Federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan have reportedly issued subpoenas seeking information on Rudy Giuliani and two of his recently-indicted business associates.
According to the Wall Street Journal on Monday, people familiar with the matter said the plethora of subpoenas issued to Giuliani’s business and individuals with ties to his professional associates indicate a “broad federal investigation into possible money laundering, obstruction of justice and campaign-finance violations, and suggest that prosecutors are looking closely at the work of Mr. Giuliani himself.”
At least one of the subpoenas was issued to Giuliani Partners LLC, the former New York City mayor’s management and security firm. As previously reported by Law&Crime, Giuliani Partners was contracted and paid $500,000 in 2018 by Fraud Guarantee, the company founded by Ukrainian-American businessmen Lev Parnas. Parnas and Igor Fruman were both arrested in October for allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws.
Sources familiar with the investigation told the Journal that the subpoenas suggested federal prosecutors are investigating a menu of potential criminal activities:
[O]bstruction of justice, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, serving as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the Justice Department, donating funds from foreign nationals, making contributions in the name of another person or allowing someone else to use one’s name to make a contribution, along with mail fraud and wire fraud.
“This is a very specific, and very long list of serious crimes that Giuliani is being investigated for,” former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Mimi Rocah remarked in response to the report.
A subpoena was also issued for a second company founded by Parnas that paid Giuliani for business and legal consultation services. Parnas recently agreed to cooperate with congressional investigators. On Sunday, it was reported that he provided the House Intelligence Committee with audio and video recordings. These purportedly feature Giuliani and President Donald Trump, though the exact nature of their contents is unknown.
Parnas’s attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, said his client is willing to testify about his knowledge of Giuliani’s involvement in digging up dirt of former Vice President Joe Biden and possibly leveraging Trump’s authority over the Department of Justice to obtain such information (Giuliani said that was “fake news”).
In addition to Giuliani’s business dealings, the U.S. attorney’s office is looking into the political action committee (PAC) America First Action (President Trump’s primary super PAC) and non-profit groups associated with the group, according to the Washington Post.
[image via Elsa/Getty Images]
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