Giuliani pal Lev Parnas found guilty of campaign finances crimes using Russian cash
Former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas was found guilty Friday of orchestrating a bumbling campaign finance scheme to curry favor with Republican politicians using a Russian tycoon’s money.
A Manhattan Federal Court jury needed less than six hours of deliberations to return a verdict finding Parnas guilty on all counts. Over nine days, prosecutors portrayed Parnas as a serial fraudster who conspired to illegally funnel $1 million to U.S. politicians he and his business partners thought could help them obtain licenses to sell recreational weed.
Parnas and his crew used cash from wealthy Russian businessman Andrey Muraviev for the pot plot, in violation of laws barring political contributions from foreigners. Muraviev was not charged in the case, but Andrey Kukushkin, an intermediary for the Russian who stood trial alongside Parnas, was also found guilty of helping in the failed cannabis venture.
Parnas, 49, landed at the center of GOP scandal after his shady 2019 work with Giuliani in Ukraine helped trigger former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. The jury also found him guilty of a separate scheme involving illegal contributions to right-wing causes, including a $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.
“Campaign finance laws are designed to protect the integrity of our free and fair elections — unencumbered by foreign interests or influence,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. “Safeguarding those laws is essential to preserving the freedoms that Americans hold sacred.”
Judge Paul Oetken will sentence Kukushkin on Feb. 18. Parnas does not have a sentencing date because he is awaiting a second trial on charges that he bilked investors in a company aptly named Fraud Guarantee.
Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, remained defiant and said his client will fight on despite his second trial looming.
“Mr. Parnas appreciates the support he has received,” Bondy said. “He has returned home to be with his family. We will be filing motions for acquittal and a new trial in the near future.”
At trial, prosecutors showed the jury numerous photos of Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman rubbing shoulders with Trump, Giuliani and other prominent Republicans while seeking to advance their own business interests.
“Everything is great!! We are taking over the country!!!!” Fruman, who pleaded guilty in September to charges related to the weed scheme, wrote in a WhatsApp message to Kukushkin and Muraviev, along with a photo of Parnas smiling with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Parnas and Fruman, prosecutors said, were able to insert themselves into the highest echelons of the GOP by merely promising to contribute large amounts of money.
Parnas’ enthusiasm for weed legalization, which is not supported by the mainstream GOP, didn’t stop politicians like former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt from courting the Soviet-born businessman for cash, testimony revealed.
“(I was) really kind of bombarding him,” Laxalt, a rock-ribbed conservative, testified at the trial after recalling Parnas pledged to raise $200,000 for Laxalt’s failed 2018 Nevada gubernatorial campaign.
Despite their high-rolling antics, Parnas and his entourage failed to make good on most of their pledges.
While telling Muraviev that they would use his $1 million for marijuana-related campaign donations, prosecutors said Parnas and Fruman actually only steered about $100,000 to political candidates. Parnas and Fruman used the rest to pay off credit card debt and fund their lavish lifestyles.
The donations Parnas and Fruman actually made were mostly returned.
Laxalt — who only received $10,000 from the duo — testified that his campaign rescinded the donation within days of receiving it because his finance team deemed it suspicious.
After that, Laxalt said he began thinking of Parnas as “a clownish guy with a gold chain.”
The $325,000 donation in March 2018 to the super PAC, American First Action, came weeks before Parnas met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Parnas made the donation in the name of his business, Global Energy Producers. But the money actually came from a private loan taken out by Fruman — another violation of campaign finance laws.
Parnas and Fruman were at the time seeking oil deals in Europe for their nascent energy company, and prosecutors said they wanted to “make it appear that GEP was a successful business” by forking over the dough to the super PAC.
When Parnas and Fruman were first arrested in October 2019, they were best known for helping Trump and Giuliani pressure Ukrainian government officials to produce political dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election.
The case against Parnas and Fruman initially overlapped with the Ukraine scandal. The feds charged that they made illegal donations to Republican politicians as part of an effort to drum up support for removing the U.S. ambassador to the European country because she was not sufficiently loyal to Trump.
The ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was eventually removed by Trump — a key episode in his first impeachment — raising the specter that Parnas’ trial could shed more light on that convoluted saga.
But before Parnas went on trial, the feds filed a superseding indictment scrubbing all references to Yovanovitch.
Prosecutors also rarely mentioned Trump and Giuliani at trial, telling the court that they wanted to “streamline” the case.
Neither Trump nor Giuliani were accused of any wrongdoing in the Parnas case. Giuliani, however, remains under investigation by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office over allegations that some of his Ukraine dealings may have violated foreign lobbying laws.
