Judicial Watch: Unseal Records of Seizure of Rudy Giuliani’s Phone and Email!
Navy Wastes $3.4 Billion to Sustain Submarines with “No Operational Capability”
Judicial Watch: Unseal Records of Seizure of Rudy Giuliani’s Phone and Email!
With former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani we filed a motion asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to unseal materials related to two search warrants issued by the Biden Justice Department targeting Giuliani’s electronic information and telephone records.
The warrants authorized the government to seize and search Giuliani’s iCloud account and obtain prospective and historical location information for two telephone numbers assigned to him (In re Search Warrants Executed on April 28, 2021 (No. 21-mc-00425 (JPO)).
Giuliani, a longtime attorney and adviser to President Donald J. Trump, served as U.S. associate attorney general from 1981 to 1983 and U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989. He was elected mayor of New York in 1994 and served until 2001.
The motion, filed before U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, seeks materials related to:
1. November 4, 2019 – Warrant to search iCloud account belonging to Mayor Giuliani; and
2. April 13, 2021 – Warrant for prospective and historical location information for two telephone numbers assigned to Mayor Giuliani.
We are asking the court to unseal the materials under the common-law right of access to judicial records, the First Amendment, and Giuliani’s right to access judicial records under the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. The motion argues that the warrant materials are judicial records subject to a presumption of public access and that no compelling governmental interest justifies their continued sealing.
In our motion, we state: “Judicial Watch is investigating the potential politicization of numerous federal law enforcement agencies and whether they abused their powers to attack associates of a political opponent.”
The motion points out that “[a] similar request was previously granted pursuant to an application from The New York Times…. As Mayor Giuliani is a direct party in interest, the bases for disclosure are even greater in this instance.”
The motion argues that the presumption of public access outweighs any countervailing interests:
The records are being sought to enhance the public’s understanding of the United States’ targeting of President Trump’s attorney by the Biden administration. The public has a real interest in knowing the evidence underlying the search warrant application and whether the warrant was sought for legitimate law enforcement purposes rather than to target a political opponent’s ally.
There is no ongoing prosecution that disclosure could jeopardize, no witness whose safety is at risk, and no trial whose fairness could be compromised.
The motion asserts that Giuliani cannot determine whether “the warrant that authorized the search was constitutionally defective without first seeing the materials …”
On April 28, 2021, at approximately 6 a.m., federal agents executed search warrants at Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment and his office, seizing his cellphone and other electronic devices. Agents reportedly seized additional materials, including a computer used by longtime assistant Jo Ann Zafonte.
We previously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to a February 2026 FOIA request. The request, which included a signed certification of identity from Giuliani himself, seeks all records related to the April 2021 search warrants.
The American people have a right to know why the federal government secretly targeted America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani and what evidence was used to justify these searches. Giuliani was never charged with a federal crime, yet the government has kept the warrant materials hidden. The public should be able to see whether these extraordinary investigative measures were justified or were part of the political targeting of President Trump’s associates.
We have taken a leading role in exposing the politicization and weaponization of federal law enforcement.
In August 2026, we and Victoria Toensing, a former attorney for President Donald J. Trump, filed a motion asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to unseal the search warrant materials related to three search warrants targeting Toensing’s iCloud account, Gmail account, and cell phone (In re Search Warrants Executed on April 28, 2021 (No. 21-mc-00425 (JPO))).
We also moved to unseal the search warrant materials related to a November 18, 2024, warrant that authorized the federal government to seize the entire Google account of Michael Caputo, a longtime ally and policy adviser to President Donald J. Trump.
We also previously moved to unseal the search warrant materials used in the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and to publish the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court transcripts relating to the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In April 2026, we obtained records revealing the FBI’s concerns about the legal basis for the raid of then-former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. The records expose deep concerns within the FBI itself, including explicit objections from field agents who warned the U.S. Department of Justice that the unprecedented August 8, 2022, raid on Trump’s home lacked probable cause.
In June 2023, we uncovered records from the Justice Department that show top officials of the National Security Division discussing the political implications of Trump allowing CNN to use closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage of the raid on his Mar-a-Lago home. The documents confirm that the Justice Department had asked that Mar-a-Lago CCTV be turned off before the raid.
