Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, charged with campaign finance violations, can remain free on bail while awaiting trial, a judge in Manhattan ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken rejected arguments from federal prosecutors that Parnas was untruthful when he told Justice Department officials that he and his wife had about $450,000 in total assets and income. Instead, prosecutors said, Parnas had more than three times that amount, including a $1 million payment from an attorney for Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch linked to Paul Manafort, NBC News reported.
"There's certainly lots of suspicious activity here,” Oetken said, but he did not think Parnas' alleged misstatements showed he was being intentionally untruthful.
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Credit: Noreen O'Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC
Parnas, 47, was arrested in October along with another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, and pleaded not guilty to charges of funneling money from foreign entities to U.S. candidates in a scheme to buy political influence.
