[Firestarter]

In March and September 2018, Lev Parnas received two $22,500 wires from Florida lobbying firm Ballard Partners that has become a powerhouse in Trump’s Washington.

See from left, Donald Trump Jr., Tommy Hicks Jr., Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman.


The questionable campaign donations began in May 2018, when $1.2 million was wired to a company controlled by Parnas — Aaron Investments 1. According to the indictment, this money came from a mortgage on Fruman´s South Florida condo. Parnas and Igor Fruman then donated $325,000 to America First Action (not named in the indictment).
The next morning, the PAC’s director of development Joseph Ahearn received an email about the donation from Bulldog Compliance. Though a note on the donation referenced Global Energy Producers (GEP), the money was listed as coming from Parnas’s company Aaron Investments. The money “never passed through the GEP account”.
For some reason America First Action, while knowing that the contribution came from Aaron Investments I LLC, falsely attributed the funds to GEP. In doing so, America First Action violated the straw donor ban: by knowingly reporting it falsely as coming from GEP.

In another one of those strange coincidence, Rudy Giuliani was also headed for Vienna Wednesday night.
Trump repeatedly claimed that he did not know Parnas or Fruman, despite photographs of them together:

I don’t know those gentlemen. Now it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody.

See Parnas with President Donald (from Parnas’s Facebook page).


The indictment also alleges that Parnas and Fruman conspired with codefendants Correia and Kukushkin to funnel money from an unidentified "foreign national" to various unnamed politicians to get support for a new recreational marijuana business the men planned to launch in various states in the US, including Nevada: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoe...ni-ukraine
(http://web.archive.org/web/2019101214060...ni-ukraine)


The indictment says the “foreign national” sent Fruman $1 million in September and October 2018, and that the 4 men used money “to gain influence” with “politicians and candidates”. The business venture never went through.
From the indictment:

Foreign National-1 then arrainged for two $500,000 wires on or about September 18, 2018 and October 16, 2018 to be sent from overseas accounts to a U.S. corporate bank account controlled by FRUMAN and another individual (the “FRUMAN account”).

http://web.archive.org/web/2019101214114...7cd3e20000


America First Action’s finance chair, Roy Bailey, is close friends with Rep. Pete Sessions and was also Sessions’ campaign chair, the super PAC would spend millions on Sessions’ failed reelection bid.
Bailey is also a partner at Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani LLC. Giuliani himself would headline a fundraiser for Sessions later in 2018.

On 9 May 2018, the same day that Parnas posted a photo to Facebook meeting Rep. Sessions, Sessions sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for the ambassador’s removal, citing “concrete evidence from close companions that Ambassador Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration”.


Reportedly Parnas and Fruman were trying to export US natural gas to Ukraine for which Yovanovitch had to be replaced “with someone more open to aiding their business interests” and replacing the leadership at Ukraine’s state gas company, Naftogaz, with allies who would give them natural gas contracts.
Starting in March 2019, The Hill’s John Solomon published a series of articles critiquing ambassador Yovanovitch, referencing the Sessions letter, with additional information from Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, whom Parnas and Fruman had introduced to Giuliani two months earlier. President Trump praised Lutsenko’s claims on Fox News in April 2019.
Lutsenko has recently reopened the investigation into the gas company Burisma with Hunter Biden on its board: https://campaignlegal.org/update/real-ba...ump-donors
(http://web.archive.org/web/2019101214233...ump-donors)