last summer but top officials at DOJ raised concerns about issuing a warrant so close to an election.
DOJ rules prevent actions close to an election that might be seen as interference – a matter that came up both in 2016 during the probe of Hillary Clinton's emails and in 2020 during the investigation, not publicly revealed, into Hunter Biden over potential tax issues.
But after Merrick Garland was confirmed as President Biden's attorney general, the Justice Department lifted its objection to the search.
The raids indicate the investigation of the former New York City mayor has entered an aggressive new phase. It is unusual for prosecutors to execute a search warrant on a lawyer, particularly one who has privileged conversations with his client, the former president of the United States.
The Giuliani investigation grew out of a federal investigation of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who worked on gathering information about the Bidens during the election.
The two Soviet-born men were charged with federal campaign finance violations.
The two, who pleaded not guilty, were arrested at an airport outside Washington carrying one-way tickets to Europe. That investigation is on-going and faced some delays due to the COVID pandemic.
Trump has said he doesn't know the two men or the work they did.
Investigators are also looking into Giuliani's role in the ousting of US Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was a prominent witness in Trump's first impeachment trial. Current and former U.S. officials testified at that inquiry that Giuliani carried out a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine.
As Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials to announce an investigation of the Bidens, he pushed to have Yovanovitch removed, seeing her as an obstacle to his efforts to produce a probe that would benefit Trump politically.
At Giuliani's urging, Trump had her recalled.
Press and members of the public crowd the street in front of Giuliani's condo building
The Giuliani investigation grew out of a federal investigation of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who worked on gathering information about the Bidens during the election and were charged with violating the ban on political donations by foreign nationals in October 2019
Lev Parnas, center, and Igor Fruman with Rudy Giuliani at far right, Trump second right, and VP Mike Pence left
Investigators are also looking into Giuliani's role in the ousting of US Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was a prominent witness in Trump's first impeachment trial
Prosecutors are examining whether Giuliani was working not only for Trump, but also for Ukrainian officials or businesses who wanted Yovanovitch dismissed for their own reasons, The New York Times reported.
Giuliani later bragged about having her removed, saying he 'forced' her out as she was making his push for the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens 'difficult.'
Trump was impeached on two counts in his first trial after reports of a July 25, 2019, phone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and also a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election.
Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
No comments