Do Lev Parnas and David Correia Have A Connection To Sale Of Trump Properties To Russians In South Florida?
Jim again here.
Yesterday’s post about Fraud Guarantee, a company started by two of Rudy Guiliani’s clients who were indicted, was so much fun that I decided to do more noodling around in Florida corporate records for Lev Parnas and David Corrieia. As I noted on Twitter this morning, there are many corporate entities associated with Lev Parnas, and yet none of them seem to have active status with the state, including Fraud Guarantee itself:
Searching the Florida Division of Corporations website, I find 26 entries associated with Lev Parnas. Not a single entity is in active corporate status. pic.twitter.com/w90dszgtYb
— Jim White (@JimWhiteGNV) October 11, 2019
One of these corporate entities stands out when looking at the names associated with it. Mendo Cali, LLC, near the middle of the list in the tweet, has this information on the state website:
Note the person listed along with Parnas and Correia: Inna Ponomareva. What an interesting-sounding name! When searching that name, especially with a South Florida preference, some interesting hits pop up:
It appears that there is a person by the name of Inna Ponomareva who worked for Miami Red Square Realty. I say worked for because it appears that Miami Red Square also is no longer an active company. Clicking on these links reveals that the real estate listings are no longer active, but it is clear that Ponomareva was associated with listings for these properties with Red Square.
And this is where it gets really interesting. Miami Red Square Realty features prominently in this Washington Post article from just around the 2016 election:
SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla. — The first of three identical 45-story Trump-branded condo buildings opened in this oceanfront city at a seemingly terrible time, just as the recession was dawning and the real estate market was starting to crumble.
Many other projects in South Florida floundered in the lead-up to the national housing collapse of 2008. But the Trump buildings were among those that survived, in part because the developers were able to turn to another business source seemingly immune to the factors dragging down the U.S. market: wealthy Russians looking to move their money out of the volatile post-Soviet economy.
Hey, that’s pretty interesting. There’s more:
Roman Bokeria, the Georgian-born chief executive of Miami Red Square Realty, said that Russian-speaking investors have been attracted to the Trump buildings because they see the brand as a safe place for their money.
“They don’t trust stocks or bonds,” Bokeria said. “They want real estate, something they can see and touch and feel. And for Russians, where is the best real estate? It’s Miami and South Florida. It’s Trump. That is the dream.”
Things get even more interesting from here. Note when Mendo Cali, LLC was incorporated: August of 2014. Just above the passage about Red Square in the Post article, we have this:
Trump does not own these buildings, but, like many Trump projects around the world, he licensed the use of his name and took a percentage of the profits from the initial sales of units. Real estate agents say there have been fewer Russian investors in Florida condos since U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia took effect in 2014. They predict that the market will improve if Trump wins and reconsiders the sanctions.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump downplayed his business ties with Russia. And since taking office as president, he has been even more emphatic.
“I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia,” President Trump said at a news conference last month. “I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.”
But in the United States, members of the Russian elite have invested in Trump buildings. A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records.
The lede here is definitely buried:
The tally of investors from Russia may be conservative. The analysis found that at least 703 – or about one-third – of the owners of the 2044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property’s true owner. And the nationality of many buyers could not be determined. Russian-Americans who did not use a Russian address or passport in their purchases were not included in the tally.
What a coincidence! Fully a third of the Trump properties are owned by LLCs so that the identities of the true owners may be obscured. And for the three years leading up to the Reuters analysis, sanctions curtailed ownership by Russians.
The Reuters article goes on to detail one person who was particularly active in the sales of these properties [The Dezer Corporation built the properties under a license from Trump]:
Dezer and Trump got help selling the condos from Elena Baronoff, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Baronoff, who grew up in Uzbekistan, had been active in Soviet cultural associations. In Miami, she soon began bringing Russian tour groups to Miami.
Gil Dezer’s father, Michael, recruited Baronoff to work alongside the Dezer corporation. She traveled to Moscow, St Petersburg, France and London to bring in Russian buyers, according to Dezer, selling apartments to them for between $1 million and $2 million. Baronoff was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2014 and died a year later.
“She was huge, she was big for them,” Dezer said, referring to Russian buyers. “No one has filled her shoes.”
Hmm. The primary mover and shaker for selling Trump properties in South Florida to Russians took ill in 2014. Although Dezer claims in the article that “No one has filled her shoes” the timing for the incorporation of Mendo Cali, LLC sure fits the window when this market opened up. And Mendo Cali, LLC just happened to have a person with a Russian name and an affiliation with Red Square Realty, which sold Trump properties to Russians. I’m sure this is just an innocent coincidence.
