He’s defended narcos, mobsters, hit men and no less than one fugitive hedge funder, squaring off towards seasoned New York prosecutors for decades. He’s a reptile enthusiast and schedules calls with reporters at four:20 p.m.—a nod to his work in hashish regulation.
But Joseph A. Bondy’s newest shopper, Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian-born sidekick of Rudy Giuliani whose efforts to purchase affect in Washington earned him a federal indictment, has pitted him towards the president of the USA—and Bondy, a meditative, chess-playing pot lawyer keen on quoting historic Chinese texts came well-equipped to the struggle.
“It's worthwhile to do whatever it takes to get the most effective deal potential in your shopper,” Bondy stated in a current interview.
All legal professionals are likely to voice comparable dedication, but Bondy has taken the sentiment to a brand new degree. Hours earlier, Bondy had posted a video on his Twitter account—overlaid with Earth, Wind & Hearth’s “September”—displaying Second Woman Karen Pence holding Parnas’ hand and patting him on the again with the vice president standing within the background.
It’s not precisely Perry Mason. However Bondy, who says he seems to be at all of his instances like a chess board, is specializing in the endgame—on this case, the sentencing decide, who he hopes will take into accounts Parnas’ willingness to cooperate with Congress.
“I often assume very early on about the best way to create or determine the brightest favorable mild that I can discover in a shopper,” Bondy says. “And with Lev, the brightest mild, probably the most favorable mild, is his fact.”
Bondy’s tweets at this point are principally just pictures of Parnas with numerous Trump allies—together with members of his authorized group, Pam Bondi and Jay Sekulow—who've either claimed not to know Parnas or declined to name for witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial. The objective isn't just to show hypocrisy, but in addition to “increase the stakes,” Bondy says, for the GOP’s defense of the president. And he wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t what Parnas needed, he says.
“Here’s a pleasant shot of the newest @GOP senator/juror—Mike Braun of Indiana—afraid to name Lev Parnas as a witness on the impeachment trial, posing with, in fact, Lev Parnas and @RudyGiuliani,” Bondy tweeted on Tuesday. “#LevRemembers #LevSpeaks #LevIsEverywhere #TheyAllKnew.”
In a means, Bondy is utilizing Trump’s M.O. towards him, interesting to the plenty on Twitter with hashtags like “#LetParnasTestify,” “#CallLevNow,” “#LevIsKey,” and “#LetLevSpeak” as he tries to get the Senate to name Parnas as a witness in Trump’s impeachment trial. He’s principally given up making an attempt to attraction to federal prosecutors in New York, who are weighing bringing more charges towards his shopper, by dangling greater fish.
In any case, Bondy notes, what’s the purpose of giving the U.S. Lawyer’s Office for the Southern District of New York details about Trump if the Justice Division has a coverage towards indicting a sitting president?
“Lev Parnas has first-hand details about the Ukranian quid professional quo,” Bondy tweeted last week. “And, @TheJusticeDept depends on cooperating witnesses day by day in securing indictments & convictions. What does @GOP worry? Call the witnesses. #LevRemembers #LetLevSpeak.”
Parnas, for his half, has been speaking in current days—but not to the Senate, which can vote again subsequent week on whether to listen to witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial. As an alternative, Parnas granted a riveting interview to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that turned the present’s highest-rated of all time, and later fielded questions from Anderson Cooper on CNN.
To Cooper, Parnas hinted that he’s blessed Bondy’s social media technique. “Every time he says that,” Parnais stated—referring to Trump’s claims that he by no means knew Parnas— “I’ll show him another image.”
The appearances came after House Democrats launched a trove of probably damning documents Parnas handed over, pursuant to a subpoena, displaying the attainable surveillance of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch; Ukraine’s former prosecutor common, Yuriy Lutsenko, dangling dust on Biden in change for Yovanovitch’s firing; and photographs of Parnas with members of Trump’s family and his administration — together with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and then-Lawyer Common Jeff Periods.
Checking out all the numerous claims Parnas has made is a full-time employment program for investigative reporters. One among his most explosive claims so far is that Lawyer Basic Bill Barr was “principally on the workforce” making an attempt to get dust on Biden, and that he typically heard Giuliani and Toensing chatting with Barr concerning the scheme on the telephone. However he hasn’t yet produced proof that Barr was concerned, and the Justice Division beforehand denied it.
What we do know for positive is that this a lot: Parnas and his affiliate, Igor Fruman, have been used as intermediaries by Giuliani as Trump’s private lawyer sought dust on Joe Biden, the president’s chief 2020 opponent. The two men also paid Giuliani $500,000 in 2018—supposedly for business and legal recommendation, according to Reuters—across the time the trio started poking around on Biden in Ukraine. Fruman has chosen to remain the course—he stays in a joint defense agreement with Giuliani and has been silent since his indictment almost four months in the past.
But Parnas has gone 180 levels in the other way, turning on Trump and Giuliani and insisting that “everybody knew” concerning the scheme to strain Ukraine into saying an investigation of the Bidens. His phrases echo U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s November testimony concerning the Ukraine scheme: “Everyone was in the loop.”
