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Lev Parnas

MIAMI — On a warm evening in mid-May, Lev Parnas arrived at a recording studio in Miami, settled into a chair behind a microphone and, over the next roughly three hours, proceeded to lambast his former hero.
“People don't want to realize to what extent Donald Trump micromanages and is aware of all the corruption and criminality that’s going on,” Parnas said.
“Don’t forget that Donald Trump loves Vladimir Putin,” he said.
“It’s a contract marriage,” he said of Trump’s relationship with Melania. “Most oligarchs, they have the same thing.”
It wasn’t an especially groundbreaking line of attack against the former president, but Parnas was still feeling his way in his new role as a Trump world scourge. Back in 2019, Parnas was a pro-Trump hatchet man whose tale of digging up dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine would put his face on cable news and his name on the front page. And had also netted him a campaign finance conviction, for which he went to prison and finished his term on home confinement in September 2023. When I met him in May, it had been only a few months since Parnas had rebranded himself as an anti-Trump podcaster. His show, “Lev Remembers,” was pulling in an audience of maybe a couple thousand live listeners. But the podcast is just one of the vehicles that Parnas is using to try to reclaim the attention and influence that came so easily five years ago.
February, Parnas published Shadow Diplomacy: Lev Parnas and His Wild Ride from Brooklyn to Trump’s Inner Circle. In March, he testified before Congress, seeking to discredit the GOP-led impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Earlier this month, Rachel Maddow unveiled an MSNBC Films documentary she produced about Parnas’ life — “From Russia With Lev” — to sold-out audiences in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco. An average of 2.2 million viewers watched its MSNBC premier on Sept. 20. Last Wednesday, Parnas appeared at a campaign event for Paula Collins, a Democrat looking to unseat one of Trump’s top allies in the House, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Meanwhile, a group of anti-Trump activists is organizing a “Tour America With Lev” event, which is expected to bring Parnas to audiences from North Carolina to Wisconsin in the run-up to the election. The event’s mission, the organizers write, is “to Save Democracy One Story at a Time.”