The road from MAGA devotee to democracy defender is rarely traveled. Our conversation with Lev Parnas revealed the pivotal moments that transformed him from Trump's Ukraine operative into one of democracy's most compelling witnesses.
5️⃣ SOVIET REFUGEE ORIGINS: THE PERFECT MIDDLEMAN
Parnas's story begins with his 1975 journey from Soviet Ukraine as a Jewish refugee. As he explained, "In 1976, the Russian president decided that he's gonna get rid of the Jews... and started sending all of us to Israel." Through a stroke of luck during America's bicentennial, his family won green cards in a lottery.
Growing up in Brighton Beach – "a little enclave right by the ocean" where Soviet Jews settled – shaped his worldview. "When we came from the Soviet Union, we had no trust for the government, we had no trust for the police," he told us, explaining why immigrants often aligned with figures outside the system.
This background positioned him perfectly for his later role bridging American politics and Ukrainian interests, creating connections that would eventually lead to the Trump White House.
4️⃣ BUYING ACCESS
While Parnas met Trump earlier at a 2015 fundraiser, his true entry to Trump's inner circle came through donations to America First, a super PAC "being run by Trump and Don Jr." This access gave him unprecedented influence.
In a pivotal dinner at Trump International Hotel in Washington, Parnas advised Trump about Ukraine. "I said to him, you know, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta get rid of the ambassador," he recounted. Trump's reaction was immediate: "He just stopped and froze. He looked at me with this dead serious hit. He said, looked at me and he said, 'Get rid of her. Get rid of her.'"
This moment reveals how easily access to presidential power could be purchased and leveraged to influence foreign policy.
3️⃣ THE GIULIANI PARTNERSHIP: SHADOW DIPLOMACY
Parnas's relationship with Giuliani began after a mutual connection suggested Giuliani could help with Parnas's fraud guarantee insurance company. "Literally from that day on, we were inseparable," he said. "We were together every like, five, six days."
Their Ukraine operation expanded far beyond Biden dirt-gathering. "Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs were paying for that. And American oligarchs," Parnas revealed. "Peter Thiel's plane we were on... Harry Sargent with the Venezuela stuff... Dmitri Firtash from Ukraine."
As I've reported at Narativ, this shadow diplomacy connected to Russian interests through figures like Pavel Fuchs, who was simultaneously paying Giuliani for work in Kharkiv. This operation circumvented traditional diplomatic channels while serving private financial interests.
2️⃣ BILL BARR'S SETUP: THE CALCULATED SILENCING
Perhaps the most explosive revelation from our interview was how Bill Barr personally orchestrated Parnas's arrest to silence him before he could testify to Congress. "The day of my arrest, Bill Barr flew—the Attorney General of the United States of America flew to New York to the Southern district office to oversee my arrest," Parnas told us.
This wasn't a routine arrest of fleeing suspects. "We weren't fleeing anywhere," Parnas explained. "Rudy, Victoria Toensing, and Joe diGenova were all supposed to be on that flight to Vienna with us. At the last minute, they all canceled."
The Vienna trip wasn't an escape—it was a mission to obtain alleged evidence against Hunter Biden. "We were flying to Vienna to meet Alexander Kwasniewski, who was the CFO of Burisma," Parnas revealed. "The Russians had taken what he—Hunter was in Kazakhstan," he explained, revealing another dimension of the operation targeting Biden's son.
The timing was no coincidence: "When he saw the whistleblower report, he knew we were gonna get dragged in front of Congress," Parnas said of Barr. "So how do you shut somebody up? He thought as soon as he arrests us, I have—and remember, who do they give me as my attorneys? John Dowd, who is Trump's attorney."
The plan was clear: arrest Parnas, assign Trump-loyal attorneys to keep him quiet, and prevent him from revealing what he knew to Congress. What they didn't anticipate was that Parnas had kept extensive records of everything.
1️⃣ THE FAMILY INTERVENTION: BREAKING FREE FROM THE CULT
Breaking free from Trump's orbit came not through a television moment but through a powerful family intervention. "Aaron was there, my wife was there, my lawyer was there," Parnas recalled of the turning point. "It was definitely intervention."
His new attorney, Joseph Bondy, refused to defend him unless he told the truth, while his family urged him to break from Trump's web of lies. "I have like that come to Jesus moment where I said to myself, you know, either I'm going to give Rudy a call right now... or I'm gonna tell [them] to go fuck themselves, and I'm gonna go out there and tell the truth wherever that leads me."
The cost was enormous: "You lose everything. It's like, you know, you're, you have to start your life all over at 53 years old," he said. "Most of my life, people in it were... still Trump loyalists."
Today, Parnas warns that Trump's second term is unfolding exactly as he predicted. "The big one is when he's never gonna leave office again," he cautioned. His urgent call to action: don't wait until 2026 to flip the House. "Six, seven people. Six, seven souls could change, save our democracy," by giving Hakeem Jeffries the gavel now.
The transformation of Lev Parnas offers a vital lesson about the power of speaking truth to power, even at tremendous personal cost. As he put it: "Once he takes away our voice, once he shuts down the independent journalists, the media, the leakers, it's over with folks. You will never, ever get the truth again for a long time."
The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Advertising inquiries email next@narativ.org. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.
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