There's always another layer.
Lev Parnas, one of the men who reportedly introduced President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to top Ukrainian officials, including former prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko — who helped spur the allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden tried to stop an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company to protect his son, Hunter — has been labled a "con man" and a "crook" by a former business partner, The Miami Herald reports.
Dianne Pues and her husband, Michael Pues, reportedly lent $350,000 to Parnas to help finance a movie, and now he reportedly owes them $500,000. The couple is suing Parnas, who reportedly lives in Florida, but it's reportedly been difficult to track him down. Parnas claims he's done nothing wrong and plans to counter-sue, the Herald reports.
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Dianne Pues told the Herald that she and her husband also received a phone call over the summer from one of Parnas' business partners. "He said we no longer knew who we were dealing with and that the Ukrainians had ties all the way up to the State Department and the White House and they were partners with Rudy Giuliani," Diane Pues said. Indeed, the Ukrainian-American Parnas and fellow South Florida businessman Igor Fruman, who also served as one of Giuliani's connections to Ukraine and like Parnas was referenced (albeit not by name) in the whistleblower report, have recently become major Republican donors, the Herald reports.
It's not just the Pueses who feel they have been wronged by Parnas — he has reportedly been sued numerous times over failures to pay debts, was evicted from a $15,000-per-month house, and worked for three brokerage firms that were expelled from the industry by regulators. Read more at The Miami Herald.
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