Prosecutors decline to charge Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine work

Federal prosecutors on Monday declined to charge former New York City mayor and longtime Donald Trump ally Rudy Giuliani for his work with Ukrainian figures during the Trump administration. The decision ends a more than year-long investigation into whether he acted as an unregistered foreign agent as part of his efforts to aid the Trump administration by denigrating then-candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, for their Ukrainian dealings.

"In my business, we would call that total victory," attorney Robert Costello, who represented Giuliani in this case, told The Associated Press upon news of the prosecutors' decision.

"We appreciate what the U.S. attorney's [sic] has done," he added. "We only wish they had done it a lot sooner."

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In 2021 investigators searched Giuliani's home, and confiscated a number of his personal electronic devices, in what his attorney at the time called "legal thuggery." According to The New York Times, none of the evidence seized in that search was enough to yield definitive proof that Giuliani had broken the law. As they wrote in a memo to the presiding judge this week: "based on information currently available to the government, criminal charges are not forthcoming."

While Giuliani appears to have dodged a legal bullet in this instance, his actions to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump have led to the suspension of his law license in New York state, as well as placed him under ongoing investigation by Georgia officials.