Newly Disclosed Documents Reveal Why Biden Admin Raided Giuliani’s Home

Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media after leaving the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Aug. 23, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

U.S. agents executed a search warrant at the home and office of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani because they believed his attempts to convince then-President Donald Trump to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine stemmed partly from possible financial compensation, according to documents made public on Dec. 19.

Mr. Giuliani, who also represented President Trump at the time, and his associate Lev Parnas worked to remove U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in 2019.

“Based on my review of materials obtained from the prior search warrant returns, I have learned that Giuliani invited [redacted] to participate ... with what appears to be the expectation that in exchange for Giuliani and Parnas’s efforts to remove Ambassador [redacted] from her post, [redacted] would reward [redacted] and Giuliani with a several-hundred thousand dollar retainer agreement,” an FBI agent wrote to a federal court in an application for the search warrant.

The agent said he had reviewed a financial analysis of Mr. Giuliani and discovered that as of Feb. 16, 2019, Mr. Giuliani had more than $110,000 in credit card debt and that his cash on hand had dropped from more than $1 million to about $288,000.

Based on the review, “it appears that around this time, Giuliani had a financial interest in receiving a retainer agreement,” the agent said.

A draft of the agreement was for $200,000, according to the document.

Mr. Giuliani was “incentivized” to push President Trump to fire Ms. Yovanovitch because an individual whose name was redacted agreed to provide negative information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, the application stated.

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Authorities said Mr. Giuliani may have violated federal law by not registering with the U.S. government before representing a Ukrainian national, but Mr. Giuliani has said he never represented any Ukrainians.

Mr. Giuliani traveled to Ukraine ahead of the 2020 election to try to uncover more details about the work of Hunter Biden in the country. Mr. Biden worked for years for Burisma Holdings Ltd., an energy company, while his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy efforts for some time.

President Biden has bragged in public that he caused the removal of a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma by threatening to withhold a loan guarantee, though he has also said that he did nothing wrong.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are currently probing President Biden for possible wrongdoing. They approved an impeachment inquiry in a recent vote.

The application and related materials were unsealed on the orders of U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, in response to a media request. Mr. Giuliani consented to the release of the materials, according to Judge Oetken.

The contours of the investigation were broadly known even before its conclusion, but details of what evidence prosecutors were acting on when they sought to search Mr. Giuliani hadn’t been revealed.

The documents contained numerous redactions, with many names and other identifying information blacked out. President Trump’s name appeared in the documents more than two dozen times, mainly pertaining to Mr. Giuliani’s alleged lobbying efforts. There was no suggestion that investigators suspected President Trump of wrongdoing.

Judge Oetken said redacted names included uncharged third parties who had privacy interests that outweighed the public’s right to access but that President Trump’s privacy interest was “diminished” because he’s a public figure and because of his relationship to the records in question.

The application was approved and agents raided Mr. Giuliani’s home and office in 2021, seizing computers, cellphones, and other items.

Prosecutors announced in 2022 that Mr. Giuliani wouldn’t be facing any charges.

“Based on information currently available to the government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” they wrote. They said the grand jury probe that led to the seizure of Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices had concluded.

Mr. Giuliani said at the time that he was vindicated.

Ms. Yovanovitch was removed in 2019 amid allegations of not acting properly. A Ukrainian prosecutor later confirmed that she instructed him not to prosecute certain people.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is sworn in prior to providing testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 15, 2019. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Other Charges

Mr. Giuliani was indicted in August in Georgia on charges that he acted as President Trump’s chief co-conspirator in a plot to subvert President Biden’s 2020 victory. He was also described as a co-conspirator but not charged in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case against President Trump.

Earlier in December, a jury in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers who sued him for defamation over lies he spread about them in the wake of President Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The former workers, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, sued Mr. Giuliani again on Dec. 18, alleging he continued to defame them during the trial.

Mr. Biden was charged by U.S. authorities in September with federal gun crimes and is scheduled to be arraigned next month on tax charges.