Criminal law, Justice

Why Didn’t The FBI Agents Take Hard Drives In Seizing Giuliani’s Electronic Devices?

I have been a long critic of Rudy Giuliani going back years, including interviews and press conferences that I have condemned for making unsupported statements (as well as comments inimical to his client’s interest). However, Giuliani may have a valid point.  The Biden Administration sent FBI agents to raid his home and other lawyers to seize “electronic devices.” According to Giuliani, this included computers and cell phones containing electronic files. However, the agents reportedly refused to take hard drives that Giuliani said contained material related to Hunter Biden, the son of our President. If the warrant did call for the seizure of computer and electronic devices, that makes no sense at all, particularly in accepting the word of the target of the search as to the contents of the devices.  As a defense attorney, I often question the scope of seizures in such searches as excessive or overly broad. I have never run into a search where agents refused to take evidence that is ordinarily defined within the scope of the warrant. We have yet to see the warrant itself but this is a curious omission given the seizure of computers.

Giuliani was on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Thursday and described the search of his home at 6 am by seven FBI agents. He said that the agents seized laptops and cell phones in what is believed to be an investigation into the possible violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). That itself is notable since, until a few years ago, FARA violations were rarely prosecuted criminally and most violations were treater as civil or administrative measures.

Giuliani denied such violations: “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.”

However, it is this statement that stuck out for me:

“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. 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.”

On one hand, the FBI could argue that they already have that evidence because the laptop was previously seized. However, how do they know that hard drives contained the same information? The search warrant was premised on the claim that Giuliani was a risk for evidence destruction. Yet, the agents took his word for what was on the devices? For all the agents knew, Giuliani could have taken all of his incriminating FARA evidence and just slapped a “Hunter Biden Stuff” label on the outside.

Another explanation could be that the search warrant was narrowly written. The Justice Department could exclude hard drives out of concern for privileged communications. However, I have not seen that type of limitations in prior searches.  In prior cases, the Justice Department minimizes such searches through filtering teams as opposed to leaving some storage devices.  It would also make no sense since the current cellphones or laptops may not have records from the critical period. Moreover, the agents could claim that the search warrant is limited to Giuliani’s records, not those of clients or third parties. However, how would they know what was on the hard drives?

It is also possible that the FBI could say that Giuliani is lying and there was no such hard drives offered. Yet, if that were the case, one would expect the agents to return for the claimed hard drives missed in the prior search.

I have previously written about the Hunter Biden laptop and the virtual news blackout of the story, including the strikingly reluctant coverage after the release of his book. I frankly do not see why the FBI would reluctant to have this evidence since it is likely duplicative of evidence already held by prosecutors. I am not assuming that this was an effort to protect Biden.  I am just honestly confused by the decision of the agents if this warrant did call for the seizure of electronic devices and material.

Giuliani, who earned well-deserved fame as a mob prosecutor, recounted “I said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want them? I mean the warrant required them to take it. ‘No, no, no.’ One last time, I said, ‘Don’t you think you should take it?’ And they said, ‘No.'” Giuliani added: “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. 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.”

This was an extraordinary search targeting the counsel to the former president.  There were reportedly disagreements in the Justice Department on whether to seek the warrant.  Yet, the Justice Department convinced a judge that there was electronic evidence and records that had to be seized to prevent destruction and to use on a possible prosecution.

The Justice Department has emphasized the need to acquire hard drives in its training manuals, including the publication Searching and Seizing Computers And Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations:

The typical computer user thinks of the contents of a hard drive in terms of what the computer’s user interface chooses to reveal: files, folders, and applications, all neatly arranged and self-contained. This, however, is merely an abstraction presented to make the computer easier to use. That abstraction hides the evidence of computer usage that modern operating systems leave on hard drives. As computers run, they leave evidence on the hard drive— considerably more evidence than just the files visible to users. Remnants of whole or partially deleted files can still remain on the drive. Portions of files that were edited away also might remain. “Metadata” and other artifacts left by the computer can reveal information about what files have recently been accessed, when a file was created and edited, and sometimes even how it was edited.

The Justice Department defines terms like “records” to expressly include hard drives. It encourages the following language:

The terms “records” and “information” include all of the foregoing items of evidence in whatever form and by whatever means they may have been created or stored, including any form of computer or electronic storage (such as hard disks or other media that can store data); any handmade form (such as writing, drawing, painting); any mechanical form (such as printing or typing); and any photographic form (such as microfilm, microfiche, prints, slides, negatives, videotapes, motion pictures, photocopies).

