The New York Times, the Washington Post, and NBC News have issued retractions on stories they published about the investigation surrounding Rudy Giuliani, who these news outlets claimed that the FBI warned about being targeted by a Russian influence operation. The false report told about how Giuliani was given a formal warning in the form of a "defensive briefing" from the FBI about "Russian disinformation" in 2019.
According to Breitbart, NBC News reported how a "source familiar with the matter" told of how Giuliani was provided with a "defensive briefing" by the FBI in which agents "warned him he was being targeted by a Russian intelligence influence operation" while he was building "opposition research on the Biden family."
The news organization, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post reported on this matter after the FBI raided the former New York City mayor's Manhattan residence and confiscated electronic devices.
According to Insider, the current federal investigation into Giuliani seeks to determine whether he was involved with Ukrainian individuals when he lobbied for the Trump administration for the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
"I've never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government," Giuliani told FOX News. "The search warrant is on one single failure to file for representing a Ukrainian national or official that I never represented."
Giuliani is now demanding the "fake news media" disclose the source of the misinformation that was published about him. He took to Twitter to ask, "Where did the original false information come from?"
The former Trump lawyer also criticized the Washington Post for its "defamatory story," claiming that the publication, as well as the New York Times, "must reveal their sources who lied and targeted an American Citizen" and called out CNN and MSNBC for failing to make the corrections immediately.
Giuliani accused the FBI for "spying" on his iCloud account over the last two years right until the FBI raided his Manhattan apartment. The former Trump lawyer claims that the FBI "took documents that are privileged, and then they unilaterally decided what they could read and not read," the Irish Sun reported.
Furthermore, the FBI also searched the home of Giuliani's close confidant, lawyer Victoria Toensing. He believes that his rights as an American citizen and his attorney-client privileges have been violated.
Following the FBI raid and "fake news media" attack against Giuliani, attorney Alan Dershowitz spoke out on the former Trump lawyer's treatment under the Biden administration, saying that it was "inappropriate" for the FBI to have raided his home like they did, especially when he is a lawyer who may have had privileged information of his clients stored in his home.
"You don't use search warrants when people have privileged information on their cell phones and in their computers. You use a subpoena," Dershowitz told the New York Post. "The difference between a subpoena and a search warrant is like night and day...It's just not constitutional."