Update October 13
From a Washington Post article put Saturday evening, October 12:
Parnas, 47, was born in Ukraine but moved with his family to the United States as a child and grew up in Brooklyn. He told The Washington Post in an interview conducted before his arrest that he got his start in real estate, selling Trump condos for Donald Trump’s father, Fred, then worked in shipping in the former Soviet Union before becoming a securities trader. He moved to Florida in the mid-1990s.
Isn’t that interesting? We now have a connection between Parnas and the Trump family that started decades ago. And that connection is Parnas selling Trump-branded condos.
And “Red Square Realty” sounds like it was aimed primarily at Russian buyers, who would have mental associations for that name that US buyers wouldn’t.
Da.
Excellent piece, Jim. Thought I’d link to yesterday’s Al Jazeera article, “Exclusive: Giuliani Associate Linked to Yanukovich’s Stolen Cash.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/exclusive-giuliani-associate-linked-yanukovych-stolen-cash-191010120733266.html
Yet more fun dealings and long-term relationships between Trump & family, Rudy, and Ukrainian/Russian “entrepreneurs!”
Velly interesting. My NHL hockey team signed (with great excitement) a young Russian hockey player (he had the numbers!!!) I won’t include his name because I don’t know if that might be troublesome. Anyhow, our fans just roared with excitement at his hockey prowess. After a what seemed like a short few years, he was angling for a trade – to the Florida NHL team – and eventually got out of his contract and was off to his desired city. Apparently, at issue was there was a growing population of Russians in Florida and he was missing that comraderie. Anyhow, I believe he still keeps a very nice place in Florida for winter and the rest of the time, he is back in Moscow and lives within a short walking distance of the current head of Russia and is on very good speaking terms with the gentleman.
Florida actually has two NHL teams (and no income tax for players who play for a Florida team) and there are always rumors that seem to go around as to the “real” reason a player gets traded. is fact that it has no income tax is a huge draw for players.
Putin is a big hockey fan, and there are hard to watch videos out there I think it was from the olympics of him skating around in all his beer league glory supposedly getting past some of the best defensemen in the KHL and NHL and “scoring” numerous goals against the best net-minders in Russia.
If you were a KHL defenseman, would you body check a guy who has access to polonium isotopes?
I wonder about the addresses of the LLCs buying – how many of them share addresses?
(At one time I was having to read parcel descriptions, and that’s all real estate records.)
Thanks Jim, for your hard work investigating all this, and for a fascinating read.
I haven’t absorbed all the info yet, so not sure there’s anything new or different here– but of course I googled Roman Bokeria
ttps://patribotics.blog/2017/06/21/hostkey-west-trumps-miami-red-square/
One of those guys you link to being in cahoots with the Russians is actually a CPA which explains why he turns up as a registered agent on so many corporations
Eh, it may, or may not, explain anything. Unless you are said CPA, or his attorney, you don’t know.
Okay, “Patribotics” is one of those sites that IS the kind where the link should be intentionally broken if you have to so link it at all here. And so it is not an active link, whoever saw to that, thank you.
That is the blog of international crackpot Louise Mensch, and should never be given one iota of credibility. Ever.
Sorry bmaz- I didn’t know, but now I do! Thanks for the info.
Yes, agreed, thank you all EW
Great analysis.. Thank you!
The name ‘Strategic Global Assets’ is making my brain perk up. I still haven’t found why, but when I googled it I came across an interesting diagram of interconnected corporations and people in this Corporation Wiki. Parnas and Corriea are at the center of the diagram.
https://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Boca-Raton/strategic-global-assets-llc/108700467.aspx
The Wellington Group stuck out for me . They are an investment advisory in Indiana. I was puzzled why they are connected to Lev Parnas and David Corriea. Then I discovered that Wellington put on a Cannabis in Commercial Real Estate event at Trump Tower in New York three years ago.
I think I remember someone saying that Correia is involved in promoting Cannabis in some way ? Please correct me if I am wrong. I expected to find Wellington Group in the list of Trump Inaugural Donors, but I didn’t, nor did I find the founder, Tony Bonanno.
There are multiple entities with The Wellington Group, LLC name. The one here:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-wellington-group-llc
shows up as having been incorporated in Florida for a while and as you see, had Correia as one of a small number of employees. So I don’t think the Indiana thing is related, even though it has the same name.
