Indicted Giuliani associate attended private ‘16 election night party for ‘friend’ Trump

Lev Parnas' relationship with the president might have begun years earlier than previously reported.

Donald Trump tried to distance himself from the latest scandal that threatens his presidency on Thursday by saying he didn’t know either of the foreign-born Rudy Giuliani associates that his own Justice Department had just indicted for alleged campaign finance violations.

But that’s not what one of the men said three years ago — while attending Trump’s invite-only 2016 election night party in New York

In fact, Lev Parnas described himself to a foreign correspondent at the cash-bar event in midtown Manhattan as a friend of the president-elect who didn’t live far from his south Florida winter home.

Parnas arrived at Trump’s November 2016 election night party, which was held in a ballroom at the Midtown Hilton, with two other men in suits and their heavily made-up wives, according to a forgotten but newly relevant dispatch from the event published at the time in Le Figaro, France’s oldest daily newspaper.

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Parnas posted a photo of himself with Trump at the White House on May 1, 2018, with a caption describing an “incredible dinner and even better conversation,” according to a screenshot captured by The Campaign Legal Center. Another picture Parnas posted from May 21, 2018 shows him with Fruman and Donald Trump Jr. in Beverly Hills, with the capiton “Power Breakfast!!!”

More: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/11/lev-parnas-giuliani-trump-private-party-044698