Thursday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who formerly served as former President Donald Trump’s legal counsel, criticized the FBI raid on his Manhattan apartment during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson.
According to Giuliani, the agents were “very professional and very gentlemanly,” however they refused to accept hard drives that Giuliani claimed contained incriminating evidence on Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.
Partial transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Mr. Mayor, thanks so much for coming on.
Now, if you had been reading the Twitter feed of The Lincoln Project, the Democratic hacks who got Joe Biden elected, you would have known that federal agents were about to raid your home. They knew before you did. But, apparently, you weren’t.
Tell us what happened yesterday.
RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, about 6 o’clock in the morning, there was a big bang, bang, bang on the door, and outside were seven — seven — FBI agents with a warrant for electronics.
And I looked at the warrant, and I said, this is extraordinary, because I have offered to give these to the government and talk it over with them for two years. I don’t know why they have to do this.
The agents seemed somewhat apologetic, I might say. They were very, very professional and very gentlemanly. The only time they got perturbed is at the end of the search, when they had taken about, I would say, seven or eight electronic items of mine, which is what they took, and two of someone else’s.
I — 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, no, no.
I said, Are you sure you don’t want them?
The warrant required them to take it. And they said, No, no.
And I — one last time, I said, Don’t you think you should take it to – and they said, No.
Now, Hunter Biden’s hard drives fall within the scope of the subpoena. The subpoena required them to take all electronics. But they decided to leave that behind. And they also were completely content to rely on my word that these were Hunter Biden’s hard drives.
I mean, they could have been Donald Trump’s. They could have been Vladimir Putin’s. They could have been anybody’s. But they relied on me, the man who had to be raided in the morning, because I’m — what, I’m going to destroy the evidence? I have known this for two years, Tucker.
I could have destroyed the evidence years ago. I didn’t destroy the evidence because the evidence is exculpatory. It proves that the president and I and all of us are innocent. They are the ones who are committing — it’s like projection. They are committing the crimes.
Yes, go ahead.
CARLSON: Well, may I just interject to say it’s, I think, literally projection.
So, from what we have read in the press, the Department of Justice wants to know whether you violated FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, in representing foreign nationals, Ukrainians, for pay. You didn’t register. They are saying that may have been a crime.
We know for a fact that Hunter Biden did that. He didn’t register under FARA. He represented Ukrainians. He probably made a lot more than you did. He also represented Chinese nationals, lobbying his dad.
And he’s not been charged with a FARA violation. Am I missing something here?
GIULIANI: Yes, you are missing the equal administration of justice, which is what we don’t have anymore.
The reality is, the hard drive contains somewhere between a dozen or more violations of FARA that are spelled out completely, failure to register. The fact is, it also spells out, as we now know, a clear violation of the Gun Act. The application is a straight-out fraud. He says, I’m not an addict.
We have a picture of him five days before smoking a crack pipe behind the wheel of a car, and then saying under oath that he is not an addict. And it is the left that gets all perturbed about people who are mentally unstable having guns. Well, he was unstable.
He has been — unfortunately and tragically. I feel sorry for that part of Hunter Biden. I think his father exploited him. But the reality is, he is still a danger to the public if he is driving an automobile or holding a gun. But they don’t care about that.
CARLSON: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: They come instead into my apartment, when I am willing to talk to them civilly myself.
And, second, I can tell you, I never, ever represented a foreign national. I — in fact, I have in my contracts a refusal to do it, because, from the time I got out of being mayor, I didn’t want to lobby. Never did it to Bush. Never did it to Obama. Never did it with Trump.
And I can prove it. Just give me an opportunity. But they wouldn’t.
CARLSON: So–
GIULIANI: Instead, they had to break down — well, I wouldn’t say break down, but smash on my doors in a frightening way.
Lucky I don’t get frightened very easily. I handled them very professionally, and they handled me very professionally. I want to make that point.
Also, Hunter (sic), I am a lawyer who has prosecuted a lot more serious cases than have been prosecuted in the U.S. attorney’s office since I left. And the reality is that that warrant is completely illegal.
The only way you can get a search warrant is if you can show that there is some evidence that the person is going to destroy the evidence or is going to — or is going to run away with the evidence.
