MIAMI – “This is actually the initially time I am [talking about] Ron DeSantis since it was principally all Trump, Trump, Trump,” Lev Parnas explained to me this 7 days. “And now that Ron’s jogging for president, I really feel it is my duty to finally get the truth of the matter out there.”
Parnas is the Ukrainian American businessman who was a central character in the scandal encompassing Donald Trump’s 1st impeachment. Functioning with Rudy Giuliani, Parnas sought damaging information and facts from Ukrainian governing administration officials on Hunter Biden in 2019. That similar calendar year he would also be arrested and ultimately convicted of defrauding investors and accused by federal prosecutors of illegally funneling Russian oligarch money into American campaigns. Immediately after Parnas’s arrest, DeSantis introduced he was turning more than to the federal governing administration a $50,000 donation from a person of Parnas’s organizations to his 2018 marketing campaign. Parnas’s prosecution did not involve the contribution to DeSantis.
“This is a dude at RNC features, Trump victory features, he was at a ton of these things,” DeSantis mentioned on October 16, 2019. “This man was seen as just one of the major supporters of the president in Florida, and so it was just like any other donor, nothing at all a lot more than that.
In his to start with tv job interview about DeSantis, Parnas claimed his marriage to the presidential prospect was significantly larger than DeSantis explained at the time.
“I was extra than just a donor or supporter,” he mentioned. “We grew to become pals.”
Parnas pleaded responsible to wire fraud and was also convicted by a jury of marketing campaign finance crimes. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and is now serving the remainder of his sentence below supervision at his dwelling in Boca Raton in which he is necessary to wear an ankle keep track of. Parnas supplied CBS Information with extra than 60 textual content messages he reported had been amongst him and DeSantis amongst May and October 2018. They purportedly reveal a concerted work by DeSantis to have Parnas provide as a gateway into Trump’s interior circle.
The existence of these text messages was very first documented by Reuters.
The DeSantis campaign did not react for a request for remark from CBS Information. A spokesman for the marketing campaign advised Reuters, “This is another recycled narrative that has been confirmed improper a lot of periods more than.”
Parnas described to CBS News the minute he stated DeSantis approached him for the initially time in the lobby of the then Trump Intercontinental Resort in Washington DC in early May well 2018.
“He told me that he is jogging for governor of Florida and that he genuinely, wished to check out to somehow get Trump’s endorsement, Trump assistance,” Parnas reported. “And he explained to me that he was told that due to the fact of my partnership with Trump and Rudy, that I could make it materialize.”
In December 2017, Trump tweeted that DeSantis would make a fantastic Governor, but he failed to formally endorse DeSantis till June 22, 2018.
“We had a romantic relationship where it was not just 1 matter,” Parnas claimed. “A – I was helping him with the Trump endorsement. B – I was also helping him with a great deal of the fundraising. C – I was encouraging him with individuals in Florida simply because I’m a Florida guy and I know a great deal of people in Florida.
The textual content messages Parnas supplied to CBS surface to display DeSantis on a regular basis contacted Parnas, asking for help with bringing in massive funds donations. In just one textual content, DeSantis requested concerning a probable donor “would it be realistic for me to inquire him to donate $50K? I assume he did six figures for Trump.”
Parnas responded: “I will get in touch with you afterwards and give you a very good insight.”
The texts he gave CBS News confirmed they shared gossip about unique donors, and speaking of yet another possible donor, DeSantis wrote: “Make confident Robert offers a great deal!”
“I suggest, I’ve launched him to a large amount of rich donors, even donors that donated to him before I would go out there and see him and request them to give far more money,” he explained.
Parnas stated he was serving to DeSantis mainly because he wanted to get associated in the cannabis business in Florida.
“I was a quite massive hashish supporter, and I knew Ron at the time was not, he was anti cannabis,” Parnas mentioned. “And I created it clear to him, I mentioned to him, `Listen, Ron, it truly is quite difficult for me to aid someone that is heading to go towards matters that I am going to want, want in the point out of Florida.
“And that is when Ron turned around to me and reported, `You know what? I would be open up to thinking in a different way about hashish if you were being to give me Trump’s assist.'”
In July 2018, a handful of weeks right after Trump’s formal endorsement, DeSantis arrived out in support of health-related marijuana. The textual content messages Parnas delivered also display DeSantis prompt Parnas should really encourage Giuliani to attack his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who experienced become enmeshed in a public corruption investigation.
On October 26, 2018, just days in advance of the election, Parnas wrote “Hey Ron I am likely to have Rudy do a tweet about how crooked Gillum is.”
DeSantis wrote back again: “He demands to strike him tough on his scandal – can say as a prosecutor this would be an indictable case and so on.”
Soon after the election Gillum was indicted. He was found not responsible of lying to the FBI and the remaining costs had been dropped by prosecutors.
In the runup to the November 2018 election, Parnas and Giuliani flew all around the condition, pursuing DeSantis’s campaign aircraft and appearing with him at several rallies. On election night, a person of the first persons DeSantis hugged on phase was Parnas, telling him, “we did it.”
Parnas said he was invited to the inauguration and the ball held in Tallahassee in early January 2019. He explained DeSantis promised to make him part of the transition staff, but never ever did.
“I thought he was my close friend,” Parnas explained. “I thought he was heading to, you know, be a great governor of all of this. We have all these ambitions, all these plans. And all of a sudden, at the time he grew to become governor, you know, he pretended like, you know, he has no time for me.”
Questioned why the general public need to think what he was declaring, due to the fact he was convicted of fraud and marketing campaign finance violations, Parnas said: “Well you have to glance at existence as effectively. You know, men and women make blunders. And of course, what I have done, I am spending the rate for it and I’m presently however paying the rate for it. That will not indicate that my full daily life, which is who I am or my whole lifetime, which is who I was. But I have no rationale to lie. I’m doing this simply because I want to get the fact out. I want to make my wrongs proper. And I mean, allow the folks choose for what they want.”
Parnas said he met privately with DeSantis 1 past time in January 2019 right after DeSantis was sworn in. He stated DeSantis explained to him they ended up even now friends but could no longer be viewed publicly with each other simply because of the tales starting to arise about Parnas. According to Parnas, DeSantis told him, “you’re still my boy.” After that, he suggests DeSantis stopped returning his phone calls.
