Biden says he learned of Giuliani raid after it happened

President Biden was not given advance notice of an FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani’s apartment, he told NBC News on Thursday, vowing he wouldn’t meddle in Justice Department matters.

“I made a pledge I would not interfere in any way, order or try to stop any investigation the Justice Department had underway,” Biden told NBC’s Craig Melvin in an interview. “I learned about that last night when the rest of the world learned about it. My word. I had no idea this was underway.”

Biden added that he hasn’t been briefed on any investigation into Giuliani, nor has he asked to be briefed. 

“That’s the Justice Department’s independent judgment,” Biden said. “The last administration politicized the Justice Department so badly. So many quit, so many left because that’s not the role of a president to say who should be prosecuted, when they should be prosecuted, who should be not prosecuted. That’s not the role of the president. The Justice Department is the people’s lawyer.”

Federal prosecutors executed a search warrant Wednesday at Giuliani’s apartment. Giuliani served as former President Trump’s personal attorney and has reportedly been the subject of an investigation into his dealings with Ukraine. 

The New York Times first reported that authorities seized Giuliani’s electronic devices during early morning searches at both his home and law office, a significant development in the long-running investigation into Giuliani’s connections to Ukraine.

“The search warrants involve only one indication of an alleged incident of failure to register as a foreign agent,” Giuliani’s attorney, Robert J. Costello, said in a statement, adding that the materials seized are “replete with material covered by the attorney client privilege.”

Giuliani took a trip to Ukraine in 2019 as part of an effort to make a documentary TV series pushing for an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who previously sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. He argued the series would show Kyiv’s role and potential interference in the 2016 general election.

Giuliani also came under scrutiny for his role in ousting Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, from her post.

Trump was impeached in 2019 after he urged the president of Ukraine to speak with Giuliani and announce an investigation into the Bidens ahead of the 2020 campaign.

Trump, in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday morning, called Giuliani a “great patriot” and decried the raid as “so unfair.”