Lev Parnas, ex-member of Trump's 'cult', runs for Congress as Florida Democrat [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 8 Mar 2026 08.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 8 Mar 2026 08.02 EDT


Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district.

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

In his announcement, Parnas said he will run as a Democrat. His son, Aaron, is a prominent Democratic activist and social media influencer with 5 million followers on TikTok and nearly 3 million on Instagram, and has been called the gen Z Walter Cronkite by Rolling Stone. “I’ve spent years speaking out, exposing corruption, and warning about the dangers facing our democracy. Now it’s time to take that fight directly where it belongs — to Congress,” the elder Parnas wrote in a post on X.

Parnas was convicted of campaign finance violations in 2021 as part of a scheme to trade Russian political contributions, including $325,000 to Trump’s approved Super Pac, America First Action, for support for a legal cannabis company. While people with felony convictions may not vote in Florida, they are permitted to run for office.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/lev-parnas-ukraine-congress-florida