In 2018, Lev Parnas says he was offered ten percent of what became America’s biggest weed company. Trulieve says that never happened. Then Rudy Giuliani pulled him into Ukraine, and the case that later put him in federal prison included a scheme prosecutors said was aimed at buying political influence tied to marijuana licenses with money from a Russian businessman.
In 2018, Lev Parnas says, he was offered a piece of what became the biggest cannabis company in America. He never got it. According to Parnas, he got pulled away to do Donald Trump’s dirty work in Ukraine instead, and ended up in a federal prison cell. The case that later put him in federal prison included a scheme prosecutors said was aimed at buying political influence to secure marijuana licenses with money from a Russian businessman.
He joins the call in a white t-shirt, a horseshoe on a chain around his neck, AirPods in, South Florida through the window behind him, and a volcano vape within reach.
Parnas grew up, by his own account, the sober one. The powerful men he ran with around the world drank and snorted their way through the night. “I was always like the clear-minded one in the group,” he says. Then, around twenty, somewhere near 1992, a friend at a club told him he was too wound up and handed him a joint. He says he took cannabis up deliberately, after reading about it. “The more I studied it,” he says, “the more I started understanding there were benefits to it.” He once carried it into Russia by accident, he admits.
Plenty of people in this industry pose as stoners, which is its own kind of strange, given how long stoners were marginalized for it. Parnas tells me he is not posing. Whatever else …
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Author: Rolando García / High Times
