CNN reports:

Rudy Giuliani has been approaching defense attorneys for possible representation, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The move by Giuliani, who is President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is notable because last week he said he would not be seeking a new lawyer unless he felt one was needed. His previous lawyer, John Sale, was helping him deal with congressional inquiries.

“If they take me to court I would then have to get another lawyer,” Giuliani told CNN’s Mike Warren on October 15.
Earlier on Wednesday, Giuliani said he had not heard from the FBI, US attorneys for the Southern District of New York or any other lawyer pertaining to the Ukraine matter.

He would not directly comment Wednesday morning to CNN about whether he has hired or is in the process of hiring a criminal attorney. [Continue reading…]

Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance, both former United States Attorneys, write:

Based on facts already in the public record, we believe that Rudolph Giuliani could be indicted now for conspiracy to interfere with the fair administration of elections, conspiracy to commit bribery, and contempt of Congress. Below is what an indictment of Giuliani might look like if it were drafted today.

It’s important to note that we are, to some degree, speculating here. We are considering charges that could be brought against Giuliani, using publicly available information. Prosecutors obviously don’t do this. They use only evidence that they are confident is correct and that they believe will be admissible in court. And their sense of the evidence will be more nuanced that what is publicly available. Nonetheless, with so much information now available, it is helpful to understand the seriousness of Giuliani’s conduct by seeing how it lines up to the crimes proscribed by the federal criminal code and whether there is evidence of criminality in what Ambassador Bill Taylor called the “irregular channel” for conducting foreign policy in Ukraine that involved Giuliani and others. (Taylor, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, currently heads the U.S. embassy in Ukraine as Chief of Mission.)

The three counts we outline represent just the crimes that could be proven by the public record alone. No doubt, if Giuliani is under investigation, prosecutors would want to probe additional potential crimes relating to his role, if any, in the recent campaign finance scheme charged against his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. It is entirely possible, but not yet clear, that some or all of those counts could be superseded to add Giuliani as a defendant. Prosecutors would also want to consider whether Giuliani was acting as an unregistered foreign agent in violation of the law when, as reported, he asked then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to intervene in the criminal prosecution of Reza Zarrab, a Turkey-based businessman, for money laundering and violation of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Of course, a grand jury investigation related to the allegations we focus on here could uncover additional aggravating or mitigating facts that would inform potential charges against Giuliani. Prosecutors would likely use grand jury subpoenas and court orders to obtain Giuliani’s bank records and income tax returns to identify his sources of income and movement of money. Prosecutors would also interview individuals with knowledge of Giuliani’s activity, perhaps including some of the same former and current State Department officials who have been testifying before Congress. [Continue reading…]