No Tempur-Pedic mattresses where Rudy's going to be sleeping

America's Mayor may be headed downtown to the MCC

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That’s a typical cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is a division of the United States Department of Justice.  Rudy Giuliani knows exactly where it’s located on Park Row in downtown Manhattan, right behind the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse on Foley Square.  He put a whole bunch of organized crime biggies behind bars at the MCC back in the mid-80’s when he was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the most prominent U.S. attorney’s office in the whole country, often used by its occupants as a so-called “springboard” to elective office.  He just loved showing up before a big bank of cameras standing in front of a justice department crest when he announced his arrests of big-time gangsters and white collar criminals like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.  

Rudy locked up three heads of the five Mafia families in New York down there in 1985, scoring sentences of 100 years in federal prison for each of them.  He also convicted the heads of the Genovese and Columbo families and put them in the MCC:  “Fat” Tony Salerno and Carmine “The Snake” Persico, who received 70 and 39 years each, sentenced to run consecutively.  According to an FBI memo released in 2007, the new leaders of the five families voted in 1986 on whether or not to take out a contract on Giuliani’s life.  It was a split decision, with three families voting no, but John Gotti and the head of the Colombo family voting yes.  It was later revealed that a notorious Sicilian mafia don, Salvatore Riina, went ahead and ordered a hit on Rudy later that year.  All of this was related to Giuliani by the FBI, including the fact that the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 to anyone who could take him out during the first year he was mayor of New York in 1994. 

That was back in the days when Rudy and the FBI were on the same side.  Not so much anymore.  These day’s Rudy’s relations with the FBI have been a little less comfortable.  It was revealed this week that back in 2019, ahead of one of Rudy’s trips on behalf of President Donald Trump to Ukraine, the FBI paid a visit to his offices on Park Avenue and issued him a warning that he was a target of a Russian intelligence operation aimed at damaging the campaign of Joe Biden.  Typically, the object of the foreign intelligence operation is provided with a list of agents of the foreign power who might approach him.  In Rudy’s case, that would have included Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian politician who had been close to Russian intelligence for decades, and who as a young man had attended the KGB intelligence academy in Moscow. 

The FBI was quite busy in late 2019 running around Washington issuing warnings about the Russian intelligence campaign to influence the presidential election.  They paid a visit to the White House to warn them that Giuliani in particular was the target of Russian intelligence, the Washington Post reported last year.  The FBI had evidence, including communications intercepts, that Rudy had been talking to people with ties to Russian intelligence.  Then National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien was said to have cautioned Trump that any information Giuliani provided to the White House from Ukraine was likely from sources influenced by Russian intelligence.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who was then holding hearings of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chaired, was holding hearings into Hunter Biden’s alleged connections in Ukraine.  Johnson was warned by the FBI that Russian intelligence was seeking to influence the presidential campaign with disinformation about Joe and Hunter Biden.  Johnson told the Washington Post that he felt “the briefing was completely useless and unnecessary because it followed the production and leaking of a false intelligence product by Democrat leaders.”

At the time the FBI was warning Giuliani, the White House, and Johnson, the bureau was under the control of Attorney General William Barr, who was appointed by Donald Trump.

Rudy went ahead and made a well-publicized visit to Ukraine in late 2019 and met with Andriy Derkach, the alleged agent of Russian intelligence.  When he returned to this country, Rudy had Derkach on his podcast, where the Ukrainian spread the false rumor that billions of dollars of U.S. aide to Ukraine was missing or misused when Joe Biden was in charge of U.S. relations with Ukraine for President Obama.  Derkach was sanctioned by the Department of the Treasury and forbidden to do business in this country back in September of 2019, three months before Giuliani’s trip to meet with him in Ukraine.  He is still under sanction.

Information gathered by the FBI was used by the office of the Director of National Intelligence when it issued a report this year concluding that Vladimir Putin was behind the operations by Russian intelligence to influence the 2020 election, and that they did it by spreading disinformation through “prominent” Americans including some who were “close to former President Trump,” according to the Washington Post.

The FBI appears to be finished issuing warnings to Rudy.  On Wednesday, as we all know, they paid a visit, unannounced and uninvited, to his offices and home in New York and seized multiple “electronic devices,” eight in all, according to some reports, that may contain evidence of Rudy’s contacts with Ukrainian and Russian officials and oligarchs on behalf of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.  Also targeted in the FBI search warrant, according to reports, was evidence of Giuliani influencing the firing of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in May of 2019.  Giuliani’s pal and client Lev Parnas had told Trump as far back as the summer of 2018 that Ambassador Yovanovitch was “running around Ukraine badmouthing” Trump. 

“The warrant also sought his (Giuliani’s) communications with Ukrainian officials who had butted heads with Ms. Yovanovitch, including some of the same people who at the time were helping Mr. Giuliani seek damaging information about President Biden, who was then a candidate, and his family,” according to a report in the New York Times yesterday.

Yovanovitch had run afoul of numerous officials in the Ukrainian government, including its chief prosecutor, because of her vocal campaign to end corruption in the Ukrainian government.  It is a violation of Federal law to influence American governmental officials without registering as a foreign lobbyist with the Department of Justice.  Giuliani never registered, but claims that he never accepted any money for his actions on behalf of Trump in Ukraine.  Prosecutors in Giuliani’s old office at the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York are said to be working on the theory that Giuliani was provided with information on Joe and Hunter Biden beneficial to himself and his client, Donald Trump, in exchange for removing Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Every former federal prosecutor interviewed by the Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC has said that the FBI does not move on prominent targets like Rudy Giuliani unless they already have enough evidence to indict them.  To support their claims, the former prosecutors referred to the cases of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, both of whom were served with FBI search warrants shortly before they were indicted.

Unless my guess is waaaay wide of the mark, I’d say it’s highly likely that Rudy and his lawyer, Robert J. Costello, are making the kinds of preparations people usually make when they’re looking at being locked up, even temporarily, in a facility like the MCC, pictured above.  Rudy will turn 77 years old on May 28.  If the prosecutors in his old office are as mean as he was when he worked there in the 80’s, they could choose to arrest him late in the day on his birthday, which falls on a Friday this year, which would keep him behind bars awaiting a bail hearing at least until the day after Memorial Day, which would be the following Tuesday. 

Pack some ibuprofen, Rudy. Them old bones ain’t going to be resting on a thin mattress at the MCC the way they do uptown at your apartment on Madison Avenue.

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