Lev Parnas, a onetime associate of Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was found guilty on Friday of violating U.S. campaign finance laws during the 2018 elections.
Parnas, a Ukraine-born American businessman, and his former associate Igor Fruman had been accused of soliciting funds from Russian businessman Andrey Muraviev to donate to candidates in states where the group was seeking licenses to operate cannabis businesses in 2018.
Parnas was found guilty on all six counts of federal election law violations that he faced, which included illegally helping a foreigner contribute to a U.S. election campaign, making contributions in the names of others, and lying to the Federal Elections Commission . Parnas, dressed in a blue suit, stared straight at the jury as the verdict was read. Kukushkin, wearing a grey sweater, shook his head after he was pronounced guilty on the second count.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken denied a request from prosecutors to detain Parnas and Kukushkin. "The defendants have sufficiently established that they're not a risk of flight," Oetken said after the jury left. Parnas' defense lawyers countered that Muraviev's funds went toward business investments, not campaign contributions, and that the donation to the pro-Trump group was from a company founded by Parnas and broke no laws.
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