Interesting that they show Aaron Investments I, LLC. This is the entity that was used to funnel the $350,000 from Parnas to the Trump PAC that lies at the center of the indictment. Strangely, this was one of the few entities where Parnas ever filed an annual report. Even more strangely, it was initially set up with both Correia and Parnas involved, but a few months before the money transfer, Parnas filed a document with the state removing Correia, stating he had been mistakenly included. Also, the state just last month took it to inactive status,
“What a coincidence! Fully a third of the Trump properties are owned by LLCs so that the identities of the true owners may be obscured.”
Also great for laundering dirty money.
Not sure, it’s hard to tell.. but look at this picture from an article by Daily KOS showing the trump kids in Russia sometime between 2006 -2009. In the picture is Dezer and Barnoff with the trump kids. Additionally, there is third guy who the daily KOS could not identify. Am I crazy, or does he strike an amazing similarity to Lev Parnas – right down to that hairline? (in fact, that is how I found your page by doing a “Gil Dezer Lev Parnas” search.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/15/1689980/-Photos-Surface-of-Ivanka-Don-Jr-Eric-Trump-In-Russia-Together
Wow! That would certainly establish a link at the time the properties were just being built. I agree there’s a strong resemblance to Parnas.
With a little more digging, I’ve seen the same photo now with the person identified as Michael Babel, a Russian who was interested in real estate. It is possible the photo comes from a trip to discuss Trump Tower Moscow. I’m not providing the link for that identification, because I’m not sure whether the site or the post is reliable.
That’s Lev Parnas in that picture.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please use a more differentiated username when you comment next as we have several community members named “Mark” or “mark.” Thanks. /~Rayne]
“Elena Baronoff” is just Trump talking on the phone in a falsetto.
Ha!
And yet for a moment I had to consider it as a possibility. We do live in a bizarre time!
Will continue to poke around a bit, but here’s a little overview of Trump branded properties in Sunny Isles Beach, FL (Miami-Dade County).
Trump International Beach Resort: 18001 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach FL (vacation resort)
Trump Tower I: 16001 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach FL (condo)
Trump Towers: 15901 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach FL (condo)
Trump Tower III: 15811 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach FL (condo)
In property records, each of these condo building is listed as its own subdivision and with similarly named condo association respectively:
TDR Tower 1
TDR Tower 2
TDR Tower 3
I have no idea what TDR stands for.
Deeper scan required, but many property records, attorneys, multiple LLC ownership names all have a “Russian flavor” to say the least. Offhand I do not see any of Jim’s “Parnas related LLC” names on the (current) property ownership records – not expected actually, but they may be in historical sales records that require deeper digging.
There are other current LLC ownership names that are also inactive though.
Anyone who is a better digger than I might go to: https://www.miamidade.gov/Apps/PA/propertysearch/#/
and do a subdivision search using “TDR Tower” as the search term – 816 hits.
I wouldn’t expect any of Parnas’ entities to hold many, if any of the properties. My gut feel is that they were used as some sore of flow through for a few transactions each and then abandoned. See my response above to Molly Pitcher about Aaron Investments I and how it was used.
Great digging! Thank you!
You might appreciate the work here:
https://themoscowproject.org/players/elenabaronoff/
Much has been uncovered about Baronoff, an “ex spy” they say.
[Link deleted per request from klynn. Jim.]
You should follow this Twitter feed as well…It will connect her name to many. Scroll down two tweets to follow the money trail Jay has documented.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jamesfourm/status/958084645199011840
And a little OT but related to Red Square Reality is this article about a sale in NYC. It’s curious.
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161026/east-village/red-square-purchase-new-management-wage-decrease.amp
Thanks. But I think there’s a very good chance the academic person in Tampa just unfortunately has the same name, so I’d really prefer that we leave her out of this unless evidence comes out that they are the same person.
Also, you should be aware that “Jay” blogs at Louise Mensch’s blog, so I would advise getting independent verification of anything you see in that twitter feed, else we face the wrath of our prickly friend.
Finally, I think the New York story is unrelated, as you suggest.
Given how often academics pop up in the years-long Trump-Russia narrative — like Aleksandr Kogan, Svetlana Lokhova, Joseph Mifsud — it’s best to remain neutral about Ponomareva, keep our eyes open.
Also worth keeping in mind that ‘Inna’ may be a diminutive for Valentina/Nina/Ekaterina/Marina/Alina/other -ina, and that ‘Ponomareva’ may be a variant of ‘Ponomaryova’.
