Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will not face criminal charges over his interactions with Ukrainian figures in the runup to the 2020 presidential election, federal prosecutors revealed in a letter to a judge Monday. Prosecutors with the US attorney's office in Manhattan said they made the decision after reviewing electronic evidence gathered in raids on Giuliani's home and law office in April 2021, the AP reports. Federal prosecutors had examined whether Giuliani should have registered as a foreign agent because of his dealings with Ukrainians who wanted his help pressuring then-President Trump’s administration, while he was looking for their help launching an investigation that might hurt Democratic rival Joe Biden.
“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 Giuliani’s electronic devices had concluded. Giuliani tweeted Monday that it was a "COMPLETE & TOTAL VINDICATION.” “A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. I wasn't even a ham sandwich,” Giuliani, himself a former prosecutor, said later on a Twitter broadcast, a reference to the level of evidence needed to justify charges. “In my business, we would call that total victory,” his lawyer, Robert Costello, told the AP. “We appreciate what the US attorney's (office) has done. We only wish they had done it a lot sooner.” Other figures swept up in the federal investigation of Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine wound up facing criminal charges.
Sixteen of Giuliani’s devices were seized as part of a federal investigation into whether the bellicose Republican ally of Trump violated a law governing lobbying on behalf of foreign countries or entities. The spectacle of agents carting off computers and cellphones during the searches in Manhattan appeared to signal that the former New York City mayor—once celebrated for his leadership after 9/11—was in a legal bind that would be hard to escape. “Today they found there's no probable cause," he said on his livestream. "From the day I began representing Donald J. Trump, I committed no crime, and I’m supposed to say thank you? Thank you for finding out that I didn’t commit a crime? I know I didn’t commit a crime.” Giuliani remains a target of a special grand jury in Atlanta investigating attempts by Trump and others to overturn the former president's 2020 election defeat in Georgia.
(More
Rudy Giuliani stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
