Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday for his first television interview since federal investigators raided his Manhattan home and office.
The federal agents “seized the former New York City mayor’s electronic devices in connection with a probe of whether he violated the law by lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials,” according to Fox News.
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Giuliani told Carlson that he “recalled being woken by a loud ‘bang’ at 6 a.m. Wednesday and being greeted by seven FBI agents at his door with a search warrant.”
“I looked at the warrant, and I said, ‘You know, this is extraordinary because I offered to give these to the government and talk it over with them for two years,'” said Giuliani, adding that the federal investigators remained in his apartment for “nearly two hours,” seizing devices such as laptops and cell phones.
“I don’t know why they have to do this,” Giuliani said, claiming that the agents “seemed somewhat apologetic,” and were “very professional and very gentlemanly.”
“The search warrant is on one single failure to file for representing a Ukrainian national or official that I never represented,” the former New York City mayor claimed, before denying any accusations of lobbying on behalf of foreign entities.
“I never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government. I’ve declined it several times. I’ve 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.”
Giuliani then pivoted to discuss Hunter Biden’s laptop, accusing the FBI of being disinterested in the hard drives which, according to Giuliani, “fall within the scope of the subpoena.”
“At the end of the search, when they had taken about, I would say, seven or eight electronic items of mine … they weren’t taking the three hard drives, which of course, are electronic devices. They just mimic the computer,” Giuliani told Carlson. “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.”
“I said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want them? I mean the warrant required them to take it,'” he continued. “And they said, ‘No, no, no.’ One last time, I said, ‘Don’t you think you should take it?’ And they said, ‘No.'”
Giuliani continued, claiming that the agents 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 going to destroy the evidence? I’ve known about this for two years, Tucker,” he added. “I could have destroyed the evidence. The evidence is exculpatory. It proves 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.”
Following the raid, Robert J. Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, described the actions as “legal thuggery,” adding that the searches were “unnecessary because his client had offered to answer prosecutors’ questions, except those regarding Mr. Giuliani’s privileged communications with the former president,” according to The New York Times.