There was at least one spy in the Illegals Program whose cover was academic; I don’t think he ever gave his real name while in custody, either.
I am so glad you’re covering the Florida Man angle for us, Jim. LOL Sunny Isles is chock full of issues we haven’t begun to tap.
Granted. But most academic covers I’ve seen tend to be at lower level institutions and don’t achieve the kind of prominence we see here.
I’m glad you’re covering Sunny Isles, too. Thanks, Jim! I was hoping someone would do this.
Jim or Rayne, it would be best to delete the link to the academic vita.
My research that took me to a research article in Computational neuroscience is a different Inna P. – my sincere regrets.
The above vita IS in nanoscience.
My gut says this is a ‘borrowed’ identity situation.
99% sure you’re right.
Yes I agree with your points Jim but as Rayne noted academia has been a long time cover. Furthermore, photos online for both have the appearance of a “before and after” extreme make-up makeover. So image differentiation online is not possible. Having the same name, as far as Russian names go, Inna’s name is not a “John Smith” common name. Inna can be a nickname for any name ending in “ina” — these two online persons needs more investigation.
Bmaz…yeah, yeah, I hear you and posted knowing I would get an ear full.
Re Jay: I followed only the items on Jay’s Twitter that link to actually documents or reported events in trusted sources. He has some points about Baronoff correct; thus my link to that specific thread. (Yes, I am aware of the LM link and THAT is an issue in reading him overall.)
If you needed to use academia as a cover, it wouldn’t be in physics with a super busy publication record….doesn’t pass the sml test.
Then, please, do not post that Mensch shit here. You will get that “earful” every time, and deservedly so.
So, “yeah, yeah, yeah”. Post that absolute crap here, and you will be lit up, and for good reason.
If you want to explore conspiracy bunk, and idiots like Mensch, do it elsewhere. That is always going to be the response here if you traffic in that nonsense.
“Jay” is a fucking crackpot. Louise Mensch shit does not fly here. Nobody should “follow” that tripe.
Jim was right, prickly one no approve.
They don’t call you Saguaro Slim for nothing. Thanks for keeping the weeds down.
I’m a computational neuroscientist, and no, it’s not particularly good prep for a life of propaganda engineering.
But her resume says computational nanoscience, not neuroscience.
I think we should be careful with casually and publicly linking names with people we Google. There is real opportunity for real harm.
Squire White, you must have been a dachshund in a former life – you’re so good at wriggling through dark tunnels in pursuit of savage beasts & barking your findings up to those on the surface. Really, this is an interesting line of investigation. So Parnas and Correia were associated with Inna Ponomareva, who previously worked for Red Square Realty, the firm that sold many Trump-branded properties to Russians or anonymous LLCs, and the firm they formed (right after Red Square’s founder died) – did what, exactly? You haven’t quite cornered the slavering beast, but you seem to be in the right passage.
For the record: Mendo Cali was officially located at 7700 Congress Avenue in Boca Raton, a general-purpose office building. Suite 2205 is now rented by a psychologist, though, so the suspects definitely moved on. Probably didn’t bother to pay the rent. The only Inna Ponomareva I can find is a professor of physics at the U. of South Florida. She looks to be a legitimate academic. She did start out at the Russian Academy of Sciences, but was in the U.S. as far back as 2005, originally at the U. of Arkansas but moved to South Florida by 2015. Not sure why she would have been involved with these shady characters; my guess is she did some real estate work on the side, probably as a translator for Red Square, and got roped into a brief association with the crooks.
Rats. Was editing when the clock ran out. There is also a real estate agent named Inna Ponomareva. She is now said to be with One & Only Realty on 48th Street in NYC (registered as a realtor in New York since 12/18) but seems to have a southern Florida connection as well (“Sunny Coast Enterprise” and “Red Box Realty” and others). Licensed in Florida since 11/12. Doesn’t seem likely to be the same person as the active physicist, but I’m not 100% sure.
Mendo Cali was at an address that Parnas used for many businesses. And no, we haven’t yet found any evidence for what it may have done. I’m suspecting it may have been just a vehicle for a transaction or two, but have no evidence for that.
As I said above to klynn, I think we’re dealing with two different people with the same unusual name. If the academic merely did translation work, there would be no reason for her to have listings on her own as a real estate agent. An academic as successful as she appears would simply have no time for dabbling in these activities several hours away. Trust me, I’m married to an academic and know the demands on their time. Further, all descriptions of Miami Red Square Realty I’ve seen mention that they had at least 15 or so Russian speaking agents, so they’d really have no need to bring in a translator from Tampa. And also note Mendo Cali was incorporated in the fall of 2104, around the time the academic seems to have been moving from Arkansas to Tampa.