This is why I am confused by this account. I waited to see if there was an obvious explanation and perhaps there is one that I am missing. I just find the account perplexing.

We will have to wait to see if this is truly just about a single possible violation of FARA.  However, we should be able to see the warrant and the FBI should be able to explain why it would not take electronic storage devices or why it would take the word of the target on their content.

154 thoughts on “Why Didn’t The FBI Agents Take Hard Drives In Seizing Giuliani’s Electronic Devices?”

    1. Why on earth do you and they assume that she’s a grandma, when the whole point is that the woman hasn’t been identified?

      1. Why do you/others assume the DOJ & FBI are still acting as Law Enforcement Agencies?

        Maybe you & your friends also need a few more GMO Covid 19 booster shots, the so called Vaccines.

        2. After you answer the question I asked you at 1:45, I’ll answer the question you asked me at 5:37.

  2. There is nothing surprising about the FBI’s decision not to take the Hunter Biden laptop hard drive copy. The DOJ and the FBI are Deep State Criminal Enterprises dedicated solely to punishing pro-America political dissidents and to protecting their fellow anti-America criminals. Once you understand this basic principle, all actions of the DOJ and FBI are consistent, logical, and predictable.

  3. Maybe the political hit job didn’t want to confuse the FBI agents who were reviewing the contents. What would happen if they did review the contents? Would that open up a can of worms that the FBI wrongly didn’t appropriately investigate previous corruption claims against Biden when they first got the laptop? Is this yet another layer of corruption the FBI is covering up for itself and the Biden ( along with the prior Obama Biden administration)?

    Corruption breeds corruption and the amount of corruption affecting this administration is rapidly increasing.

        1. It is to S. Meyer. And if he truly believes what he writes, than yes the world is flat for him.

          1. Fishwings when you make dumb accusations insulting another recognize that you are not smart enough to defend yourself with fact or critical thinking skills. Maybe your skills lie in cleaning up rat droppings left behind by Anonymous the Stupid.

            SM

      2. FW. The earth is an oblate sphere. You are barely past kindergarten, so I don’t think you have yet to learn that. As you progress through elementary school perhaps you will learn that in space the shortest difference between two points is a curve. You might never understand why but that is not important. Instead you should exercise your physical skills because your mental skills are very lacking.

        SM

        2. Actually Anonymous the Stupid, in this case you are more correct, because it isn’t a sphere but resembles one. On the other hand oblate means flattened at the poles so obviously we are not dealing with a perfect sphere so therefore the proper term is spheroid.

          What this shows is that I was sloppy and should have reviewed what I wrote. This also shows the miserable type of character you display. Most people that are intelligent recognize that type of error and try not to act in your fashion. Here ou have demonstrated you anti-social behavior and that is what we have seen on the blog for years.

  4. As I always say with these things, let it run its course. It may be nothing or everything. It may be something totally unrelated. We just do not know right now. I hope this is nothing because it would be a heartbreaker if he is involved in criminal activity.

  5. Turley appears to be suffering from amnesia. Last October, the NY Post reported Hunter Biden’s “computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI in December (2019) after the shop’s owner says he alerted the feds to their existence. But before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.”

    JT now resorts to wild speculation that maybe Giuliani somehow ended up with a completely different Hunter Biden hard drive than the one the NY Post reported the FBI seized 16 months ago. Maybe JT finds it completely implausible that the FBI seized Hunter BIden’s computer & hard drive 16 months ago. Maybe Turley believes the NY Post story is fake news.

    Sad to see Professor Turley so utterly confused.

    1. Don’t kid yourself, Turley is not confused. His writings are for the Trump cult. He might be sweating his name does not come up with Rudy G and trump.

    2. Your comment misses Turley’s point. What is going on. They are looking for computers and electronic information. Rudy offers up hard drives, as he should have, but FBI just takes Guliani’s word for it that they are Biden’s. How do they know until they look? Since when does law enforcement just take the word of the person who is the target of the search warrant about where relevant stuff is. They likely took a lot of irrelevant things. Something is wrong with that, especially if the FBI doesn’t go back to get it. You would be an idiot agent if you asked what is on the hard drive, take the target’s word for it and think we already have these hard drives anyway. If the feds are transparent we will find out that there was no reason not to just use a subpoena as opposed to a raid. Do people not see that the FBI is going to trample all our rights. We should be bothered even if you don’t like Guilliani or Trump. I don’t like human trafficking, but if the govt tramples on their constitutional rights, I have a problem with it. We are not supposed to be a country where ends justify the means.

