By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lev Parnas, a onetime associate of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, will be sentenced on Wednesday for violating U.S. campaign finance laws during the 2018 elections.
Parnas, 50, was convicted in October of seeking funds from Russian businessman Andrey Muraviev to donate to candidates Parnas believed could help secure licenses to operate cannabis businesses. U.S. law bars foreign individuals from contributing to campaigns.
The Manhattan federal court jury also found that Parnas had concealed that he and former associate Igor Fruman were the true source of a donation to a group supporting Trump.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken is scheduled to sentence Parnas at a hearing starting at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT).
Prosecutors last week said Parnas deserved to serve between six and eight years in prison, arguing the Ukraine-born American businessman “put himself above this country” and lacked true remorse.
A lawyer for Parnas had urged Oetken not to send Parnas to prison, arguing he deserved credit for his post-arrest cooperation with the U.S. House of Representatives’ investigation leading to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.
Parnas and Belarus-born U.S. citizen Igor Fruman are best known for helping Giuliani investigate Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. While Trump was impeached for abusing his powers to investigate political rivals, he was later acquitted by the Senate.
Both Fruman, who pleaded guilty, and Andrey Kukushkin, a Muraviev associate who was convicted on some counts alongside Parnas, received one-year sentences.
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)
