Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Office: At least 6 times, DeSantis, Parnas met
Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian-American tied to Rudy Giuliani and under indictment for campaign finance fraud, met with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at least six times and had other encounters beyond that, the governor’s office confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel.
The number of interactions is more than previously reported by Florida news outlets asking questions for weeks about the governor’s ties to the Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman. The duo also has been tied to the Ukraine scandal that has led to House impeachment hearings of President Trump.
DeSantis has refused to talk about his encounters with the two South Florida businessmen beyond an initial brief description of
them, even though Parnas repeatedly contacted his campaign and sought meetings with DeSantis. Now Parnas and Fruman face charges of illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. campaigns.
DeSantis’ office stressed that the governor had no knowledge of their alleged crimes and immediately gave the $50,000 they had contributed to DeSantis’ campaign to the U.S. Treasury after news broke of their arrests.
It’s unclear what Parnas and Fruman wanted from the new DeSantis administration. The Miami Herald reported they sought to invest in a medical marijuana license, but despite all the repeated contacts between Parnas and the campaign, DeSantis’ office said no policy was ever discussed.
Parnas met DeSantis for the first time on May 9, 2018, at an event of the Zionist Organization of America, a pro-Israel group. At the time, DeSantis was a U.S. House member in a GOP primary for governor. The next day, his campaign aides reached out to Parnas’ assistant, to talk about a future donation to the campaign.
DeSantis next met Parnas on May 29, 2018, when he had lunch with him and Rob Pereira, a South Florida construction magnate. Pereira agreed to donate to the campaign at the meeting and to host a fundraiser. Middlesex Corp., the company Pereira founded, ended up giving $115,000 to a DeSantis political committee.
Although Parnas and Fruman are often presented in tandem, DeSantis has said Parnas was the main point of contact and he didn’t know Fruman as well.
Parnas and Fruman, both of who are naturalized Americans born in former Soviet republics (Parnas in Ukraine and Fruman in Belarus), were largely unknown to the public until Oct. 9, when they were arrested at Dulles International Airport in Washington. According to the Daily Beast, the items Parnas had on him when he was arrested included five cellphones, eight credit and debit cards and $5,000 in $100 bills.
He also had the business card of Nazar Kholodnytsky, a Ukrainian prosecutor Giuliani met with months earlier as part of his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while Biden was vice president.
Parnas and Fruman have been asked to testify in ongoing impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill.
Parnas set up several businesses based in Boca Raton, and Fruman has a home in Sunny Isles Beach.
The next time DeSantis met Parnas was in Longwood on July 18, 2018, at a fundraiser at which Donald Trump Jr. attended. Parnas was on the host committee for the event. Parnas and Fruman’s company, Global Energy Producers, had donated $50,000 to DeSantis’ committee the previous month, on June 21, one day before President Trump tweeted a formal endorsement of DeSantis, although Trump had expressed support for DeSantis previously.
Another encounter took place Oct. 3, 2018. DeSantis finished a day of seven fundraising events at the Hillsboro Beach home of Thomas and Michelle Murphy in Broward County. Pereira lived down the street from the couple at the time. Parnas was supposed to give a minimum donation of $25,000 to attend the event but never did.
Parnas then tried to set up a meeting with DeSantis on Nov. 1, five days before the election, but Parnas never showed up. Emails and texts from campaign aides show they thought Parnas’ assistant set up the meeting and were perplexed when he didn’t show.
On Nov. 4, 2018, Parnas and Fruman were seen at DeSantis rallies in Daytona Beach and Boca Raton. Parnas was pictured on his social media accounts with Giuliani on his plane the same day, leading to speculation that he was on the plane with DeSantis traveling between the two events.
DeSantis’ office denied that and claimed Giuliani and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi traveled on the same plane with DeSantis from Daytona Beach to the Boca Raton rally, while Parnas and Fruman followed in Giuliani’s plane.
Parnas and Fruman were then seen in numerous pictures with DeSantis at his victory party on election night.
During the transition, Parnas asked to be on the public safety transition team, but DeSantis opted to name Pereira instead.
Parnas and Fruman then attended a “Thank You” dinner in Miami on Jan. 3, a few days before DeSantis was to be sworn in as governor. They complained they were seated in the back and lacked access to DeSantis.
The pair also turned up in the VIP section of DeSantis’ swearing-in ceremony, which was approved by Justin Caparale, an aide with the Republican Party of Florida at the time.
Parnas later requested a meeting with DeSantis in which he was going to introduce the new governor to Matityahu HaCohen Dan, chairman of Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli organization dedicated to buying land and building projects in East Jerusalem and creating a Jewish majority there. The plan was to talk about a construction project in Jerusalem, but the meeting never took place.
Campaign aides set up a meeting between DeSantis and Parnas at the West Palm Beach airport on Jan. 18, but DeSantis aides describe it as “just a few handshakes” where nothing substantive was discussed.
Susie Wiles, DeSantis’ former campaign manager who helped out with the transition, was copied on the emails that set up the meeting, but she told Politico, which first reported the meeting, that she didn’t set it up.
Susan MacManus, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of South Florida, said the connections to Parnas and Fruman aren’t likely to hurt DeSantis.
“There’s a general sense of ‘this is politics as usual,’ ” MacManus said. “The public is jaded already, and they’re more impressed that he’s a different kind of governor than the public anticipated. … His actions on public policy get people’s attention more than the drip-drip of bad relationships and imagery from the campaign.”
Mac Stipanovich, a Republican consultant in Tallahassee who has been critical of DeSantis because of the governor’s fervent support of President Trump, agreed that he didn’t believe the Parnas scandal will have any real political effect on DeSantis’s popularity.
“Absent any evidence he knew they were not on the up-and-up and was open to some sort of skeevy activity on their part, I think he’s going to be fine,” Stipanovich said.
A candidate running in the third-largest state in the country “meets all kinds of people,” he said, comparing the situation with when First Lady Rosalynn Carter was photographed shaking hands with someone later charged with being a serial killer.
“Absent more information, it’s not much different than Rosalynn Carter being in that picture with John Wayne Gacy,” he said.