By:  Ellen Cans

Lev Parnas, formerly an associate of Rudy Giuliani, just got out of Federal prison and is on probation.  As reported by the NY Post, the 51-year-old lost no time, making the request just a week after his release from federal custody, to request the use of medical marijuana during his three years of supervised release.  Parnas, a Ukrainian-born American businessman, was found guilty in 2021 on six counts related to a scheme to solicit illegal campaign contributions from a foreign national in the 2018 elections. Prosecutors had showed that Parnas and co-conspirers had funneled $100,000 they received from a Russian businessman to political candidates who they thought could further their business interests in a legal marijuana company. In June 2022, Parnas was sentenced to 20 months in prison, and three years of supervised release, and was required to pay $2,322,500 in restitution in relation to a second scheme.

On Monday, Manhattan federal Judge Paul Oetken ruled to grant Parnas’ request to use pot for medical reasons.  Hours earlier, Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, had sent a letter to the court explaining that his client is “a long-standing registered medical cannabis patient in the state of Florida.”  The lawyer had added that Parnas was granted the same permission when he was out on bail before his conviction.  Per the Post, the lawyer’s letter added that neither the probation department nor the US Attorney’s office had objected to the marijuana request.

Parnas was sentenced in June 2020, to serve 20 months in the upstate federal medium-security prison in Otisville, New York. He was recently released on Sept. 5, as per the federal Bureau of Prisons. Federal prison officials confirmed that Parnas is now living in a community confinement program in Miami.  “Yesterday I was released from BOP custody after finishing serving my sentence,” Parnas wrote last week on X (formally Twitter). ” It’s been a long 4 years since my arrest on October 10, 2019.”  “This ordeal has been very difficult on my wife and kids,” he wrote in the social media post. “We are ready for our new chapter in life. Thank you everyone for supporting me in my mission to get the truth out!”

Per the Post, the main scheme that Parnas had gotten into trouble for was a plan to start a business acquiring retail pot licenses. Along with Igor Fruman and Andrey Kukushkin, he then attempted to gain favor with political candidates by illegally donating to their campaigns in the November 2018 election in hopes they could help them obtain the coveted licenses. They received about $1 million in donation funds from Russian oligarch Andrey Muraviev. Following his arrest, Parnas cooperated with the first congressional impeachment investigation of former President Donald Trump, and he has since bashed both the former president and his one-time friend former mayor Giuliani, whom he had allegedly connected with Ukraine contacts to help find dirt on Hunter Biden.  “I will continue to get the truth out. There’s a lot more that needs to get out about Rudy Giuliani, President — the ex-president, the former guy Trump, and everything that they did,” he previously told reporters.