Rudy Giuliani mistakenly referred to Tucker Carlson as "Hunter" in a bizarre first television interview since federal investigators executed a search warrant at his New York City apartment.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan executed the warrant at Giuliani's Upper East Side apartment, seizing multiple electronic devices. Giuliani, the personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump, has been investigated over alleged lobbying ties to Ukrainian officials since 2019.
Giuliani appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight to vigorously defend himself against the probe, calling the search warrant "illegal" and "unconstitutional."
He claimed the investigators took about "seven or eight" of his electronics and "two of someone else's," but steadfastly refused to seize the former New York City mayor's much-touted hard drives allegedly containing incriminating information against President Joe Biden's son Hunter.
Rudy Giuliani invoked Hunter Biden’s name so many times, he accidentally refers to Tucker as Hunter here pic.twitter.com/ERGQS9GSlX
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2021
"They weren't taking the three hard drives, which of course are electronic devices, they just mimic the computer," Giuliani said. "I said 'Well, don't you want these?' and they said 'What are they?' and I said 'Those are Hunter Biden's hard drives.'"
"And they said 'NO, NO, NO, NO!' I said 'Are you sure you don't want them?' I mean, the warrant required them to take it. And they said 'NO!'"
Giuliani claimed the agents seemed "completely content" to "rely on [his] word that these were Hunter Biden's hard drives."
"I mean, they could've been Donald Trump's," he said. "They could've been Vladimir Putin's. They could've been anybody's. But they relied on me, the man who had to be raided in the morning, because—to destroy the evidence?"
Later in the interview, Giuliani denied the allegations leveled against him.
"And I can prove it, just give me an opportunity," he said. "Instead they had to [...] smash on my doors in a frightening way, lucky I don't get frightened very easily, I handled them very professionally and they handled me very professionally."
"Also, Hunter, I am a lawyer who has prosecuted a lot more serious cases than have been prosecuted in the U.S. attorney's office since I left," Giuliani continued, erroneously addressing Carlson as Biden's son.
When the Fox host asked Giuliani whether he believed the president did not know about the search warrant beforehand, the ex-mayor answered: "Maybe he doesn't remember. I'm not sure if he can retain anything for more than about the time that it takes to read it.
"My sole concentration from the beginning here, Tucker, was to find evidence that would prove what I knew: that [Trump] was innocent of Russian collusion, and that he was innocent of doing anything improper," Giuliani said.
"He did exactly what a president should do with the president of Ukraine. He sked him to investigate a vice-president who violated our laws over and over again."
"30 years of the Biden crime family violating our laws, that is what is on the hard drive that they have censored. And that's why they wanna put me in jail."
