One year after the raid on Rudy Giuliani's home and office, we look at his career from prosecutor, to mayor, to Donald Trump's lawyer, to target of an investigation by the office he used to lead.

Transcript

A MARTINEZ, HOST:

It's been exactly one year since federal prosecutors in Manhattan raided the apartment of the man who once led the U.S. attorney's office there. And that's Rudy Giuliani. For the past 12 months, lawyers have been sifting through the evidence gathered that day. And that's not the only challenge, in and out of court, that Giuliani faces. NPR's Andrea Bernstein has been covering the legal drama. Andrea, take us back to last April. What happened back then?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN, BYLINE: So good morning. A year ago today, FBI agents paid a 6 a.m. call on the former prosecutor and New York mayor. They took cell phones and computers. They were looking to see if there was evidence that Giuliani had illegally lobbied on behalf of parties in Ukraine or if he tried to get the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, fired because of that lobbying. And while we still don't know exactly the basis of the search warrant, we do know that prosecutors had to have a high degree of certainty they'd find what they were looking for in order to even do this raid. It was a remarkable turnaround for the former U.S. attorney, Rudy Giuliani. I mean, his picture still hangs on the wall in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, along with all the other former U.S. attorneys.

MARTINEZ: Is it unusual for the office to take so long to take any action after a raid?

BERNSTEIN: So prosecutors who've worked in that office tell me no. They say there's been a lot of digital evidence to parse through. There was also a so-called special master appointed this year to see if there were any issues of privilege. So to them, this seems like a normal amount of time.

MARTINEZ: OK. Now, this isn't the only legal difficulty for someone who was once the personal attorney to former President Trump. Is it?

BERNSTEIN: No, not at all. About two months after that raid - and embarrassing for Rudy Giuliani - his license to practice law was suspended in New York and then later in Washington. The New York court found, quote, "uncontroverted evidence" that Giuliani communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large regarding the 2020 election. In fact, after the election, Giuliani personally argued a case himself in Pennsylvania. It was one of the first times he'd been in a courtroom in front of a judge in that way in a quarter century and as it turned out the last time before the license suspensions.

MARTINEZ: Yeah, false accounts about voter fraud got him slapped with another lawsuit, this one by Dominion Voting Systems. Tell us about that one.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, this is a defamation suit. And Dominion is suing Giuliani and others for $1.6 billion, accusing the defendants of harming their business through their post-2020 election lies that Dominion had stolen votes and fixed the election. This case is really going to be a test of whether, as a lawyer representing a client, your claims have to be true. And so far, Dominion's case has survived a motion to dismiss, which means that their lawyers get to demand more evidence from Giuliani.

MARTINEZ: And there's another case in which two election workers are also accusing Rudy Giuliani of defamation. What's that one about?

BERNSTEIN: So this one stems from the same thing. It's lying about alleged stolen ballots in Georgia. But this time it's not a huge company with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts at stake. It's two elections workers, working people who were harassed after being baselessly accused of election fraud. One of them had to flee her home after she got death threats.

MARTINEZ: And how does the House committee investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol fit into all of this?

BERNSTEIN: Yes. So we know that they're asking about what Giuliani was doing that day and about his contacts with the former president. While there's no indication that the Justice Department is looking at Giuliani's actions, we do know the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said he will follow those riot cases as far as they lead. Now, Giuliani and his attorneys have denied wrongdoing in all the matters we've discussed today.

MARTINEZ: If Rudy Giuliani is no longer practicing law, what is he doing?

BERNSTEIN: So even before his law license was suspended, Trump's spokesperson said Giuliani was no longer working for Trump. So for now, he's podcasting. He's campaigning for his son, Andrew Giuliani, who's running for governor in New York. And most recently, he was unmasked from the Jack in the Box costume on the TV show "The Masked Singer."

MARTINEZ: That's NPR's Andrea Bernstein. Thanks a lot.

BERNSTEIN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.