Giuliani turned to an unlikely pair of Florida fixers
When Donald Trump wanted Ukrainian authorities to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani turned to an unlikely pair of fixers: two Soviet-born business partners from Florida.
Documents show that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans while facing lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts.
The pair used wire transfers from a company they controlled to make a US$325,000 donation to a Trump-allied political action committee in 2018. That was on top of US$100,000 in earlier donations to Trump and Republican Party candidates, which helped the relatively unknown entrepreneurs quickly gain access to the highest levels of the party – including face-to-face meetings with the president at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.
‘‘Thank You President Trump !!! Making America great !!!!!! ,’’ Parnas wrote in a May 2018 Facebook post showing him and Fruman with Trump at a dinner in the president’s private residence at the White House.
It is not clear when the two men first met Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer. But earlier this year, according to Ukrainian media reports, Parnas and Fruman were spotted in Kyiv, where they were frequent visitors to then-prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko, who sought to portray himself as an uncompromising fighter against corruption.
Multiple Ukrainian media outlets later named Parnas and Fruman as helping to arrange a January meeting in New York between Lutsenko and Giuliani, as well as other meetings with key government officials.
Fruman did not reply to a request for comment. Parnas, in an interview with The Miami Herald on Friday, called the impeachment inquiry a ‘‘soap opera’’ and defended Trump.
Parnas said the Ukrainian government had access to information about alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens, but the US government had proved indifferent to receiving it through official channels. Thanks to his friendship with Giuliani, he and Fruman became the best people to get it into the Trump administration’s hands.
There is little public evidence that Global Energy Producers was ever a thriving enterprise that could generate the income to account for its outsized political giving.
Details of the source of the funds only emerged earlier this year as part of a long-running, unrelated lawsuit involving the estate of a US Navy veteran from New York who accused Parnas of defrauding him out of nearly half a million dollars in loans and investments in a Hollywood movie project that turned out to be a mirage.