Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Testimony at Lev Parnas trial offers peek at his place in Trump’s orbit

Adam Laxalt

John Locher / AP

In this Nov. 8, 2020, file photo, former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt speaks during a news conference outside of the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas.

NEW YORK — Adam Laxalt was a Republican candidate for governor of Nevada in 2018 when he bumped into Rudy Giuliani in a ballroom at Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Laxalt, who, like Giuliani, was a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, accompanied Giuliani to a balcony and told him that the governor’s race was “very close.”

Among a group smoking cigars and having drinks, someone Laxalt did not know spoke up: It was Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman.

“He immediately offered to help my campaign,” Laxalt said Friday while testifying as a prosecution witness at Parnas’ corruption trial in federal court in Manhattan. “He offered to throw a fundraiser.”

Parnas is charged with conspiring to make campaign contributions by a foreign national and in the name of a person other than himself. Among the contributions at issue is one made in the maximum amount, $2,700, to Laxalt in 2018. An indictment says Parnas made the contribution using credit cards belonging to a business partner, Igor Fruman, and another person.

Later, Parnas and Fruman became known for helping Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as he oversaw an effort in Ukraine to uncover damaging information about Joe Biden, at the time a leading Democratic presidential candidate who went on to beat Trump in the 2020 election.

Laxalt’s testimony illustrated how thoroughly Parnas appeared to have installed himself in Trump's orbit. Laxalt was a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Nevada, and he supported an effort to overturn Trump’s loss there.

The interactions between Laxalt, who is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, and Parnas also provided a glimpse into the life of a political candidate eager to keep money flowing to his campaign.

Although Laxalt is well known in Nevada — his grandfather was Paul Laxalt, a U.S. senator from the state — he testified that his race against Steve Sisolak, the Democrat who ultimately prevailed, was a “long, grueling, very tense” experience.

The day after the meeting at the Trump hotel, Laxalt testified that he and Parnas exchanged text messages and that he believed some of them were related to plans to attend a rally that was to include Mike Pence, the vice president at the time.

The text exchanges continued for weeks. A pattern emerged, in which Laxalt asked Parnas about donations, and Parnas provided responses that were short on commitment.

Laxalt’s apparent friendliness in his messages to Parnas may have been partly professional. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that he had referred to Parnas as “a clownish guy with a gold chain,” and wondered whether he was an oddball from Brooklyn with a home in Florida who was more interested in taking photos with candidates than in writing checks to them.

“Are you going to deliver on this fundraiser,” Laxalt texted Parnas at one point. Parnas suggested some possible dates. But they passed without the event taking place.

Laxalt testified that he encountered Parnas at a rally for Trump in Elko, Nevada. They also arranged to have dinner, along with a few others, at a restaurant in Las Vegas that Laxalt described in a text message to Parnas as “an old mob joint.” (Parnas responded ‘love it” and included a thumb’s up emoji.)

At times, the two exchanged comments about the campaign of Ron DeSantis, a good friend of Laxalt’s whom Parnas was also supporting as he ran for governor of Florida.

As the election neared, Laxalt kept inquiring about money. Parnas said he would bring Giuliani to Nevada to barnstorm on Laxalt’s behalf. Parnas also asked Laxalt whether he would like help in arranging a robocall.

Eventually, Parnas told Laxalt by text that he could arrange for donations totaling $20,000 from three people. Laxalt was appreciative, but he asked whether Parnas himself was going to donate.

“I can’t,” Parnas replied, citing a Federal Election Commission matter, an apparent reference to a complaint that a $325,000 donation to a super PAC supporting Trump, America First Action, by an energy company started by Fruman and Parnas had broken the law.

“My attorney won’t allow it,” Parnas wrote to Laxalt, adding that he had tried to get his wife to donate, but that his lawyer had also vetoed that idea.

A short time later, on Nov. 1, 2018, less than a week before Election Day, Laxalt’s campaign received a $10,000 donation from Fruman.

Laxalt said during his testimony on Friday that he was suspicious of the donation and, on the “advice of counsel,” had decided to send a check in that amount to the U.S. Treasury.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.