The Giuliani corrections

I expressed my doubt about two of Rudy Giuliani’s statements to Tucker Carlson last week here. They discussed the search warrants executed at his home and office in connection with the investigation of an alleged Foreign Agents Registration Act violation. In that post I also took a cynical look at two New York Times stories on the case giving rise to the warrants. I don’t take anything either Giuliani or the Times says at face value and I view FARA as the last refuge of a prosecutorial scoundrel.

The New York Post has now rounded up corrections on a related point made by the Times, the Washington Post, and NBC. The related point bears on an alleged FBI warning about Russian disinformation. Russia! Russia! Russia!

Here is the Times on the second of the two Giuliani warrant stories it ran last week: “An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.” The Times correction comes in the form of a note attached to the story.

Clarice Feldman also provides a good backgrounder on the Giuliani news in the American Thinker column “The Never-ending Hunt for a Trump Crime.” The media corrections came too late for Clarice to add a point about the never-ending embarrassment of the Times and its lessers among the mainstream media.

We are in the land of fake news generated by unidentified sources “familiar” with this and that. Unfortunately, I think the New York Post still owes its readers an explanation of the editor’s note appended to Laura Italiano’s “Kam on in” as well as Mark Moore’s follow-up story. Their stories turn out to have been “Fake news, NY Post style.”

Alan Dershowitz comments on the Giuliani warrants in his Dershow podcast below. Professor Dershowitz argues that the search warrants violated the Fourth Amendment. Among other things, Professor Dershowitz asserts that a search warrant is “essentially thuggery.”

Professor Dershowitz contends that Giuliani should have been served with a subpoena in lieu of the more intrusive search warrants. I believe his comments are consistent with Department of Justice guidelines, but I don’t know that the Supreme Court has ever adopted this practice as a matter of constitutional law under the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, Professor Dershowitz cites no case supporting his argument. Rather, he cites “civil liberties” and relies on “the spirit of the Fourth Amendment.” However, his comments are consistent with Giuliani’s comments to Tucker Carlson.

Following the execution of the Giuliani search warrants last week, Professor Dershowitz agreed to provide constitutional advice to Giuliani’s legal team. The podcast gives us a preview of the advice he will render and the argument that will be made at some point on Giuliani’s behalf. If I were in trouble, I would want Professor Dershowitz on my side, but I infer from his comments that existing law does not support the argument he makes in the podcast.

UPDATE: I unintentionally overlooked Lee Smith’s Epoch Times column on the Giuliani raid. Lee makes several telling points and his thesis may be right.

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