Lev Parnas, a Rudy Giuliani associate with ties to Ukraine, arrives for a bail hearing in the Southern District court Dec. 17, 2019. Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP

Lev Parnas and another indicted ex-associate of Rudy Giuliani are battling over whether additional evidence from their Manhattan criminal prosecution should be turned over to Congressional impeachment investigators.

In a series of court filings made public Tuesday, Parnas' attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, asked a judge's approval, for the third time, to provide new materials to House impeachment managers, who have been making their case in the Senate for removing President Donald Trump from office.

The request came after Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman accused of federal campaign-finance violations, gave interviews to MSNBC and CNN earlier this month, in which he implicated Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Attorney General William Barr in a wide-ranging effort to pressure Ukraine's government to announce a corruption investigation of Joe Biden.

Parnas has also been keen to cooperate with subpoena from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which has led the impeachment investigation in Congress. Bondy has told the New York Law Journal that he hopes to use his client's efforts to help mitigate any sentence he may receive, if convicted in the Southern District of New York.

According to the filings, the latest request involved materials from Parnas' iCloud account that Apple Inc. had produced to prosecutors. Though it was not clear precisely what type of information Parnas sought to provide, Bondy said in a Jan. 17 letter that it was "essential to the committee's ability to corroborate the strength of Mr. Parnas's potential testimony."

The request was opposed by Parnas' less-outspoken co-defendants, as well as Manhattan federal prosecutors, who argued that public disclosure risked the "privacy and privilege interests of third parties and co-defendants."

U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken ordered a hearing for Thursday afternoon to consider Parnas' request.

Parnas' co-defendant, Igor Fruman, is also an ex-associate of Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer.

Parnas and Fruman are accused of funneling foreign funds into U.S. elections in order to buy political influence. Both men have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, falsifying records and lying to the Federal Election Commission. Two other defendants, Andrey Kukushkin and David Correia, have pleaded not guilty to related charges.

The latest filings highlighted divisions among defense attorneys over the handling of evidence and strategy in the case.

Todd Blanche, a Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft partner who represents Fruman, said the materials at issue contained information that also belonged to his client, and asked the court to "claw back" evidence that had already been turned over to the committee related to his client.

"That is unacceptable," he said in a Jan. 22 filing.

Blanche continued: "My obvious concern is that Mr. Bondy's hasty efforts to find a forum (beyond MSNBC and CNN) for someone—anyone—to listen to his client's version of events caused him to irresponsibly produce materials to the HPSCI."

Bondy responded in a Jan. 24 filing that common-law privileges, like the attorney-client protection, did not prevent Parnas from complying with the Congressional subpoena, and said the demands of impeachment investigators required information to be turned over "sooner rather than later."

"Mr. Blanche's request, if granted, would have the effect of suppressing the flow of materials to Congress that are detrimental to the president and his attorneys through misplaced reliance on tools related to criminal, adversarial proceedings," he said.

Prosecutors said they had not objected to allowing Parnas to produce his own materials, but noted that the new petition was different.

"The materials at issue include records that, as far as the government knows, were never in Parnas' possession. For instance, the data produced by Apple includes deleted records (which may only exist because of the Government's preservation requests), account usage records and other information to which a subscriber would not necessarily have access," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebekah Donaleski, Nicolas Roos and Douglas Zolkind wrote.

To the extent that he wished to provide his own texts, emails and photographs, they said, Parnas could simply download his own iCloud account. However, other materials should be identified ahead of time to give the other defendants the chance to raise privilege or privacy concerns prior to their release.

Gerald Lefcourt, who represents Kukushkin, said his client did not specifically object to Parnas' request, except to maintain his claim of attorney-client privilege.

"If all privileged materials can be removed from Mr. Parnas' iCloud account prior to production to HPSCI, or the iCloud account can be produced to HPSCI in some other manner that preserves Mr. Kukushkin's privileges, we have no objection to the application," he said.

A hearing was set for 2:30 p.m. Thursday in Manhattan.

Bondy said late Tuesday that he and Parnas had been cleared through Sen. Chuck Schumer's office to attend the Senate impeachment trial Wednesday, as senators prepare to vote on whether to hear witness testimony.

In a letter, Bondy asked Oetken to modify his client's travel restrictions and allow the removal of Parnas GPS monitoring bracelet so he could watch the proceedings from the Senate gallery. The government, Bondy said, did not oppose Parnas' request to attend, but did object to removing his ankle bracelet.

 

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