To many outdoors legal commentators, Bondy’s technique has been puzzling. Ken White, a felony defense lawyer, posited a number of theories earlier this month, together with that this can be Bondy and Parnas’ means of offering a “public proffer” that can't be buried by the Barr-controlled Justice Division.
That’s a part of it, Bondy acknowledges. “We’ve determined to converse to the viewers that may take heed to us,” Bondy stated, referring each to Congress and to the general public.
“We just have to be truthful and full, while making an attempt to increase consciousness for the necessity for there to be a good tribunal” in the Senate, he elaborated. “If we reach the point where Lev has not been referred to as as a witness, at the least I can look again and know I did the perfect I might for him and for the general public.”
And people cheesy slideshows of Parnas with numerous Trump world luminaries? The ones whom Bondy typically gleefully pumps out instantly after they say they don’t recall assembly him? They’re a part of a technique Bondy has been honing for decades, courting back to his days as a younger lawyer who made his identify representing high-profile New York mobsters.
The narrative goes something like this: Parnas was just one small a part of a scheme directed from the highest. And something he did, he did with the naive belief that he was doing the proper thing, as a result of he trusted his superiors and all the time carried out their orders.
It doesn’t all the time work. However to Bondy, it’s all the time value a attempt.
“The notion of hastily being silent and relenting, whereas making an attempt to be an advocate for a human being I’m making an attempt to save—that isn't in my e-book of conduct,” he stated. “We’ve turned Lev round from being someone ridiculed on ‘Saturday Night time Stay’ to being probably the most effective witness to date. And that was onerous work—not magic.”
***
Bondy’s highest-profile shoppers up to now have been convicted mobsters like Peter Gotti, the older brother of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, and Louis Eppolito, a New York cop who was sentenced to life in jail for murdering several individuals for the Lucchese crime household. (He bonded with Eppolito in specific over their mutual love of reptiles and their respective snake collections, Bondy informed The New York Occasions for a profile in 2006.)
The 52-year-old father of three studied psychology at Columbia and applied to Brooklyn Regulation Faculty only to get his mother off his case, he says. When she first advised he apply to regulation faculty, he retorted: “Advantageous, I’ll turn into a lawyer for the Mafia,” he recollects, hoping it will deter her. It had the other impact: She inspired him to apply to Brooklyn, “the place all the most effective mob legal professionals went,” he recollects her saying.
He jokes about it now, however Bondy insists he’s no mob lawyer.
“I’ve represented about 1,000 individuals and perhaps 5 have been made men in the Mafia,” Bondy stated. “That’s not likely how I define myself.”
He met his future spouse on the first day of courses—she is a media lawyer who most lately labored for HBO—and nonetheless remembers the constitutional regulation class he took with the late Supreme Courtroom justice Antonin Scalia whereas learning abroad at the College of Innsbruck in Austria.
In school, he interned at the New York State Workplace of the Lawyer Basic's Environmental Protection Bureau and Federal Defenders in Japanese District of New York—an “eye-opening” experience that exposed him to the “despair” of people that can’t afford legal professionals, he says.
“We all have so many lovely issues about us in our lives,” Bondy says. “And the great transcends the dangerous. We’ve all transgressed. We’ve all made mistakes.”
Bondy’s subsequent venture wasn’t exactly for an underdog. After graduating, he started working with protection legal professionals for one of the Colombian Medellin cartel’s prime “sicarios,” or assassins—Dandeny Munoz Mosquera, better referred to as “La Quica,” who was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in 1995 for his position in the 1989 bombing of an Avianca jetliner that killed all 107 individuals aboard, together with two People.
Bondy ended up making several journeys to Colombia, he recollects, and met with Colombian Lawyer Basic Gustavo De Greiff to gather proof. De Greiff confirmed his meetings with Bondy in a letter to the decide in the case that was obtained on the time by Colombian outlet El Tiempo.
The narrative Bondy is now pushing of Parnas as merely a bagman for Giuliani and Trump is harking back to an argument he used with Gotti more than a decade ago. “My shopper was thought-about a dope by his personal brother!” Bondy said in his opening statement at Gotti’s trial.
Whereas Bondy has never disparaged Parnas, he’s pushed onerous to painting him as more messenger than mastermind. “Lev Parnas was instantly present in Ukraine, working on behalf of @POTUS, and at the course of @RudyGiuliani,” Bondy tweeted in December.
The strategy of taking Parnas’ legal struggle into the courtroom of public opinion is both “sensible” or “desperate,” depending on which lawyer you converse to. Most agree it's risky—prosecutors have already requested for Parnas’ bail to be revoked over his alleged concealment of a $1 million cost from a Ukrainian oligarch, and Parnas’ disclosures to Congress or on prime-time television might incriminate him additional.
But Bondy appears intent upon appealing to the sentencing decide instantly by demonstrating that Parnas offered substantial help to Congress in its impeachment probe. “I don’t need a 5k letter from the government to go to the courtroom and say, ‘Lev has tried to cooperate with the congressional inquiry,” Bondy stated, referring to the letter a prosecutor provides to a courtroom to indicate that a defendant has cooperated.