      1. ” FBI just takes Guliani’s word for it ”

        You’re taking Giuliani’s word for it that he offered these to the FBI and they rejected them. Why would you trust Giuliani??

  6. ” I am not assuming that this was an effort to protect Biden. I am just honestly confused by the decision of the agents if this warrant did call for the seizure of electronic devices and material.”

    My guess is you may have already seen the warrant when consulting with Barr on how to make it go away last year? While I’d have the questions you do about what got seized from Giuliani and why, I also have questions about how you and Barr may have interacted with Rudy…

    And join the club about being confused about all things Giuliani, he has that effect on people. Really curious about where this one could go. Certainly because he’s another of trump’s lawyers to go under the microscope. But also about Rudy’s really straddling that line of treason and not seeming to really care about it. Sure, he thought a trump pardon might be his ticket out, and equally so, trump couldn’t give him that pardon because it’s tantamount to admitting guilt in the eyes of the public…, but this one goes to some really fascinating places..

    EB

  7. Well, the “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity” (FBI), group (at least this group of agents) have truly lost their professional way. Any of many federal search warrants we executed in my career, were very specifically written and defining what to be seized. We did have some discretion but if we had left behind evidence of federal crimes, we would have explain that to the federal judge who signed and issued the warrant. The agents could have accepted the devices identified by the target as a evidence of a federal crime, using a separate piece of documentation. Then, the process could proceed according to usual evidence processing and chain of custody requirements. Then, an appropriate case could be opened based on the receipt of the piece of evidence, if it is unrelated to the case related to the search warrant. Of course if you act as if the evidence does not exist, or is unimportant then, the agents never need worry about having to answer for their actions or lack thereof. I can tell you for sure that the internal affairs division, within the Justice Department, the parent agency of the FBI, is The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), who have the responsibility to investigate allegations of agent wrongdoing, malfeasance, and dereliction of sworn duties. Further, at a very minimum, the matter should be investigated and pursued as appropriate according to bureau policy, without the agents involved, having the discretion to “ignore” evidence of a serious federal crime. We must however keep in mind that before November 3, 2020, we could have faith and confidence that the matter would have been properly handled. Now, with that Man in the Whitehouse, (Biden) the particular agents who rejected the receipt or seizure of Hunters laptop hard drive, likely new their butts would be protected by FBI management all the way up the chain upto and including Joe Biden him self if they committed any questionable actions or lack thereof. We should also remember that most agents are honorable, hard working devoted individuals. But, at the Washington, DC level as we have seen of late, some people seem to find it acceptable to pick and choose what they will and will not enforce based on some political agenda and not the provisions of the Constitution regarding such situations.

  8. Kind a tells you the FBI is crooked why don’t they go after MS13 and other organized crime

  9. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden — whose middle name is “FARA Violation” — receives a lucrative book deal, slobbering interviews with the media, and a teaching gig at Tulane.

    Life is good when your last name is Castro — I mean Biden.

    1. Not to mention, Hunter LIED on his Gun application. So much for gun control, when any crazy crack addicted Democrat can lie and get one anyways…and nothing gets done about it when his girlfriend throws it in a garbage can in front of a high school, and the Secret service covers it up for you.

  10. Isn’t is amazing how many weird procedural thingies that happen coincidentally work against Republicans and for Democrats???

    Like Jimmy Comey deciding not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, even though that decision was not his to make?

    Or how Lois Lerner just accidentally held up conservative grass roots organizations over at the IRS.

    I mean, I could go on.

    But this is what happens when you have a captive press, that acts as propagandists for the Democrats. You have a few outliers like Taibib and Greenwald, but mostly you have a flock of sycophants agreeing how nice the naked emperor looks.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  11. Why you ask? Because the upper echelons of the FBI are hypocritical partisan hacks and notoriously corrupt. Always have been. As Aldrich Ames observed: “The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.”

  12. Given Giuliani’s past falsehoods, no one should assume he is telling the truth.

    According to the WSJ, Giuliani’s lawyer, Mr. Costello, “said the warrant sought communications between Mr. Giuliani and individuals including John Solomon, a columnist who was in communication with Mr. Giuliani about his effort to push for Ukrainian investigations of President Biden before he was elected.”

    Odd that Turley raises lots of questions about what the warrant did or didn’t include, but ignores what Mr. Costello has said about it.

