Hey Everyone,

Many of you know I have a soft spot for Lev Parnas, whom I met when I was working at CNN in 2019, soon after he’d been arrested for campaign finance violations. It emerged that Trump and a bunch of cronies, including Rudy Giuliani, had told Parnas to go to Ukraine and try to dig up dirt on the Bidens as part of a “shadow diplomacy”. Yet, when Lev was arrested, they suddenly had amnesia about it and hung him out to dry.

“Lev who?” was the party line – until, it emerged that the canny Lev had got photographic and video evidence of being in rooms with “the Big Guy” as he once called Trump. He had recorded a conversation in which he talked about trying to oust the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch as part of the campaign to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

I remember feeling very sorry for Parnas, who is immensely charismatic, as you can see in this video – and who was just as sunny when he was under a lot of pressure.

I remember watching him in court, his pregnant wife Svetlana by his side, as his lawyer tried, unsuccessfully, to get him out of house arrest while on bail. He wound up being sentenced to 20 month in prison. But in all that time, in his many conversations with me, he never lost his sense of humor or his verve for life.

Watch the full conversation and read the full write-up on Vicky Ward Investigates.