Lev Parnas has the evidence. He just wants the right people to listen.
The Ukraine-born businessman was, for a few short years, a mover and shaker among the elite donors, lawyers and lobbyists surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump. With his then-friend, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he was a key player in efforts to gin up political dirt in Ukraine, which led to Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and then acquittal by the Senate earlier this year.
But during the impeachment investigation, Parnas flipped, supplying House investigators with thousands of files on the scheme he advanced to pressure Ukraine’s president to open investigations into Trump’s rival, Joe Biden. Despite this, he was never invited to testify.
“Maybe when I first came out and started talking, a lot of people thought I was crazy,” Parnas said. “Then, my receipts, like they said, my evidence came out and validated it. And today, the biggest validation is time.”
Sitting at home in Florida as he awaits trial on federal campaign finance charges — and an additional fraud charge prosecutors leveled on Thursday — Parnas has plenty more he wants to share with congressional investigators and law enforcement. But so far, no one has taken his testimony.
So, in the meantime, he shared much of it with reporters.
Breaking his silence on Trump’s Turkish entanglements in a 90-minute interview, Parnas provided reporters from Courthouse News, OCCRP and NBC News photographic, video and documentary evidence about the coterie of oligarchs and alleged criminals behind the NATO ally’s influence campaigns.
Reporters were able to verify Parnas’ key claims by cross-checking them with his and other independently gathered documents and interviews. The investigation showed how Parnas and foreign oligarchs worked to set up lucrative contracts for Brian Ballard, a man widely considered to be one of the most influential lobbyists and fundraisers in Trump’s Washington.
But Parnas also told a wider story that sheds light on his own unlikely rise in U.S. politics and his own recollections of international dealmaking — some of which may be of interest to investigators and prosecutors. Among the events Parnas said he witnessed were at least four instances of international influence peddling by his former associate, Giuliani, whom multiple news outlets have reported to be under investigation for possible violations of U.S. foreign lobbying law.
‘A Cinderella Story’
Born in Ukraine and raised among Russian-speaking immigrants in Brooklyn, Parnas nearly had to pinch himself.
An inveterate charmer with a string of failed businesses, unpaid debts and alleged frauds, Parnas never saw himself as the kind of person who could become a political insider. But it was October 2016, and another fast-talker from New York’s outer boroughs, Trump, was running for president of the United States.
So, a $50,000 donation later, there Parnas was, sitting in an opulent Florida mansion watching the future president gaze despondently out at the sea.
The Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump had bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” had just come out, and the crowd of roughly 20 high-dollar fundraisers was trying to cheer him out of his funk.
Trump confided in the group that he had doubts about his presidential run. “I don’t want to give up golf and do all of this stuff, but I feel like I have to do this to save our country,” Parnas recalled Trump saying.
Some four years and over 275 presidential golf outings later, it was all very ironic to Parnas, who is now cast out, disillusioned and awaiting trial on allegations he has denied.
But at the time, Parnas was in awe.