Well, I have had it for two years and I haven’t destroyed it. And they also got it from the iCloud. So, there was no — there was no justification for that warrant. It is an illegal, unconstitutional warrant, one of many that this department of injustice tragically has done. And it breaks my heart, because I belonged to the Justice Department.
And I think I had a record that is a hell of a lot better than theirs.
CARLSON: Joe Biden said he didn’t know. The Lincoln Project knew, the guys who covered up child molestation.
But Joe Biden says he didn’t know that this raid was coming. Do you take that at face value?
GIULIANI: Maybe he doesn’t remember. I’m not sure if he can retain anything for more than about the time it takes to read it.
But, in any event, who cares if he knew or not? And the reality is how — The Lincoln Project knowing means that they have a serious leak in a very important investigation. We have been warning them of that for two years.
My lawyer, Bob Costello, has written to them four times to plug up the leaks. They have done nothing to do that.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: So, just to frame this — may I interrupt you?
I just — I should have done this at the outset.
GIULIANI: No, please.
CARLSON: I just want to make absolutely certain that we understand, our viewers understand what it is the Justice Department says they’re investigating.
We have read it’s a FARA violation. Is there something else? What have they said to you about what they’re looking into?
GIULIANI: They haven’t said anything. They won’t explain to me what they’re looking into for two years.
We have called them five, six occasions, said, tell us what you’re investigating. We will come in and address it.
No, just come in and talk to us. Tell us about your whole life.
Of course, that’s ridiculous. And so I have to go — I have to go, as a lawyer, on the search warrant. The search warrant is purportedly based on one single failure to file for representing a Ukrainian national or official that I never represented.
I have never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government. I have declined it several times. I have had contracts in countries like Ukraine. In the contract is a clause that says I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation.
I don’t do it because I felt it would be too compromising.
CARLSON: Right.
GIULIANI: Here I am in the middle of representing the president of the United States on a charge of that I believe he was innocent of. I had great passion about that.
If you are a lawyer and you’re representing an innocent man, there is no greater burden you can have. And my sole concentration — and I am so offended by the things they have said about me — my sole concentration from the beginning here, Tucker, was to find evidence that would prove what I knew, that he was innocent of Russian collusion and that he was innocent of doing anything improper.
He did exactly what a president should do with the president of Ukraine. He asked him to investigate–
CARLSON: Right.
GIULIANI: — a vice president who violated our laws over and over again, 30 years of the Biden crime family violating our laws.
That is what is on the hard drive that they have censored. And that is why they want to put me in jail.
CARLSON: One of the great ironies is, the Democratic Party is hysterical on the subject of Russia, in part because they have taken so much money from Ukraine, which, of course, fears Russia and has for an awful long time. They are being paid to hate Russia.
But let me just ask you. So, now they have taken your phone. They have taken — they have got all your texts. They have got all your digital communications.
So, unless you have been in mass 12 hours a day for the last five years, like, is there anybody who could–
(LAUGHTER)
CARLSON: No, it’s a sincere question. I’m not — I mean, is there anybody–
GIULIANI: No, I understand–
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: The Justice Department–
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: — out for you. And they have got every text you have ever sent and every e-mail — that they couldn’t find something to charge you with?
Do you think this is going to remain a FARA investigation? Or could it get much bigger quickly?
GIULIANI: Well, I think it should get much bigger.
I think they should be investigated for blatantly violating my constitutional rights, the president’s constitutional rights. In the middle of the impeachment defense–
CARLSON: Yes.
GIULIANI: — they invaded, without telling me, my iCloud.
They took documents that are privileged, and then they unilaterally decided what they could read and not read. So, the prosecutors at the Justice Department spied on me.
And that is — if that is not taken seriously, if that doesn’t result in their being sanctioned and the case being dismissed and it stopping, this is no longer a free country. We might as well be in East Berlin before the wall fell.
CARLSON: Yes.
GIULIANI: This is tactics only known in a dictatorship, where you seize a lawyer’s records right in the middle of his representation of his client.
They — I mean, you should be prosecuted and disbarred for that.
CARLSON: Yes.
GIULIANI: You shouldn’t be prosecuting somebody else.
CARLSON: I agree. I agree with that. I agree with that uncritically.
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: They are a disgrace. They are a disgrace to a great department. They are a disgrace to a great department–
CARLSON: The former mayor of–
GIULIANI: — that I served honorably and well.
CARLSON: It’s shocking.
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