You don’t end up that deep in Trump’s orbit by accident. You don’t get close to Giuliani, funnel Russian money into U.S. elections, and help construct a foreign interference campaign against a political opponent because you got confused. You’re there because you belong there. Because the value system that proximity requires — loyalty over ethics, access over integrity, money over everything — is a value system you already had.
Lev Parnas is running for Congress as a Democrat in Florida’s 27th District. And large Substack creators are platforming him like that’s a story about redemption. It isn’t. It’s a story about a grifter who has always chased power and influence, and who has simply rebranded the chase.
So let’s talk about what he actually did. All of it.
Parnas ran a company called Fraud Guarantee… and yes, that’s the real name, from 2012 to 2019. The pitch was that investors could protect themselves from financial fraud by purchasing policies through his company. At least seven people invested. Together they put in over $2 million. Instead of using that money for legitimate business expenses, Parnas and his co-conspirator withdrew it as cash, transferred it to personal accounts, and spent it on personal expenses. That included $30,000 on luxury car leases. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The SEC also obtained a final judgment against him for securities fraud in connection with the same scheme.
The sentencing judge said fraud had become “a way of life” for Parnas.
That was one scheme. While it was running, he was building a separate one. In the spring of 2018, Parnas, Igor Fruman, and two others decided to launch a business aimed at acquiring retail cannabis licenses in the United States. As part of that plan, a Russian oligarch named Andrey Muraviev agreed to wire $1 million through a series of bank accounts to fund hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions. Parnas and Fruman funneled at least $675,500 in campaign contributions to at least 14 Republican candidates and groups. That included a $325,000 donation to the America First Action Super PAC — one of Trump’s premier fundraising committees.
He wasn’t a true believer. He was buying access to politicians who could hand him cannabis licenses. The ideology was just the currency. A jury convicted him on six counts related to these influence-buying schemes. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution. He finished home confinement in September 2023. Then launched a podcast. Now he’s running for Congress. And according to FEC filings, his campaign has raised $27,336, and spent exactly $0.00 of it.
You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me...
A man convicted of using campaign finance as a personal ATM has raised $27,000 for a congressional campaign in a district he cannot win, in a race he announced two weeks ago, and has not spent a single dollar of it on actual campaigning. What he has spent is other people’s platforms — Substack writers with large audiences, handing him credibility and reach for free while his campaign war chest sits untouched.
This is what a grift looks like when the market changes.
The product used to be access to Trump world. Now the product is resistance credibility. The mechanism is identical. He just needs to find people who have something you want, tell them what they need to hear, position himself at the center of it, and collect. The only thing that changed is the audience.
Grifters use political campaigns in specific ways. They pay themselves salaries from campaign funds. They route money to vendors they control. They raise on name recognition and spend on themselves. They run in races they can’t win because the campaign is never the goal and the visibility is the point. The podcast downloads. The book deal. The speaking fees. The Substack subscribers. A congressional campaign in a solid Republican district that he has essentially zero chance of winning is one of the most effective publicity engines money can buy, and right now the money isn’t even his.
Every interview, every warm introduction from a writer with tens of thousands of subscribers launders his credibility through progressive spaces. It trains readers to see him as a witness rather than a man searching for his next grift. It makes him legible as a Democrat before he’s EARNED A SINGLE DAY of that trust. And it splits our attention and our energy at exactly the moment the left cannot afford to be handing platforms to people whose entire history is one of self-interest, not principle.
The seat he’s running for isn’t even competitive. FL-27 is rated strongly Republican. Salazar won her last race by 21 points. There is no strategic Democratic argument for Lev Parnas in this race. There is only a Lev Parnas argument for Lev Parnas. This is the pattern we have to get better at recognizing. MAGA-adjacent figures who flip don’t automatically become allies. Some of them become something more sinister. They are people who studied the resistance as an enemy and now speak its language fluently. They know what we want to hear. They know how to perform accountability without practicing it. And they are counting on our hunger for insider validation to keep us from asking the obvious question.
What has Lev Parnas done since his release to earn a place at the front of the Democratic line?
Not on a podcast. Not in a documentary. For other people, without a spotlight, in work that doesn’t benefit him directly. Nothing that warrants a congressional campaign. If the conversion is real, the move is to spend years being useful to people who did this the right way. Knock doors. Write checks. Shut up and show up. Prove it over time in ways that don’t come with a microphone. The fact that he went straight for the ballot, and straight for every Substack creator willing to have him, screams volumes about whether the values changed or whether the brand just got a new paint job.
We built these audiences to hold power accountable. That job doesn’t pause because someone tells a good story about waking up. I hope he loses the primary. I hope Florida’s 27th District chooses one of the actual Democrats in that race. The people who didn’t need a federal conviction to figure out which side they were on. And I hope the creators platforming him start asking harder questions about who they’re making trustworthy, and what they’re asking their audiences to forgive on his behalf.
The grift only works if we let it.
If a paid subscription isn’t in the cards right now, I completely get it — truly. But if you’ve ever read something here and thought “damn, she needs to keep doing this,” you can throw a few bucks in the tip jar over at Buy Me a Coffee.
No pressure. No guilt. Just me, asking nicely, with my hand out like a very earnest raccoon who writes controversial essays.
☕ buymeacoffee.com/eeviebateman
Thank you for being here. Seriously. You make this worth doing.
Thank you for expressing this backstory so clearly. I have great respect for @shane yirak who refused to platform Lev after Lev announced for Congress. Sadly, I have less respect for Waj Ali and Ellie Leonard simply because they still platform Lev.
Thank you for providing all of this information about Lev Parnas. Some of it I didn’t know and it is very useful. Ever since the ‘email episode’ which was sent, according to Lev, by one of his staff members who made unsubstantiated accusations about another Substack writer/presenter, I have been selectively listening to Lev and reading about him fairly extensively. I would encourage everyone to do the same and make up your own mind by gathering facts from reputable sources. I believe that Eevie is one of the individuals who has gathered important facts for us to consider. Again do your own homework too; make up your own mind. I am personally choosing to financially support Substacks other than Lev’s for a variety of reasons that are based on receiving one of the unprofessional and unsubstantiated emails from (purportedly) Lev’s staff member, additional information I researched (again, using reputable sources), and also by listening closely to what Lev is saying, or not saying as a guest on other Substacks. My choice for me; you can make your own.