By: Mike Mustiglione
Lev Parnas has been given the green light by a federal judge to hand over papers to Congress as part of the ongoing effort to impeach President Donald Trump.
Judge Paul Oetken of U.S. District Court in Manhattan said Lev Parnas – a one-time Rudy Giuliani associate — could hand seized data and assorted papers to the House intelligence committee.
“Parnas’ attorney said in a court filing he expected to receive the materials from the U.S. Justice Department this week,” Crain’s New York Business reported. “Parnas and Igor Fruman played key roles in efforts by Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, to launch a Ukrainian corruption investigation against Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Parnas and Fruman were indicted in October on federal campaign finance violations related to a $325,000 donation to a group supporting Trump’s re-election. They have pleaded not guilty.”
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee requested records from Parnas and Fruman in October 2019. “The two men are under indictment on allegations of campaign finance violations, and both reportedly played a key roles in assisting Giuliani in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine. Both have pleaded not guilty,” reported ABC News.
On Monday, a lawyer for Parnas, Joseph Bondy, “wrote a letter to U.S. Judge J. Paul Oetken in New York asking the court’s permission to share records obtained by the government with House investigators pursuant to the subpoena,” ABC noted. “The records include “documents seized from Mr. Parnas’s home … and the complete extraction of Parnas’s iPhone 11, seized from Mr. Parnas upon his arrest on October 9, 2019,” Bondy wrote.”
Parnas was born in 1972 in Odessa, Ukraine, when it was still part of the USSR. His family brought him at the age of three to the U.S., first to Detroit, and then a year later to Brooklyn. He was a student at Brooklyn College, according to Wikipedia. He also worked at Kings Highway Realty, where he sold Trump Organization co-ops.
“In 1995, Parnas moved to Florida, where he worked in several businesses. He became a broker, working with such organizations as Euro-Atlantic Securities, Mammoth Bullion and Monolith Bullion, and founding his own company, Parnas Holdings. After being involved in a failed film project, he partnered with Igor Fruman in an energy related venture. The Miami Herald maintains he “left a long trail of debts in Florida and beyond,” the Wikipedia entry noted.
“In 2019, Parnas served as a translator for a legal case involving Dmytro Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarchs with self-admitted mob connections, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. to face bribery charges. Firtash has lived in Vienna for five years.”
