Giuliani associates plead not guilty to illegal campaign finance charges
Two associates of Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer, both wearing American flag lapel pins, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges they used foreign money to make illegal campaign contributions to politicians and committees to advance their business interests.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arraigned in federal court in New York in a case that has cast a harsh light on the business dealings of Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a former New York City mayor, and on Wednesday became more closely tied to Trump himself.
“Many false things have been said about me and my family in the press and media recently,” Parnas told reporters after the hearing. “I look forward to defending myself vigorously in court, and I’m certain that in time, the truth will be revealed and I will be vindicated.”
Fruman and his lawyers had no immediate comment.
Prosecutors say Parnas, 47, and Fruman, 53, made the donations while lobbying US politicians to oust the country’s ambassador to Ukraine.
Giuliani was trying to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Trump’s 2020 rival Joe Biden and said he knew nothing about the donations.
Trump’s efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens are now the subject of a House impeachment inquiry.
Assistant US attorney Rebekah Donaleski told a judge Wednesday that a dozen search warrants had produced a “voluminous” amount of evidence in the case, including emails and other electronic communications.
A lawyer for Parnas, Ed MacMahon, responded by suggesting some of the communications could be protected by attorney-client privilege and even raised the potential for the White House to invoke executive privilege, walling off the evidence, since his client was doing work for Giuliani while Giuliani was representing Trump.
Prosecutors allege that Parnas and Fruman also worked with two other men, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, in a separate scheme to make illegal campaign donations to politicians in several states in an attempt to get support for a new recreational marijuana business. Correia and Kukushkin pleaded not guilty last week.
The four defendants, US citizens, are free on bail.