Former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas’s decision to speak out about his take on the private Trump team schemes that he was a part of or knew about has sent shock waves through the political scene. Now, he has revealed more of just how connected that he really is to President Donald Trump’s closest, inner circle, indicating how they can’t just write him off or wish his evidence out of existence. A photo has circulated depicting Parnas with Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka and her husband and fellow presidential adviser Jared Kushner, and although the White House has dismissed the image as just from an event with a photo line, Parnas says they’re lying. In reality, the photo is from a very small event that included them.
New: We obtained a photo of Lev Parnas with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, indicating he met them at least once. https://t.co/gRtpZjJnRW pic.twitter.com/IEryg7Bzyv
— Betsy Woodruff Swan (@woodruffbets) January 14, 2020
The event focused on cannabis policy and was held in October 2018 at a Trump hotel by a pro-Trump super PAC called America First Action. The event had no more than around a dozen or sixteen people, including Parnas, Kushner, Ivanka, and even Republican fundraiser and current Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr. Also featuring, according to the Daily Beast’s description of an anonymous account, “cannabis professionals… [and] people from the banking, agriculture, and import-export sectors,” the dinner was meant to connect the Trump family members and advisers with leaders in the cannabis industry. Besides his pro-cannabis stance that led to his own eventual ultimately failed work to develop a cannabis business, Parnas says that he was invited to the event because he was a “Trump loyalist.”
He explained the perspective of the non-administration attendees as focused on lobbying.
Parnas said:
‘They wanted Jared to be more involved, maybe help push the agenda with the president because they felt that that was something he needed to be more lenient on.’
According to one of the sources speaking to the Daily Beast, Kushner and Trump discussed criminal justice reform and the “tension” between cannabis-related legislation on the federal and state levels.
Although the super PAC apparently did not directly sell tickets to the event, at least some attendees essentially bought their way in anyway via donating large enough sums to garner the attention necessary for an invitation, the Daily Beast notes. Parnas had a hand in large donations to Republican causes, many of which figure in the federal campaign finance law violation case against him, but it’s unclear if any donations preceded this particular Trump World interaction.
Overall, Parnas’s account has been confirmed by a number of sources. For example, the Daily Beast notes that “[t]wo sources with knowledge of the dinner confirmed that it happened in October 2018 and that Parnas attended.” Additionally, subject matter expert Zack Everson has pointed out how the decor in the background of the photo featuring Parnas, Kushner, and Ivanka matches that in the venue where the small cannabis industry gathering was hosted.
The situation is a rare case in which Parnas hasn’t actually implicated the president’s team in something directly criminally nefarious, but the connections are there nonetheless — and the White House did lie about their interactions, so there’s that! Parnas’s other newly revealed evidence includes direct confirmation of Trump’s personal role in a plot to bribe Ukraine into investigating his opponents.
