Giuliani associate Lev Parnas convicted in campaign finance fraud case

NEW YORK - Lev Parnas, a Florida businessman who is an associate of Rudy Giuliani, was found guilty on Friday of using funds from a foreign investor to try to influence political candidates through campaign donations.

It took the federal jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan less than a day to find that Parnas committed fraud through donations to several state and federal candidates that were bankrolled by a Russian financier. Parnas was also found guilty on counts related to a $325,000 donationin 2018 to a joint fundraising committee that supported then-president Donald Trump.

Prosecutors told the jury that the illegal fundraising efforts documented in text messages and other trial evidence gave Parnas access to elected officials and candidates.They showed photos of Parnas with Trump and Giuliani, who was the president’s personal lawyer, schmoozing at high-end political fundraisers.

Prosecutors also said Parnas lied to the Federal Elections Committee about the source of the hefty 2018 donation, which he said in filings was from his start-up company Global Energy Producers. The company was in fact not profitable and not functioning as a real business, prosecutors argued. The donation was actually sourced through a mortgage refinance loan obtained by Parnas’s business partner, Igor Fruman, the jury found.

Fruman - whose alleged role in the events was regularly discussed in testimony at the trial - pleaded guilty last month to one count of soliciting foreign campaign contributions. He’s due to be sentenced early next year.

Parnas is also slated to face a second trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for charges related to defrauding investors in what prosecutors say was another sham company - Fraud Guarantee.

The venture purported to offer a service to other companies that protected them from fraud. But prosecutors allege that Parnas and another man, David Correia, were actually stealing from their investors. Correia has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in that case.

Parnas’s ties to Giuliani when Giuliani was Trump’s personal attorney played prominently in the ex-president’s first impeachment trial. The Ukrainian native was recruited to help Giuliani seek damaging information on President Joe Biden - and his son Hunter - before the 2020 election.

Trump was accused of threatening to withhold badly needed aid to Ukraine if officials there did not announce a criminal investigation into the Bidens.

In the campaign-finance trial, prosecutors argued Parnas knew that donations to candidates from outside the U.S. were illegal, and took steps to conceal that a Russian investor was behind the funds that went to candidates in several states where cannabis had recently been legalized. Giuliani was not charged in the case.

Prosecutors alleged that Parnas used money from Russian financier Andrey Muravievto try to curry favor with candidates he believed could help him and Fruman win licenses to operate cannabis businesses.

In his closing argument Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Cordell Scotten noted that Parnas’s own former assistant, who testified under an immunity agreement with the Justice Department, said Parnas knew the laws he was skirting by concealing the true source of the funds.

“Parnas was told again and again that he couldn’t donate someone else’s money, and he couldn’t donate except from a citizen or a legal resident,” Scotten said.

One donation at issue in the trial was $10,000 in Fruman’s name that went to Adam Laxalt, the former attorney general in Nevada, who had ties to Trump and filed lawsuits on his behalf to try to overturn the election results in his state. Laxalt lost a race for Nevada governor in 2018.

Prosecutors say Muraviev sent two $500,000 payments that were meant to be infused into campaign coffers for people seeking offices like governor and state attorney general. Parnas and Fruman allegedly used some of the money to pay bills.

Parnas’s lawyer Joseph Bondy argued Thursday in summations that the case was “absurd” and that Parnas wasn’t hiding his activities.

Andrey Kukushkin, who was also on trial for allegedly conspiring to use Muraviev’s money to get licenses for marijuana businesses, was convicted on multiple counts.

His attorney Gerald Lefcourt argued in summations that his client was unaware of Parnas’s maneuvering in politics circles and that he “never intended to do anything illegal.”

Lefcourt said Parnas and Fruman thought Kukushkin was a “rube . . . someone they could get over on” to help them get to Muraviev’s money.

Parnas and Kukushkin are both naturalized U.S. citizens.