There's A Perfectly Good Explanation For That $1M Russian Loan To Lev Parnas's Wife. Probably.

LOL, no there isn't.

For people who spend all their time criming, these guys are so, so bad   at it. Chucklefuck Lev Parnas just filed his response to the government's motion to revoke his bail and throw him in the pokey pending trial, and it's ... interesting!

Prosecutors charged last week that Parnas told a whole passel of lies about his assets back in October, including a little oopsie about his wife Svetlana's personal account. Among those accidental omissions was a $1 million wire transfer from a bank in Russia in September, which somehow slipped Lev Parnas's mind. A guy who had no discernible income just plain forgot that he was living off a seven-figure Russian remittance to his wife, and that they had parked $200,000 of it in an escrow account in Florida as earnest money toward the purchase of a $4.5 million home. Happens to the best of us!

And why was that Russian account sending the lovely Svetlana all that money? Well, there's a perfectly good explanation for that one!

The funds received represented a loan taken by Mrs. Parnas, for a term of sixty months, at a 5% annual rate of interest.

UH HUH. Because who wouldn't give a woman with zero personal income and five kids a low-interest personal loan which obligates her to $19,000 in payments every month? In September, right before Lev Parnas refused to testify and told Congress to stuff its subpoena, someone in Russia decided that "a stay-at-home mother with assets of approximately $210,000 in cash and jewelry" was an ideal credit risk. You bet!

Good little liberals that we are, we're appropriately suspicious of the government's allegation that Parnas's lawyer Joseph Bondy, an experienced federal defender, deliberately misled the parole officer. Ditto for some of the discrepancies between Parnas's jailhouse accounting of his assets and the version he presented later after reviewing his books. People forget shit. And if Bondy says his client "cannot flee to Ukraine, where he has been the subject of threats since even prior to his arrest," we take him at his word.

But Lev Parnas was ducking multiple court judgments, so when Johnny Law says that the $1 million loan and the $200,000 payment from hairball lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova for Parnas's excellent "translation" services wound up in Svetlana's account "in what appears to be an attempt to ensure that any assets were held in Svetlana's, rather than Lev's, name," we tend to believe it.

Particularly since we've danced this particular dance before with Paul Manafort, who's sitting in jail right now because of his unfortunate habit of describing offshore wire transfers as "loans," conveniently exempting him from paying income tax on them. These "loans" magically disappeared from his balance sheet when he went to borrow money from actual banks, however. Go know!

Neither party has mentioned whether Mrs. P forked over $40,000 for the November and December payments on this very serious IRL Russian loan. Guess we'll just have to wait and see whether Judge Oetken decides that Parnas deliberately lied about his assets and decides to LOCK HER UP. On the plus side, Parnas's lawyer reminded the court about five times that his client is complying with House Democrats' request for documents. And if anyone has the goods on Rudy and his Ukraine fuckery, it's this idiot. So, good luck, little chucklefucker!

[ Gov't Letter Opposing Bail Modification , via Court Listener / Parnas Response to Gov't Letter , via TPM]

Follow Liz Dye (AKA your FDF) on Twitter!

Please click here to fund your Wonkette, who is pedaling as fast as we can!