“A reduction in the sentencing tips is possible from aiding with a congressional inquiry,” he famous.
Still, it’s an unusual strategy—and a chance, his peers say.
“It’s not how I might deal with it,” stated one protection lawyer who requested anonymity to discuss the case. “I’d be quietly negotiating with SDNY.”
However it’s quintessentially Bondy, based on those that know him. It additionally matches with one in every of his other go-to techniques: difficult the very individuals who may determine a shopper’s destiny.
“He doesn’t cower to authority,” stated Eric Franz, a protection lawyer who has worked with Bondy on mob instances. “He’s extremely brave,” stated Jacob Plowden, co-founder of the Hashish Cultural Affiliation and a co-host of Bondy’s podcast Within the Know 420.
Bondy lately wrote a letter to Invoice Barr—which he filed on the public docket, making certain it immediate publicity—asking the lawyer common to recuse himself from any involvement in Parnas’ case, given Parnas’ claims that Barr was “principally a part of the workforce” that was making an attempt to get filth on Biden.
The letter, which sparked “BREAKING NEWS” chyrons and dozens of stories articles, was not only a throwaway stunt meant to boost public awareness about Parnas’ allegations, Bondy says—fairly, it was a extremely deliberate move made only after “months” of learning the “nuanced and palpable relationship” between Barr and Trump’s associates, together with Giuliani and Victoria Toensing. “Barr is interwoven into the details of this case,” Bondy says.
Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be the first time Bondy used this kind of shock tactic: Within the Gotti case 15 years in the past, Bondy accused Manhattan District Courtroom Decide Richard Casey of “turning into an advocate for the prosecution” and referred to as for a brand new trial. That, too, spawned dozens of headlines.
“He’s utilizing the media to talk to the individuals in power,” Franz stated. “Typically it's a must to do this to ship the message.”
***
Whereas Bondy shies away from the “mob lawyer” label, he is unabashedly a pot lawyer, and something of a pioneer in what is now, because of legalization pushes in dozens of states, an exploding area.
Hashish regulation, Bondy advised POLITICO, is instantly tied to felony defense regulation and an integral a part of his id as a “individuals’s lawyer.” He’s defended those dealing with federal marijuana expenses and helped shoppers secure enterprise licenses, and has been a member of the Nationwide Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Legal guidelines (NORML) Legal Committee for 23 years, he stated. In New York, he’s a longtime fixture within the nascent hashish scene, an amalgam of giant medical marijuana companies, underground operators and CBD startups. He hosted the cannabis podcast Within the Know 420 and served on the board of cannabis advocacy group Hashish Cultural Association (CCA).
Those that’ve labored intently with Bondy praised his integrity and dedication to the trigger.
“He’s a really effective advocate at sentencing with regard to cannabis-related matters — federal sentencing particularly,” stated David Holland, a fellow legal defense lawyer and hashish advocate who can also be concerned with NORML.
Bondy can also be one of many legal professionals who introduced a lawsuit towards Trump’s Justice Division in search of to legalize pot underneath federal regulation.
“He put in how many hundreds of dollars of free work into a lawsuit — a very good portion of which is concerning the harms of the struggle on medicine and cannabis prohibition,” stated Leland Radavonovic, a founding member of the Cannabis Cultural Association. The lead lawyer on that case, Michael Hiller, described Bondy’s work on it as “invaluable.”
It’s nonetheless unclear how Bondy landed on Parnas’ radar (Bondy will say solely that Parnas referred to as him and asked him to take on his case). However the SDNY indictment offers a clue: Prosecutors have alleged that starting in July 2018, Parnas and his associates illegally used money from a Russian national to donate to state and federal candidates and politicians in Nevada, New York and other states in an try and get retail marijuana licenses and type a recreational pot business.
Prosecutors haven't dominated out bringing more expenses towards Parnas, which is why some legal professionals and specialists contemplate Bondy’s technique so risky—the publicity will probably finish when the impeachment trial does, one defense lawyer pointed out.
And unlike with one other well-known Trump fixer, Michael Cohen, New York prosecutors have up to now “refused to satisfy with” Parnas and receive his evidence on these greater up the food chain in trade for a cooperation deal, in accordance with the letter Bondy wrote on Monday.
The letter cites Barr’s alleged “conflict of interest”—Parnas has claimed that the lawyer common was concerned in Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine—as one potential cause why prosecutors have not assessed Parnas as a possible cooperating witness. (The Justice Department has rejected that as “100% false.”)
Franz, the protection lawyer who’s worked with Bondy on several instances, stated the truth that SDNY has “iced out” Parnas solely makes an unorthodox strategy extra mandatory.
Perhaps so—however Gotti, perhaps Bondy’s most well-known shopper to date, was finally convicted of extortion and plotting to murder former Gambino underboss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
To Bondy and his allies, who have famous that Gotti was spared a life sentence, it just proves the purpose.
“Once you ain’t obtained nothing, you ain’t obtained nothing to lose,” Franz stated. “I have little question that any underdog is in good palms with Joe carrying their flag into battle.”
Src: Meet the Snake-Loving Pot Lawyer Beating Trump at His Own Game
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