Lev Parnas was born on February 6,1972 and is a Soviet-born American businessman and former associate of Rudy Giuliani.
32 Facts About Lev Parnas
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In October 2021, Lev Parnas was found guilty in US Federal Court on six counts related to illegal donations to the 2020 campaign of Donald Trump.
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Lev Parnas was sentenced to 20 months in prison, three years of supervised release and $2,322,500 in restitution on June 29,2022.
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Lev Parnas was born in Odesa, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1972 to a Jewish family.
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Lev Parnas's family brought him at the age of four to the US via the US Refugee Resettlement Program, first to Detroit, and later to Brooklyn.
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Lev Parnas was a student at Brooklyn College and Baruch College.
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Lev Parnas worked at Kings Highway Realty, where he sold Trump Organization co-ops.
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In 2019, Lev Parnas served as a translator for a legal case involving Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin and self-admitted Russian mob connections, who is fighting extradition to the US to face bribery charges.
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On January 24,2020, during the Trump impeachment trial, ABC News published a recording that Lev Parnas's attorney claimed was made by Fruman and shared with Lev Parnas.
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Lev Parnas later disclosed that they met with Dowd in Dowd's home and conducted a conference call with Sekulow and Giuliani.
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Lev Parnas dismissed Dowd and retained Joseph Bondy, who announced on November 5,2019, that Lev Parnas "is prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators".
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On November 22,2019, Lev Parnas stated to CNN that he would be willing to testify to Congress regarding his, Republican congressman Devin Nunes's, Giuliani's, and Trump's role in the Ukraine affairs.
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Giuliani noted that Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were present at the meeting.
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In early January 2020, an attorney for Lev Parnas turned over photos, text messages and thousands of pages of documents to the House Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
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On January 15 and 16,2020 MSNBC aired segments of an interview of Lev Parnas conducted by Rachel Maddow.
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Some of Lev Parnas's claims were supported by documentary evidence released by the House that same week.
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White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, Pence spokesman Marc Short, and a Justice Department spokesman stressed the fact that Lev Parnas was under indictment and therefore was not credible.
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Trump repeated the claims he did not know Lev Parnas, and denied he was aware of a letter by Giuliani to the Ukrainian president wherein Giuliani claimed that he was acting on the behalf of Trump.
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An official from the Department of Justice attributed the delay between when they received the messages and finally acted to Lev Parnas and claimed they were unable to read the messages contained within Lev Parnas's iPhone until recently.
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Lev Parnas announced he would look into it but stated he didn't think anything would come of the investigation.
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Lev Parnas was interviewed by Anderson Cooper of CNN on January 16,2020.
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Lev Parnas said Parnas was just trying to avoid jail and was telling lies like Michael Cohen.
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Lev Parnas said he would not get into a point by point rebuttal of all the claims Parnas made, but would testify to all the facts if he was called as a witness.
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Lev Parnas welcomed an opportunity to testify where he would inform everyone about "unbelievable amount of corruption that went on between the Democratic Party and Ukraine".
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Giuliani insisted that Lev Parnas was wrong when he implicated William Barr.
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Lev Parnas further stated he never spoke to Barr about it and that it was wrong to accuse Barr of being part of it.
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Trump's order came after Lev Parnas said something to the effect that it was important to get rid of her first.
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Lev Parnas's attorney appeared on the Rachel Maddow show that same evening and stated the tape was made by Fruman and given to Lev Parnas.
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Lev Parnas's attorney stated that Lev Parnas didn't provide the tape to ABC News.
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Lev Parnas's attorney stated the whole tape has been given to the House Intelligence Committee.
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At the invitation of committee Democrats, on March 20,2024, Lev Parnas testified before the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family that was pursuing the impeachment of President Joe Biden.
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Lev Parnas is on the board of the Ukrainian-Jewish charity Friends of Anatevka, founded by Ukrainian rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, to provide a refuge for Ukrainian Jews affected by the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.