Don’t know if this is of any help or not, but public records indicate that an Inna Ponomareva registered to vote in Hillsborough County, FL in 2013.
Okay, that puts the academic in the Tampa area in 2013 instead of 2014, but I still think that’s a different person. Note Stephen found the realtor getting a license in Florida in 2012.
Two additional things to note about Inna Ponomareva:
1. One resume for Inna Ponomareva states she began working at the University of South Florida as an Assistant Professor in 2008. Another resume says it was 2009.
2. As a cautionary reminder, identity theft is a real and present danger, as we all know. And we know that South Florida pops up in the news relative to this topic, from time to time. The same is true for perpetrators of this crime who have Eastern European connections. And we also know that medical fraud plays a big part. Medical data systems are also vulnerable as has been alluded to in the Giuliani connections. But, my point is, the name
Inna Ponomareva could be just as vulnerable to ID theft as any other. So, maybe it is the real name of a real person, or maybe it is a “borrowed” name. Life is extremely complicated these days, as we all know.
I would guess that the physicist is the real one, *if* one is fake. But it’s quite possible that both are real.
Further down the rabbit hole…
The realtor Inna Ponomoreva is currently licensed in New York and is variously listed as working for the Viza Group or One & Only Realty, but is not on the current rosters at either firm’s web site. She is not recorded as having closed any sales in the last 12 months. Both firms seem to be dominated by agents with Russian-sounding names, for what that’s worth. Viza’s one “newsworthy” deal in the last year was leasing office space in NYC for a Providence-based law firm that seems to specialize in hospitality law. I will say that it seems odd that a real estate agent would have no presence on LinkedIn and no bio listed with Zillow or Realtors; these folks are usually more self-promoting, less shy of the public eye.
All of which can be made to sound very deep & sinister or totally innocuous, depending on your initial bias. So I’ll remain agnostic and move on…
As an academic myself, I’m inclined to agree with Jim White that these are two different people – though it is an odd coincidence to have two women with such a name living in the same area at the same time. Most of the “academics” we see in these international spy-thriller plots are shaky sorts in fields like Area Studies and with thin CV’s (ever look at Gorka’s so-called dissertation? Even the US adviser only had an office at university because the school wanted his wife on faculty). This lady looks real. If she’s an agent of some sort, she’s a deep, deep plant.
Good job, Jim.
We need a forensic accountant and Leonard Cohen to guide us
“One of his most beloved lyric lines, from the song “Anthem” — a song that took Cohen a decade to write — remains what is perhaps the most meaningful message for our troubled and troubling times: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Marie Popova
Thanks. Wow, that is a powerful line. Thanks for sharing.
We can only hope that the FBI has had a team of very good forensic accountants pursuing this for several years now. While we can do a tiny bit of snooping from here with access only to public records, as you suggest, the real proof will come when we can trace the flow of money.
I think the LLC Mendo Cali might refer to the pot growing region of California. It is reported that they were pursuing some kind of medical marijuana venture.
I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that. But the timing for incorporation doesn’t match with ballot initiatives in either California or Florida and that would make a realtor being on the team harder to understand.
Could be something in the offing, OR it’s a thing or person named ‘Mendo’ or nicknamed for ‘Mendoza’ (a Guatemalan crime family, I should point out), and located in/related to Cali, Colombia.
Still early to pin this down. Wonder whether there are any cross-matches in the Panama Papers?
EDIT: Yuck. I hate looking under rocks like this. Trump was looking at real estate and another investment in Colombia during/before 2015. Trump and Proto Group of Colombia planned a partnership to bid on the Medellin-based soccer team the Atletico Nacional. When I started following that thread, up pops a photo of Baby Trumps with a guy with an Arabic last name who invests in/constructs real estate projects in South and Central America, and in South Florida. Convoluted, but watch for Roger Khafif and his K Group to pop back up again.