A separate Judicial Watch lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration resulted in the release of records about the unprecedented document dispute between the National Archives and Trump. Click here or here to review the records.
In November 2025, we sued the Justice Department for records concerning investigations of Mike Lindell (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 25-cv-03850)).
In March 2025, we sued the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security for records regarding Christina Bobb, a former lawyer for Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-00588)).
In August 2022, we sued to unseal the search warrant affidavit used to justify the unprecedented raid on the home of former President Trump.
In September 2022, we filed lawsuits against the DOJ for its records and the FBI’s records about the Mar-a-Lago raid search warrant application and approval, as well as communications about the warrant between the FBI, Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service.
Ethan Leonard and Neal Brickman of the Brickman Law Group in New York, New York are representing Judicial Watch and Giuliani in this matter.
Navy Wastes $3.4 Billion to Sustain Submarines with “No Operational Capability”
While the Trump administration can be commended for its support of our military, one part of the War Department is falling behind. Our Corruption Chronicles blog explains.
Adding to the pain of a staggering $40 trillion national debt, which undoubtedly includes wasteful government spending and failed projects, a new federal audit reveals the U.S. Navy has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars to sustain idle submarines and crews that “provide no operational capability.” The scandal involves the country’s fleet of submarines, critical to national defense because they carry out Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions, project power ashore with Tomahawk cruise missiles and support battle group operations. As of fiscal year 2025, the Navy has 44 attack submarines, according to the probe, recently published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, and the vessels are some of the most requested assets by global combatant commanders.
However, in the last 10 years the Navy has lost over 15,000 operational days and an estimated $3.4 billion because maintenance delays have kept active attack submarines idle. “Lost operational days include delays completing depot maintenance and active idle
time,” the GAO report states. “Active idle time describes a period when an attack submarine and its crew must remain pier-side because they are no longer certified to conduct normal operations and cannot be inducted into a maintenance period.” The probe also found that the Navy faces “significant challenges” managing inactive idle time for attack submarines. This is when a sub designated for decommissioning cannot be inducted into a dry dock in a shipyard. “As a result, the submarine and its crew must remain pier-side until a shipyard has the capacity in a dry dock to defuel their nuclear reactor,” according to the GAO.
The Navy’s 44 active attack submarines need access to shipyards for maintenance and repairs, but the constant backlog of older vessels that have been designated for decommissioning block access to the dry docks creating a serious holding pattern known as idle time. Although this technically differs from active idle time when operational subs wait for maintenance, both are tremendously inefficient, drain taxpayer resources and slash the number of submarines available for deployment. In the period examined, fiscal year 2016 through 2025, the maintenance delays wasted huge amounts of public funds to sustain both crews and submarines that provided no operational capability and contributed nothing to national defense. “Inactive idle time for submarines has grown and is projected to worsen,” the GAO confirms, adding that “without mitigation, 15 attack submarines will enter inactive idle time from fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2030.” During that time the Navy could incur over 14,000 days of inactive idle time and $3.1 billion in costs to operate and support the inactive submarines, the probe found.
The attack submarines get serviced at four aging public facilities— Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard—described by the Navy as “obsolete” and inefficient. The work is very involved and time-consuming and includes overhauls, alterations, refits, restorations and nuclear refueling. GAO investigators determined that the costly maintenance backlog has persisted since at least fiscal year 2008 with no improvement in site. “Further, the U.S. Navy only completed about 11 percent of attack submarine depot maintenance on time at the public shipyards, from fiscal years 2016 through 2025,” the report states. It appears that the Navy is not that concerned about the problem and hasn’t even bothered to fully evaluate alternative options to more efficiently decommission attack submarines and develop and implement an inactivation plan that could allow it to reduce inactive idle time for crews to save billions.
Congressional investigators reveal that they made two common-sense recommendations, that the Navy decommission attack subs more efficiently and develop a plan to reduce inactive idle time. Seemingly dismissive of the GAO’s findings, the Navy “verbally concurred” with the watchdog’s recommendations but did not bother to provide written comments as is customary after getting slammed in a federal audit. It also failed to disclose when it will make changes to its inefficient, decades-long system that continues fleecing American taxpayers out of huge sums amid record-breaking national debt.
Until next week,
