{"id":183161,"date":"2026-03-08T13:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T13:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/183161\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T13:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T13:02:08","slug":"lev-parnas-ex-member-of-trumps-cult-runs-for-congress-as-florida-democrat-us-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/183161\/","title":{"rendered":"Lev Parnas, ex-member of Trump\u2019s \u2018cult\u2019, runs for Congress as Florida Democrat | US politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence<\/a> for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida\u2019s 27th congressional district.<\/p>\n

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump\u2019s first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine<\/a>, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n

In his announcement, Parnas said he will run as a Democrat. His son, Aaron, is a prominent Democratic activist and social media influencer with 5 million followers on TikTok<\/a> and nearly 3 million on Instagram<\/a>, and has been called the gen Z Walter Cronkite<\/a> by Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent years speaking out, exposing corruption, and warning about the dangers facing our democracy. Now it\u2019s time to take that fight directly where it belongs \u2014 to Congress,\u201d the elder Parnas wrote in a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Parnas was convicted of campaign finance violations in 2021 as part of a scheme to trade Russian political contributions, including $325,000<\/a> to Trump\u2019s approved Super Pac, America First Action, for support for a legal cannabis company. While people with felony convictions may not vote in Florida, they are permitted to run for office.<\/p>\n

After he was arrested and charged with campaign finance violations in 2019, Parnas released video<\/a> recorded during an April 2018 donor dinner with Trump in which he told the president that \u201cthe biggest problem\u201d in Ukraine, \u201cwhere you need to start is, we got to get rid of the ambassador\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ambassador where, Ukraine<\/a>?\u201d Trump asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Parnas replied, \u201cshe\u2019s basically walking around telling everybody: \u2018Wait, he\u2019s gonna get impeached, just wait.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In her testimony<\/a> to the House impeachment inquiry in November 2019, Yovanovitch denied that she had made the comments Parnas attributed to her. \u201cAlso untrue are unsourced allegations that I told unidentified embassy employees or Ukrainian officials that President Trump\u2019s orders should be ignored because \u2018he was going to be impeached\u2019 \u2013 or for any other reason,\u201d the career foreign service official said under oath. \u201cI did not and would not say such a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late 2018, Parnas began working with Giuliani to find or manufacture evidence of wrongdoing in Ukraine by Joe Biden, during his time as Barack Obama\u2019s vice-president, to undermine Trump\u2019s rival. In 2019, Trump asked Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to do him the \u201cfavor\u201d of opening investigations into Biden and other Democrats in exchange for unfreezing US military aid.<\/p>\n

In 2024, at a screening of the documentary From Russia with Lev, which told the story of how he entered Trump\u2019s orbit and worked with Giuliani to solicit false accusations against Biden from Ukrainian officials, Parnas described himself<\/a> as having previously been part of a \u201ccult\u201d around Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of the leaders of that cult. I trained people in how to brainwash people in that cult. I can tell you as somebody that\u2019s been in that cult and now is out of it, it\u2019s a cult,\u201d he said, predicting that many more would emerge when Trump lost the election, which he did not.<\/p>\n

Lev Parnas with Donald Trump in Florida in an undated image released in 2019 by the House judiciary committee from documents provided by Parnas during the impeachment investigation against Trump. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n

Last week, he told the Miami Herald<\/a> that he had believed he was serving his country when he was actually being indoctrinated. \u201cI was pulled into one of the biggest political scandals of modern American history, but something important happened in that moment,\u201d Parnas said. \u201cI woke up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parnas\u2019s campaign acknowledges that the candidate\u2019s career includes \u201cboth professional successes and highly public challenges\u201d. On his campaign website<\/a>, Parnas says: \u201cI\u2019ve seen the swamp from the inside. They know me in Washington, and I\u2019m the last person they want with a seat in Congress and the power to call them before the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parnas is not the only Ukraine-born figure involved in the impeachment proceedings to be running for office in Florida<\/a>. Alex Vindman, a former National Security Council staffer, who listened in on Trump\u2019s call with Zelenskyy and testified in the impeachment hearings that it had been \u201cimproper\u201d, is running to be the Democratic nominee in the state\u2019s November race for a US Senate seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stepped up when my country needed a soldier, I reported corruption at the highest levels of government, and now I\u2019m stepping up again to fight for Floridians,\u201d Vindman said in a post on X<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n