I am not committed to the idea of any (planned) involvement of Mendo Cali LLC with medical pot ventures, just noting that the August 2014 incorporation does fit a timeline for FL activity: Roger Stone got involved with People United for Medical Marijuana by/ca March 2013, linked to their efforts to get it on the FL ballot for 2014, when Stone was also considering a gubernatorial run:
Charlie Crist’s boss, John Morgan, to lead medical marijuana initiative in Florida
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/charlie-crists-boss-john-morgan-to-lead-pot-initiative-in-florida/2109431
Stone now has a different PAC (by 2017 dateline); plenty of press on that and his efforts to lobby-not-lobby POTUS:
Roger Stone unveils plan to get Trump to legalize weed
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmy5ew/roger-stone-unveils-plan-to-get-trump-to-legalize-weed
(that 2013 tampabay link looks like a reprint of Miami Herald– just the version I had on hand)
Thanks. I had only looked at the dates of initiatives themselves. Thanks for taking it deeper and looking at what those who favored initiatives were doing. This does make a very feasible case for an effort on marijuana starting around that time.
I do hope we eventually get information, either through enterprising reporting, or, preferably, from an indictment, on what Mendo Cali really was used for.
Thanks Jim. Excellent sleuthing.
MAGA has a new meaning – Many Are Getting Arrested.
Saw a constitutional law professor last night say the new meaning of MAGA was ‘Making Attorneys Get Attorneys’.
Yes, that one works too.
For what it’s worth, Wiki offers two expansions of “TDR” that relate to real estate.
1) Transferable development rights, a method for controlling land use
2) Troubled debt restructuring, a debt restructuring process
I am more at home with “Time-domain reflectometer”
Going back to Thursday’s old news (lol) about Fraud Guarantee, I don’t know if there’s been updated reporting on their activities in 2016, 2018, but saw that Rolling Stone had noted odd identical “$661” donations to “roughly” 20 state republican parties, from “Alabama to Wyoming” for 2016, otherwise leaving the states unnamed:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/guiliani-lev-parnas-fraud-guarantee-897618/
A PA-local twitter person researched and found the 661.90 donation from mis-spelled “Fraud Guarentee” to PA repubs on 10-24-16:
https://twitter.com/PhillyResistNow/status/1182436034476498945
I am wondering the scope of states, and if donations like these were “merely” or partly communicative devices for someone to see in their own, or open, records.
It reminded me of the NRA donations of $13 to certain house dem candidates in 2018 (i.e. of communicative, rather than fiscal, value– certainly in the NRA case).
As to 2018 -again, I have not seem comprehensive national reporting on scope- two PA reps got nearly identical amounts from a mis-spelled Fruman, and (republican) Protect the House got 50k.
One of the Reps, Brian Fitzpatrick– co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, former FBI/AUSA, and known as “Silent Brian” for not speaking out against Trump crimes when he certainly knows better, or should (etc.)– ran in a very tight district (also newly redistricted; Cook GOP+2). I don’t have a link for the time he spent in Ukraine but a constituent tweeter said he was there in 2015 during Manafort/Shokin time (~ sic). [His wiki cites it, dateless; his House bio doesn’t even mention his time in Ukraine. There was reporting on this prior to his first 2016 run (as a carpetbagger from California, for his brother’s seat).]
Anyway, when I read this I felt for the first time “proof” that Russian money had influenced the 2018 election.
Fitzpatrick plans to donate the money rather than giving it back; tweeters suspect it will just be given to GOP-friendly causes, including anti-choice.
It seems really not right at all that Russian money can still influence US “politics” in this way through donation to charity of ill-given foreign campaign funds.
Link/details re 2018 above (article also cites case of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, who like Smucker, says he will *return* the money):
Smucker will return campaign contributions from Giuliani’s arrested associate, campaign says
https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/smucker-will-return-campaign-contributions-from-giuliani-s-arrested-associate/article_e251db58-eb93-11e9-9f47-e72f879a250d.html
See the update!
Yes! Beside the WaPo, another one from Saturday evening had additional name(s)/leads:
2014 photo shows earlier ties between Trump and indicted Giuliani associate
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/12/trump-lev-parnas-photo-giuliani-045137
Besides posting about “…llc” (sic) and “…foreign investments” in 2014 post-sanctions, Parnas-associate Shawn Jaros with an aka was also talking about “300 million dollars” worth of something in 2014. I only note that because Trump Tower Moscow and a bunch of other Trump- (or RU +/- Trump)-related stuff (e.g. a failed mid-late aughts Trump Tower Phila, etc.) is ‘worth’ 300 million. It’s a repeating digit for these folks.
–
IIRC Olga Lautman’s twitter has more relationships/orgs taking off from the new name here.
Jim, quite an interesting leap, Parnas going from selling condos for Fred Trump to ‘working in shipping’ in the USSR, to selling securities. The mind boggles at the career athleticism required.
The biggest leap to me is the one from selling condos to working in the USSR. Working in a boiler room selling securities seems about right.