Lev Parnas’ relationship with the president might have begun years earlier than previously reported.
Donald Trump tried to distance himself from the latest scandal that threatens his presidency on Thursday by saying he didn’t know either of the foreign-born Rudy Giuliani associates that his own Justice Department had just indicted for alleged campaign finance violations.
But that’s not what one of the men said three years ago — while attending Trump’s invite-only 2016 election night party in New York.
In fact, Lev Parnas described himself to a foreign correspondent at the cash-bar event in midtown Manhattan as a friend of the president-elect who didn’t live far from his South Florida winter home.
Parnas arrived at Trump’s November 2016 election night party, which was held in a ballroom at the Midtown Hilton, with two other men in suits and their heavily made-up wives, according to a forgotten but newly relevant dispatch from the event published at the time in Le Figaro, France’s oldest daily newspaper.
The Ukrainian-born businessman told the paper that a friend from his hometown of Boca Raton, Fla., had hosted several fundraising events for Trump and that his daughter had traveled around the state singing on the candidate’s behalf. It is not clear what friend Parnas was referring to.
“We are confident,” Parnas, told the newspaper, “America wants a change.” The newspaper described Parnas as an insurer. (Parnas co-founded a company, Fraud Guarantee, that at some point retained Giuliani as a lawyer.)
The new detail connecting Trump and Parnas at the same election night party in November 2016 raises fresh questions about the president’s insistence that he doesn’t know the Ukrainian-born businessman. It comes amid a rapidly unspooling investigation that appears headed for a House vote to impeach the president. On Thursday, Democrats probing Trump’s outreach to Ukrainian officials seeking an investigation into his political opponents sent subpoenas to both Parnas and his Florida-based partner, Igor Fruman, just hours after DOJ unsealed its indictments against the two businessmen.
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Indicted Giuliani associate attended private ‘16 election night party for ‘friend’ Trumphttps://t.co/h72LB5TJpX
— POLITICO (@politico) October 12, 2019
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