Just a quick reminder on the history of secret wiretaps in modern times,
~Max
He was once.
Lin Wood and Sidney Powell were once lawyers with good reputations, too.
There are programs designed to completely obliterate any trace of a certain file. But the average computer user is fairly unlikely to know that such programs exist.
As far as I know, these programs are limited to local storage (your own devices). Think about text message contents - you can delete it off your phone but the recipient has their own copy and the SMS provider might keep a copy of the message content for anywhere from a few hours to three months. And if you have your old phone in some drawer, copies of all of your old messages might still be on it.
~Max
I’d be surprised if Rudy knows the Recycle Bin exists.
Citation Needed.
For Trumpoltroons, it’s entirely possible to duckspeak the “Hillary wiped the server” talking point without ever understanding that a computer can, in fact, be wiped.
Double plus good duckspeaker.
Perhaps Rudy is so far gone that he believes agent orange can still give him a pardon. Or perhaps he has a secret pardon in his pocket.
Rudy is no mastermind at technology or being covert; didn’t he dial the wrong number and leave a long detailed voice message to the wrong person urging them to stall the electoral count (or something) which went public?
Also, as others have pointed out the prosecution likely already have a lot of evidence against him; they aren’t necessarily hoping to find the one big smoking gun in his apartment. They could already have his phone records from the service provider (as well as testimony from whoever he talked to), and simply be looking for evidence that he did actually wipe his phone clean to cover it up… kind of like searching the suspected murderers’ kitchen and noticing that his butcher knife is missing; the same type that was found in the victim’s chest.
I just read an article about a Capitol rioter. He did a factory reset on his phone and they were still able to get evidence off of it.
Au contraire, Rudy is a cybersecurity expert.
People come up to me, they say, sir, you need Rudy on your team. He has the best cyber - the BEST.
I find it entirely plausible that Rudy — like a disturbingly large fraction of the US population — believes that Trumpenkhamen is still the real president, and that at the proper moment he will reclaim his office. Two weeks later Rudy will receive his pardon.
This isn’t some random fishing expedition. Serving a warrant like this on any attorney, let alone the ex-President’s attorney, is a big deal that certainly had to be signed off on by Garland if not by Biden personally. They will have a huge amount of egg on their faces if this doesn’t lead to a serious indictment, so I assume that even if this raid doesn’t turn up useful evidence, it wouldn’t have happened unless they felt they already have enough evidence to nail him on SOMETHING.
Biden said he did not know about it. He is hands off on the justice department.
Biden has made his choices to the senate, they voted, and the chosen were sworn in. That is all Biden is doing in justice. It is all up to garland at this time.
It is so sad that Don Knotts is not around today to play Rudy in a biopic. He had the bug-eyed look down pat and had experience in playing an incompetent buffoon. Maybe Rudy was a smart lawyer at one point in his life. But today his mental faculties are virtually non-existent. He simply must be one or more of these: suffering from dementia, psychotic, or stupid.
Warrants are not easy to get, and for good reason. Warrants on lawyers are even harder to get. Warrants on lawyers with high political connections are likely the hardest to get of all. They had to convince a judge that there was probable cause. I would be astonished if they cleared the very high bar of judicial review to get the warrant that they would come up empty. I don’t think there’s a chance in a thousand that the feds wind up saying “Yep, we looked and he’s as clean as a hound’s tooth”.
I’m very skeptical about all this.
Firstly, your initial claim that “warrants are not easy to get” is dubious. But your claim about warrants on lawyers with high political connections is even more dubious. And in the case of Giuliani in particular, of late he’s not exactly connected to anyone with any influence anywhere in the DOJ or judiciary. If anything he may have negative influence these days.
That’s the wrong standard to look at. As observed upthread, this is a very complex matter, involving - for example - in whose interests Giuliani was acting in a situation with many actors who had inter-related interests. The key question is not whether the feds conclude that “he’s as clean as a hound’s tooth”, but whether they conclude “we can prove to a jury that he’s guilty”. The chances for that are a lot higher.
[It may be worth a revisit to the Trump-Russia threads, which featured constant chortling over this or that raid or cooperation with the SP, with gleeful speculation that the jig was up and that senior Trump people would be nabbed on collusion-related charges. And in the end, nothing … Which is not to say that Giuliani won’t be indicted. Only that confidence is premature at this point.]
I’m somewhere in between. I don’t think there are any official hurdles to obtaining a warrant on attorneys that are beyond obtaining warrants on laity. That said, if you’re working a case against Giuliani and look for a warrant, you’re basically fishing for shark:
- If you haul him in, you’re gonna feast on this one for the rest of your life.
- If you make a mistake, you’re gonna be the feast.
I suspect that attorneys on this case might, psychologically, feel some extra pressure to make sure they’re doing things right. They probably also feel some psychological pressure to do things.