Back in April of last year, the FBI raided the offices of Rudy Giuliani in New York City, seizing a total of 18 electronic devices, including phones and computers. They also seized the phone of one of Giuliani’s close associates in Washington. The investigation was ostensibly focused on Giuliani’s relationship with Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko and whether or not Lutsenko had been improperly causing trouble by feeding Rudy information about the Biden family’s business dealings in his country. Whatever they found was brought before a grand jury that’s been hearing all of the evidence for the past year. This week, however, the feds came back and told a federal judge in Manhattan… never mind. (NY Post)

Rudy Giuliani won’t face criminal charges in Manhattan, prosecutors revealed in a court filing Monday — a decision that comes more than a year after the FBI raided the ex-mayor’s apartment and seized a trove of electronic devices.

An independent special master was appointed to review the seized material, and prosecutors and Giuliani’s defense attorney have periodically submitted letters to keep a Manhattan federal court judge up to date on where the investigation stands.

On Monday, prosecutors wrote to let Judge Paul Oetken know criminal charges against Giuliani will not be coming.

The prosecutors told the judge that there will be no charges against Giuliani forthcoming as a result of the grand jury’s findings. Presumably, the matter is being dropped.

Back when the original raids took place, Giuliania’s attorneys protested the move, saying that their client was being treated “like a terrorist or drug trafficker.” It was also noted that the seizure of the devices likely violated attorney-client privilege. Giuliani denied any wrongdoing in the entire affair.

That investigation must have come up pretty much entirely empty. After all this time and all of the files they must have gone through, if they could have come up with anything that had even a remote chance of sticking, don’t you think they would have taken a shot at him?

But this never looked like a case of “seeking justice” from the beginning. This was about generating the most corrosive headlines possible and finding a way to drag Donald Trump’s name into the mix. Officials in New York from the Attorney General on down have been desperate to find something to pin on Trump since he was first elected as President. Since the last election, they have grown even more frantic, trying to find some sort of charge to stick on him that might disqualify him from running again. Their batting average from these fishing expeditions remains firmly stuck at zero to this day.

Keep an eye open for that sort of panic to ramp up further this week. Trump is expected to announce his next presidential campaign this evening from Mar-a-Lago (for better or worse). Only a decade ago, the idea of a person involved in multiple legal investigations jumping into a presidential race would have been unthinkable. Today, however, it’s all part of the political circus.