    Lawyer Daniel Goldman (who assisted with the first Trump impeachment, for his attempted bribe of Zelenskyy) has noted “The agents would not have been permitted to seize a laptop belonging to someone else because the search warrant application — and the probable cause — only related to Giuliani and his possessions.” According to the NYT, at least one of the Giuliani warrants was seeking evidence related to former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, looking for communications between Giuliani and Trump officials about the ambassador before she was recalled. Goldman says “Giuliani provided info to State smearing Yovanovitch, which is an effort to influence the U.S. Gov. The only remaining question is whether he received anything of value — money or perhaps political dirt — that would have required him to register with DOJ (which he didn’t do).”

    Turley omits that the FBI also executed a related warrant for Victoria Toensing’s cellphone.

    Useful background –
    Timeline: Trump, Giuliani, Biden, and Ukrainegate
    https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/

  13. Maybe someone someday will leak the complete unedited contents of the hard drive. Why aren’t lawyers no matter their political persuasions jumping up and down screaming foul. They and their clients used to be protected from frivolous actions like this?

    1. Margot, It’s going to be coming out very soon in a book by the New York Post writer Miranda Devine “Laptop from Hell
      Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide” it was announced on Sean Hannity’s show last night.

    2. Margot, the warrant was approved by a judge. Why do you assume — without evidence — that it’s a “frivolous action”?

      1. Annie-“Why do you assume”? Simple I haven’t forgotten “Russia Russia Russia”, I know you remember that. You pounded away at that here on a regular basis just as you bring up Fox, Trump, Carlson and soon Bongino as a means to fog any and every issue your unable counter.

      2. Anonymous, perhaps the word isn’t frivolous, but it seems like using a search warrant 2 years into a case, is very strange, at least in cases other than Clinton and Biden. A subpoena should have been used, which is more appropriate and less of a cowboy show. The evidence should come from the FBI or justice department as to why after 2 years, was it suddenly likely that Giuliani was going to destroy evidence. The FBI are just bullies who like to intimidate and scare people in my experience defending clients. I think it is incumbent on the government to publicly justify what they did, especially since they tipped off the press to make this a public show (something Rudy himself used to do, which was wrong then and is still wrong now. Based on what we know I think use of a search warrant instead of a subpoena may be for frivolous reasons. I would like to see what evidence they had that Guilliani was likely to destroy evidence. Just bc the FBI thinks it is possible it will happen isn’t enough.

  14. It’s also possible that Giuliani is lying and we already know Tucker Carlson is a lier because of all the provable false stories he pushes. So why is this news?

    1. BT-But then again all the useful idiot left call everyone a liar when there’s an opposing view.

      1. Carlson’s own lawyers argued in court that no reasonable viewer should assume Carlson is making truthful statements, and the judge agreed.

  15. Once again ordinary Americans get the sense that the protected get a better class of justice than they do.

    Small data points, but they accumulate.

    By the way, Schadenfreude rears its ugly head as Mr. Giuliani experiences the treatment that he metted out with such gusto in the past (Richard Wigton).

  16. This was not a Biden FBI action or a Trump FBI action and that is the problem. The FBI has become a separate arm of government. Unaccountable to anyone.

    1. Jonathon, are you really going to believe Rudy?? You are smarter than that

      1. The F.B.I. has presented false and/or exaggerated information to judges to get warrants. The judge assume the F.B.I. Is being truthful and straightforward when they ask for a warrant.

  17. It may be time to make the DOJ an independent agency, with defined terms and as non-partisan as possible, not unlike the Commissioner of Social Security. Six year terms, approved by the Senate, based on recommendations from a committee made up of 6 D’s and 6 R’s. No members of the executive branch. We have to get away from all this gotcha stuff – it is helping to diminish respect for the Rule of Law

  18. An old saying in Criminal Investigations….”If it looks like a Duck, Waddles like a Duck, Quacks like a Duck…..it might just be a Duck!”.

    The FBI refused….multiple times to seize (even when offered voluntarily ) any device containing the content of Hunter Biden’s computer files…..while serving a Search Warrant for Electronic Devices?

    Now the other thing Investigators do not like is ambiguity or coincidence….as both must be resolved.

    Why did the FBI refuse to seize the offered information that pertained to an on-going FBI/DOJ Investigation into Hunter Biden’s criminal misconduct?

    Why did they not return with a new Search Warrant and then seize the offered devices?

    The FBI seems to be haunted by the Ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in its political ambitions.

  20. Like the previous Democratic regime, the Biden regime will commit crime after crime to conceal its own dirty laundry. If Biden can stand in front of the public (virtually) and actually claim that January 6th was the worst attack on American democracy since the Civil War…then anything is possible with this corrupt regime. Once again, liberals have drunk the kool-aid and succumbed to the hysteria of their overlords.

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