Lev Parnas’ Florida congressional campaign paid a cleaning company and makeup artist thousands of dollars for services they don’t appear to provide — raising questions about whether funds were used for personal expenses.
The campaign of Parnas — a former Rudy Giuliani ally sentenced to prison earlier this decade in part for campaign finance crimes — disclosed paying $18,500 in April to Hands at Work LLC for “PR Services,” according to FEC records.
Hands at Work LLC is a cleaning company, according to a man who identified himself as the son of Marelbi Franco, who is listed as the company manager on Florida business records, when contacted by NOTUS. Franco’s son ended the call after NOTUS asked what PR services the Parnas campaign had paid the cleaning company to handle.
The Parnas campaign’s address is a mailbox at a UPS store in Miami, and the campaign has not disclosed in its FEC reports ever paying for physical campaign office space.
Trending
The Parnas campaign also paid $3,000 in May to Le Tropique Inc. for “strategy consulting,” according to its latest FEC report. Le Tropique Inc. is a Florida-based makeup studio owned by Terry Jacobs, who did not respond to an email or phone call requesting comment.
Most of the $30,000 Parnas’ campaign committee has raised through June went to services from Hands at Work LLC and Le Tropique Inc., according to FEC records.
Federal campaign finance law prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal expenses.
Hands at Work “does diverse work,” the unnamed Parnas spokesperson wrote in an email to NOTUS following publication of this article.
“In this situation it paid subcontractors who handled only campaign-related tasks such as communication strategies and community engagement strategy,” the spokesperson wrote.
And in addition to being “a well known makeup artist,” according to the spokesperson, Jacobs “also provides outreach consulting, including helping organize door‑knocking in senior centers (she is a senior citizen herself) centers and entities which she contacted for the campaign.”
Parnas campaign treasurer Andrew Madras did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Prior to publication, NOTUS tried several phone numbers for Parnas and eventually reached a person who identified themself as one of Parnas’ representatives. The person, who did not offer their name, declined to provide Parnas’ contact information but said they would pass on NOTUS’ inquiry.
On Tuesday, Parnas told his 82,000 Substack subscribers that his “campaign is real” and warned there was “a coordinated effort to disrupt our community by spreading lies and misinformation about me and my campaign.”
“As I have been warning you, organized disinformation campaigns are being carried out by paid actors whose goal is to discredit, divide, and disrupt our community,” Parnas wrote. “That is why facts matter. That is why transparency matters. And that is why I will always show you the receipts.”
A key figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, Parnas has rebranded himself as an anti-Trump crusader and built a sizable social media following — although his online presence pales in comparison to that of his son, Aaron Parnas, a prominent Democratic influencer and news aggregator who has more than 5 million TikTok followers.
The elder Parnas’ entry in electoral politics this year had proven decidedly turbulent.
Parnas initially filed to run as a Democrat in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, currently held by Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar. He then amended his federal election paperwork in June to run as an independent in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, which leans Republican, according to the nonpartisan election handicappers at the Cook Political Report.
“I helped build MAGA, and now I promise you I will do everything in my power to dismantle the corruption surrounding it piece by piece, truth by truth, until democracy wins,” Parnas said in a video on his Subtack announcing his campaign.
At present, Parnas’ name does not appear on the Florida Division of Elections’ list of congressional candidates, as independent journalist Troy Barile first noted on Medium.
After publication, Gretl Plessinger, communications director at the Florida Department of State, told NOTUS that the website list was up to date and the “qualifying dates for Florida congressional candidates have passed.”
Parnas’ campaign has not spent any money on traditional political advertising, according to the ad tracking platform AdImpact. Parnas personally posts frequently on his YouTube page, including a recent interview with Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
Parnas burst into the national spotlight during Trump’s first impeachment trial, where Trump faced charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Parnas, who was born in Ukraine, alleged Giuliani sent him to urge the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into the Bidens ahead of the 2020 presidential election — and that Trump “knew exactly what was going on,” an allegation Trump has denied.
In 2021, a jury convicted Parnas of campaign finance crimes, among others, for conspiring to funnel money from a Russian oligarch into U.S. elections. He was sentenced in 2022 to 20 months in prison and was released in September 2023, according to the Bureau of Prisons’ inmate database.
Parnas and Hunter Biden reconciled after his release. During his interview with the younger Biden, which was released last week on Kick, Parnas again apologized to the entire Biden family.
“What we’re seeing play out in Trump 2.0 is the sicker we could get, the more crazier we could do it, the more sycophantic we could become,” Parnas said, adding, “It’s just incredible to watch, man.”
This article has been updated to include a comment from the Parnas campaign and Florida Department of State.
Author
