Biden reacts to investigation against Giuliani 0:58
(CNN) -
Now that federal authorities have electronic devices of Rudy Giuliani in their possession, after executing search warrants at his residence and office in Manhattan on Wednesday, officials anticipate a court battle over the possibly privileged content they keep.
Robert Costello, Giuliani's attorney, set off the alarms hours after search warrants against his client were served.
Giuliani previously represented former President Donald Trump.
So Costello pointed out that the devices are "filled with material protected by attorney-client privilege and other constitutional privileges."
Federal agents search Rudy Giuliani's apartment
For more than two years, an investigation by the United States Attorney's Office in Manhattan has focused on Giuliani in relation to his activities in Ukraine.
Among them, if he carried out illegal lobbying activities for Ukrainian officials, while promoting an investigation linked to Trump's main political rival, then-candidate Joe Biden.
Although prosecutors conducted investigations into his work in other countries months ago, according to people familiar with the matter, the inquiry now focuses primarily on his Ukraine-related activities.
Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.
In radio statements on Thursday, he said: "What they are doing to me as a lawyer is inconceivable."
He added that he “was representing my client when I did this.
He did not represent any Ukrainian, he represented Donald J. Trump, president or not, an innocent man who was framed by a lot of criminals.
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(Credit: Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Hours later, during an interview on Fox News, Giuliani said that the search warrants "were allegedly based on a single failure to present documents to represent a Ukrainian citizen or official that I never represented."
"I have never represented a Ukrainian citizen or official before the United States government," he insisted.
"I have rejected it several times."
Giuliani also accused federal prosecutors of having accessed his iCloud service during Trump's first impeachment trial, which focused on the search for the former president and Giuliani for an investigation into the Bidens in Ukraine.
In this regard, the lawyer maintained that the officials used “tactics that are only known in a dictatorship, when records are seized from a lawyer, right in the middle of representing his client.
They should be prosecuted and disabled for that.
A spokesman for the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office declined to comment on Giuliani's public remarks.
The execution of the search warrants represents a significant advance in Giuliani's investigation.
Partly because of the high requirements that prosecutors must meet for a court to authorize such orders to be used against an attorney like Giuliani - who is also a former US attorney - or against former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen because of privileged material for confidentiality.
In Giuliani's case, prosecutors are bracing themselves for the same kind of judicial challenge they faced with the investigation against Cohen, who objected to the seizure of material in his home, office and hotel room, arguing that a large amount of documents were under the attorney-client privilege.
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For material seized from attorneys, prosecutors use a "filtering" team - that is, a team of attorneys who are not involved in the underlying investigation - with the objective of examining the evidence and classifying the privileged material.
Although, Cohen argued in his case that this step was insufficient.
Cohen's attorneys first sought a temporary restraining order to prevent investigators from reviewing the seized material.
After a federal judge denied that request, Cohen's attorneys successfully attempted the appointment of a "special teacher," an independent authority that appoints the court to review the material to determine which documents were under the privilege.
The special magistrate ultimately concluded that the privilege applied to only a small portion of the thousands of pages of documents seized.
Charges may not be filed for months
Although the execution of the search warrants represents a significant advance in Giuliani's investigation, that does not mean that it is necessarily in its final stages.
This is due in part to the judicial challenge that is expected by the claims of the attorney-client privilege.
In that sense, the charges against Giuliani are unlikely to be imminent and may not be filed for months, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In Cohen's case, federal agents seized material from him in April 2018, the "special teacher" completed his review on August 9, and prosecutors filed charges against Cohen just 12 days later.
As in the case of Cohen, any battle over the privilege of confidentiality can attract the attention of the former client they shared: Trump.
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Trump's lawyers joined Cohen's effort to block the government's filter team's review.
Referring to the search warrants against Giuliani on Thursday, Trump did not raise any objections related to the privilege of confidentiality.
But since he is no longer in the White House, he now faces even greater legal exposure than during the Cohen investigation.
Additionally, the search warrant to access multiple electronic devices comes at an interesting time for Giuliani and Trump.
New York prosecutors tried several times last year to get approval from Justice Department officials in Washington for the search warrant, even before the 2020 election, but to no avail.
Cohen: Trump wants to be America's dictator 1:05
Ultimately, they received clearance shortly after Trump left office.
And, as a result of the delay, the seized material may include all kinds of records and communications that prosecutors could not have received if the warrants had been approved earlier.
Phone, computer and iCloud accounts could include efforts by Trump and Giuliani to override election results, including multiple court appeals and calls to state officials, as well as communications ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. from USA
While there is no indication that the current investigation extends beyond Giuliani's efforts in Ukraine, prosecutors often broaden their inquiries if they discover evidence of another crime.
CNN's Kara Scannell contributed to this report.
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