Lev Parnas, ex-member of Trump’s ‘cult’, runs for Congress as Florida Democrat

Parnas, who worked with Rudy Giuliani to find or manufacture dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, says he woke up'

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida's 27th congressional district.

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.