Faulty redactions in court document show federal investigators seized more info in case against Rudy Giuliani than previously disclosed

New York federal prosecutors investigating Rudy Giuliani have seized material from a wider array of individuals than previously disclosed, including messages from email and iCloud accounts they believe belong to two former Ukrainian government officials, as well as the cell phone and iPad of a pro-Trump Ukrainian businessman, according to a court document unsealed Tuesday.

The court filing, which contained redacted portions that CNN was able to read by copying and pasting them into another document, also disclosed that federal prosecutors have “historical and prospective cell site information” related to Giuliani and another lawyer, Victoria Toensing, both of whom were the subjects of search warrants executed late last month.

The Ukrainians include the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, the former head of the Ukrainian Fiscal Service Roman Nasirov and businessman Alexander Levin.

The filing, written by an attorney for an indicted former Giuliani ally Lev Parnas, describes a chart in which federal prosecutors described the scope of the materials they sought and seized beginning in late 2019 and continuing through earlier this year.

Though prosecutors had previously indicated that their investigation was expansive and encompassed people beyond Giuliani and Toensing, they hadn’t publicly identified the other recipients of subpoenas or subjects of search warrants.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Giuliani violated foreign lobbying laws by operating on behalf of Ukrainian officials when he sought the ouster of the then-US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, while urging Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival, then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, CNN has reported.

Giuliani has said his activities in Ukraine were done in his capacity as a lawyer for his former client, former President Donald Trump, and that he “never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government.”

Prosecutors appear to have pursued material connected to Giuliani’s efforts abroad. Lutsenko, whose email account prosecutors targeted, met with Giuliani several times, and several former US State Department officials testified that he was part of a smear campaign against Yovanovich. Lutsenko falsely said that Yovanovich was speaking negatively about Trump and that she gave him a “do not prosecute” list.

The nature of prosecutors’ interest in material from Nasirov’s email and iCloud accounts and from Levin’s iPhone and iPad wasn’t immediately clear.

Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, filed the letter on behalf of attorneys for all of the defendants in Parnas’ case, asking a federal judge for a status conference on materials seized by authorities in the searches executed on Giuliani and Toensing in late April, saying the searches produced documents relevant to the case against Parnas, former Giuliani ally Igor Fruman and a third defendant, Andrey Kukushkin. All three have pleaded not guilty.

A spokesman for the Manhattan US Attorney’s office declined to comment.

Bondy declined to comment, and Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, could not immediately be reached for comment. Toensing’s lawyer declined to comment.

Bondy wrote that the evidence seized “likely includes e-mail, text, and encrypted communications” between Giuliani, Toensing, former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, “high-level members of the Justice Department, Presidential impeachment attorneys Jay Sekulow, Jane Raskin and others, Senator Lindsey Graham, Congressman Devin Nunes and others, relating to the timing of the arrest and indictment of the defendants as a means to prevent potential disclosures to Congress in the first impeachment inquiry of then-President Donald. J. Trump.”

In prior court filings, prosecutors disclosed they seized 18 electronic devices from Giuliani in late April and had covertly searched his iCloud account in 2019; they also acknowledged they took Toensing’s cell phone during the April searches.

Because both Giuliani and Toensing are lawyers, they have been at odds with prosecutors over whether and how authorities may be able to access the material seized from those searches while protecting attorney-client privilege.

This story has been updated with additional information.