America’s Mayor may be headed to a big house. Not Gracie Mansion. “I think prison is where Giuliani is going to end up,” Lev Parnas, a former henchman to Trump lawyer and confidante to Rudy Giuliani, said on CNN’s “Newsnight” with Abby Phillip.
Parnas has firsthand experience with life on the inside. He was found guilty on all six criminal counts leveled against him, including conspiracy to make foreign contributions to political campaigns, making false statements, falsifying records, and other crimes.
Parnas was arrested along with fellow Giuliani associate Igor Fruman back in 2019 for allegedly setting up a shell company to funnel hundreds of thousands in Russian donations to Republican candidates in a bid to open a cannabis business. Parnas, who later cooperated in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution for the charges.
Now that he’s free, the convicted felon Parnas foresees his one-time sidekick Giuliani as heading on a similar prison path. Just today, Giuliani, 80, received a harsh dressing-down in his Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 protection soon after a Fulton County jury awarded $148 million to Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman for the reputational and emotional harm they endured when Giuliani falsely accused them of stealing votes from President Donald Trump. Creditors are seeking the judge to impose a trustee to seize control of the disgraced mayor’s finances.
“There are reasons to be concerned here,” the bankruptcy court judge said while calling the documents offered by Giuliani a “mess.” Parnas views the bankruptcy case as a reflection of how little Giuliani takes the legal system seriously. He said, “Just even recently as today, the bankruptcy court — the judge is getting fed up with the way Giuliani is dealing and not dealing with actually giving records — which could eventually lead to other charges of fraud and stuff like that.”
All this behavior won’t bode well if Giuliani wants to remain a civilian. “So, I think Giuliani is down a very deep spiral,” Parnas noted. “He’s like doesn’t care and I think he’s going to end up in prison.”