Rudolph Giuliani, attorney for President Donald Trump, will hold a press conference on Thursday, November 19, 2020, in the Republican National Committee on lawsuits related to the 2020 presidential election result.
Tom Williams | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, protested against the prosecutors investigating him on Tuesday, proposing to act as a “secret police” and serve the political interests of President-elect Joe Biden.
Giuliani’s Twitter rant against the Justice Department came a day after NBC News reported that New York prosecutors are seeking permission from senior DOJ officials to request a search warrant from a judge for Giuliani’s electronic communications.
On the same day, judges at the US District Court in Manhattan officially appointed Audrey Strauss as the chief federal prosecutor’s office in the southern borough of New York, effective January 16.
Strauss, who oversees the Giuliani investigation, has been serving as acting U.S. attorney for the SDNY since last summer when her predecessor Geoffrey Berman was evicted.
Sources told NBC that the SDNY’s investigation into Giuliani was “very active”.
“I am proud to be number one on the Biden Vindictive government list,” Giuliani wrote in a tweet.
“Sounds like the anti-Trumpers of the DOJ can’t wait for Biden to make the DOJ the GOVERNMENT secret police, like they’re under Obama,” he added.
“You want to confiscate my e-mails. No reason. No wrongdoing. Attorney-client privilege.?”
A representative from Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is not known exactly why SDNY prosecutors are investigating Giuliani, who is currently leading Trump’s extremely far-reaching efforts to reverse the Biden Electoral College victory.
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was previously a US attorney for the SDNY and had also served as the DOJ’s chief officer.
Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that SDNY prosecutors were reviewing Giuliani’s bank records in connection with an investigation into his business in Ukraine.
Two of Giuliani’s former employees, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were involved in its dealings in Ukraine, were arrested in October 2019 on charges of campaign funding fraud filed by the SDNY.
Giuliani, as Trump’s attorney, has been trying to gather harmful information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in connection with Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine for at least last year.
Giuliani’s efforts were widely viewed as an attempt to harm Biden’s then candidacy for president in early 2019.
But those efforts failed spectacularly in the summer of 2019 when Trump personally pressured the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation into the Bidens.
At the time, Trump withheld the military aid appropriated by Congress to Ukraine, which was embroiled in a dispute over the territory with its neighbor Russia.
Trump was charged by the House of Representatives for his actions. The Senate later acquitted him after a trial earlier this year.
Trump and his company are under investigation by the Manhattan Attorney’s Office, which is a government agency.
The DA office has an arrest warrant that allows him to obtain Trump’s tax records and other financial documents from his long-time accounting firm.
The President has asked the US Supreme Court to block this subpoena for the second time.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Trump did not have a full right as president to avoid his financial records from being subpoenaed by prosecutors.
