Why federal agents searched Giuliani's home

What did it mean when federal investigators raided the home of Rudy Giuliani on 28 April 2021? The former personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump was targeted over suspected illegal lobbying of the federal government on behalf of Ukrainian officials.

The search tied the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal to a criminal inquiry. That scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine into investigating his political rival Joe Biden, potentially damaging Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Giuliani was one of the surrogates Trump enlisted, inside and outside his administration, to pressure Ukraine and other governments. Attorney General William Barr was also among them. The effort included blocking a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package, in an attempt to obtain cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government culminated in a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.

The raid concerned suspected lobbying for Ukrainian officials, not the pressure campaign over Biden itself. For Kyiv, it kept Ukraine's name attached to a US political affair, even though the suspicion centred on the conduct of an American lawyer and the Ukrainian officials he was suspected of lobbying for.