I came here as a refugee.
I was born in Odesa, Ukraine, in 1972. My family were Jewish refugees who fled the Soviet Union when I was four years old. America took us in. We settled first in Detroit, then in Brooklyn. I owe everything I am to this country and to the people who built the systems that let a refugee kid become someone.
I built businesses. I built a family. And I got close to power.
I started my career in real estate — selling Trump Organization co-ops in Brooklyn — and moved to South Florida in the '90s, where I built and ran businesses for three decades. I married my wife Svetlana. We're raising our family in Boca Raton. In 2018, I was introduced to Rudy Giuliani. The relationship grew quickly. Through him, I ended up with proximity to the President of the United States. I was in the rooms. I was in the loop. I helped build MAGA. I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy it. I should have asked harder questions about what I was being asked to do. I didn't.
I made the worst mistake of my life.
In October 2019 I was arrested at Dulles. The charges were real. A federal jury convicted me in October 2021 on six counts — campaign finance violations, wire fraud, and false statements. I was sentenced in June 2022 to twenty months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution. I served my time. I came home in September 2023. I'm not going to stand here and tell you I was framed, because I wasn't. I broke the rules. I paid for it. I almost lost my family. I almost lost my wife and my kids. And I learned more about how Washington really works than any briefing book could have taught me.
I woke up. And I'm done with both parties.
When the prosecutors came for me, Trump's people abandoned me. When I started telling the truth — to Rachel Maddow in January 2020, before the House Oversight Committee in March 2024, on the record at every chance — I expected the other side to want accountability. Some did. Many didn't. Both parties protect their own first. They are more loyal to each other than they are to you. I tried to do this work inside the Democratic Party. I'm done. I'm running as an Independent because I'm not a politician. I don't have loyalty to any real hardcore party. I'm not backed by corporations. I'm not backed by PACs. I'm backed by you.
I started showing up.
When I came home, I made a promise to myself. The next time the powerful were getting away with something, I wasn't going to be on the wrong side of it. I wrote Shadow Diplomacy with Jerry Langton. I sat for the MSNBC Films documentary From Russia with Lev. I built the Substack — Lev Remembers — and a daily livestream and the community I call the Wolfpack. We do the work the press won't do: covering the Epstein-files release, interviewing whistleblowers, delivering material directly to Congress. I sat in the House Oversight field hearing in West Palm Beach — twenty minutes from this district — and listened to Maria Farmer, Dani Bensky, Roza, Courtney Wild, Jena-Lisa Jones, and Sky and Daniel Roberts testify. I went to New York for the 24-hour reading of the 3.5 million pages. We are not going to let them use these survivors when it is politically useful and abandon them when it is time to stand. That's a promise.
Why Congress. Why now.
Florida's 22nd deserves a representative who isn't owned by a party or by a donor class. I have no PAC. I have no party machine. I have no future political career to protect — I just have what I learned, and I want to use it. Nobody knows how these people operate better than I do, and nobody will fight harder to expose them. If you're tired of being represented by people who'd rather perform for cable news than do the job, I'm asking for your vote. And before that, I'm asking for your help getting me on the November ballot.
“The American people have been lied to.
Lev Parnas, testimony before the House Oversight Committee, March 2024
And that's the whole truth.