Ex-Trump Ally Lev Parnas Seeks Congress Seat as Florida Democrat

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign finance violations, has announced a bid to unseat María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida's 27th congressional district.

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

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Now, Parnas says he has