Politics
‘From Russia with Lev’ reveals the dark toll of Trump’s ‘reality show’ presidency
They say Los Angeles is where you go when you want to be somebody, New York is where you go when you are somebody, and Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else. It’s always been a sunny place for shady people. (And there’s always a Florida connection: Watergate, 9/11, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson.)
Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian American businessman who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani to attempt to dig up dirt on Joe Biden before the 2020 election, who served time in prison on charges including campaign finance and wire fraud and who went on to testify about a number of efforts by GOP leaders, including former President Donald Trump and his close allies, to spread misinformation and mislead the public, is the consummate Florida Man.
When people get released from prison in Florida, their first call is to their mother and their second call is to us to make a documentary about them.
He makes for a provocative star of our new documentary “From Russia with Lev,” which premiered at the “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024” event in New York on Saturday.
My producing partner at our Miami Beach-based production company, rakontur, Alfred Spellman, (half) jokes that when people get released from prison in Florida, their first call is to their mother and their second call is to us to make a documentary about them. But in this case, we caught Parnas on his way to prison. As fellow Florida men, Parnas and I followed each other on the platform formally known as Twitter. Before his federal criminal trial in 2021, I slid into his DMs to set up a lunch meeting in South Beach.
I learned Parnas was familiar with and, fortunately, a fan of our work, so he agreed to tell us his story.
Parnas was born in Soviet Ukraine, and his family fled when he was 4 years old and eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, also known as “Little Odessa.” Per his account, he became a runner for local gangsters, graduated to some of the sketchiest Wall Street brokerage houses and, when his friends started getting arrested, was forced to flee again: this time to South Florida. There, he helped run “mobbed up” penny stock boiler rooms, three of which were suspended for fraud. Then there were illegal poker games in Beverly Hills, seven kids with four women, a pile of unpaid bills, a trail of lawsuits against him and defrauded investors in various ventures, like a movie he pitched that was supposed to star Jack Nicholson and a Florida company with the most Florida name ever, Fraud Guarantee.
How Parnas, of all people, got entangled with the most powerful men in the world, recruited by “America’s Mayor” to engage in “shadow diplomacy,” allegedly shake down two successive Ukrainian presidents and help get Trump impeached (the first time) is as riveting as it is “ridiculous,” to borrow a descriptor from Parnas’ third wife, Svetlana, who participated in our documentary.
The story of Lev Parnas is like Tom Clancy if Jack Ryan were played by Jackie Mason.
We were well aware of the scandal surrounding Parnas in the latter half of 2019, but our introduction to Lev: The Character was via Rachel Maddow’s sensational interview on BLN in January 2020. We never imagined that the inspiration she provided for us then would lead to our producing her first feature documentary four years later. Parnas was clearly broken in that interview, but you could still detect the mischief in his eye and the chutzpah in his voice that got him into this mess.
A man without a country — after he betrayed both of his. Hated by the left for being one of Trump’s “plumbers” and reviled by the right for betraying Trump. We have a running list of potential “pop docs,” which is how we refer to our style of nonfiction storytelling, and we knew we wanted to meet this guy someday.
Parnas’ tale fits flawlessly into our signature subgenre, “Florida F—ery With International Implications,” and Parnas himself is a rakontur archetype: the likable scoundrel. He’s a charismatic raconteur and the ultimate hustler. A man who, like the subjects in many of our pop docs, such as “Cocaine Cowboys,” “The U” and “Dawg Fight,” chased the American dream by any means necessary. But the project quickly evolved into a two-hander. When we met Parnas’ long-suffering spouse, Svetlana, we realized she is the heart, soul and conscience of the story. It’s a madcap geopolitical caper with a lot of humor and a surprising amount of emotion. The stakes could not be higher, and the personalities could not be bigger.
After “537 Votes” (2020) and “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty” (2022), “From Russia With Lev” is the third in our trilogy of biannual election-year docs. This one tries to explain the eccentricities and irreverence of the Trump era, and it’s the first that takes you inside his administration: Hanukkah parties at the White House, paranoid plotting in private dining rooms at Trump International Hotel — the Mos Eisley Cantina of Trumpworld — and the reality show foreign policy of a reality show president.
Billy Corben
Billy Corben is an Emmy, Peabody and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning filmmaker. A Florida native, he is a lifelong Miamian and co-founder of the Miami Beach-based production company ragontour. He has directed documentaries including “Raw Deal: A Question of Consent” (2001), the “Cocaine Cowboys” franchise, including the Netflix original “Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami” (2021), “Dawg Fight” (2015), TIFF World Premiere “Screwball” (2018), the HBO Original “537 Votes” (2020) and “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty” (2022).
‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing
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Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
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