Two associates of Giuliani have been charged with funneling foreign money to U.S. political campaigns, and President Trump says he doesn’t know them. USA TODAY
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NEW YORK — Two defendants in the campaign finance conspiracy case that has ensnared associates of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, are scheduled for arraignment Thursday.
David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin are scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court for an initial conference before U.S. District Court Judge Paul Oetken.
The hearing for co-defendants Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Giuliani associates who helped the former New York City mayor seek damaging information in Ukraine on the son of former vice president and 2020 rival Joe Biden has been postponed to Oct. 23rd.
A federal indictment unsealed last week accuses the four of illegally funneling thousands of dollars in foreign money to U.S. candidates and committees in a conspiracy to buy influence and boost their business ventures.
The funding, some of it disguised through so-called straw donors, was aimed at boosting the campaigns of Trump-supporting candidates and political action committees, advancing the political interests of a Ukrainian government official and bankrolling a planned cannabis retail business.
Some of the funds secretly came from a Russian businessman who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a legal permanent resident, the indictment alleged.
Correia, 44, is the only suspect who was born in the United States, the indictment said. Both Parnas and Kukushkin are 46-year-old U.S. citizens who were born in Ukraine, while Fruman, 53, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Belarus, the indictment said.
Kukushkin was ordered held on a $1 million bond following his Oct. 10 arrest in San Francisco. Correia surrendered to the FBI on Wednesday morning after arriving at JFK International Airport in New York City.
At a brief court hearing afterward, Correia’s lawyer, Jeffrey Marcus, said his client had been traveling in the Middle East when the indictment was unsealed. Correia contacted U.S. authorities to arrange his return and surrender, Marcus said. Correia was released on a $250,000 bond.
Parnas and Fruman have been held on bonds of $1 million each since they were arrested last week at Dulles International Airport in Virginia with one-way tickets on a flight to Frankfurt, Germany.
The case poses potential political and legal issues for Trump, as well as possible legal problems for Giuliani.
A Parnas-Fruman company, Global Energy Producers, was credited with giving $325,000 to a pro-Trump political action committee in May 2018. However, the indictment said financial records showed that the money came via a circuitous route through a loan transaction linked to Fruman.
During the same month as the contribution, Parnas posted photos on Facebook of him and Fruman with President Trump in the White House and with Donald Trump Jr. in California.
Stressing that he has taken photos with many people, Trump said he did not know Parnas and Fruman. However, he also suggested that they might have been clients of Giuliani. In a tweet, Giuliani referred to the men as his clients.
Parnas and Fruman also are among prospective witnesses House Democrats want to question in their ongoing Trump impeachment inquiry.
U.S. counterintelligence agents have been examining Giuliani’s business dealings with Parnas and Fruman at least since early this year, USA TODAY reported on Tuesday.
Kenneth McCallion, a New York City lawyer who has represented former Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in several U.S. court cases, said the agents contacted him and “were interested in the nature of any business dealings” Giuliani had with Parnas and Fruman.
Giuliani said he was unaware of both a federal investigation involving him and the counterintelligence questioning recounted by McCallion.
Like Parnas, Correia is a co-founder of Fraud Guarantee, a Florida company whose website says the firm was founded “to help reduce the risk of fraud as well as mitigate the damage caused by fraudulent acts.”
The website identifies Correia as the company’s chief operating officer. A brief business biography on the website characterizes him as a “lifelong entrepreneur” who worked in the commercial mortgage and lending industry. He contributed to the restructuring of the investor relations department of a publicly-traded medical staffing company, the website says.
Earlier in his business career, Correia owned, operated and successfully sold restaurants, and then invested in Philadelphia residential real estate, the website says.
A cached version of Correia’s since-deleted Twitter feed shows his apparent support for Giuliani and Trump.
On April 25, he retweeted a tweet by John Solomon, a columnist for The Hill, about Solomon’s report that said the White House under President Barack Obama engaged Ukraine to boost a narrative about suspected Russia “collusion” with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded that Russia ran a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to help Trump win the White House. While the report said Trump campaign aides were eager for any Russian dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, it concluded that neither Trump nor his campaign conspired with Russia to win the election.
According to the indictment, Correia and Kukushkin joined Parnas and Fruman in July 2018 to make plans for a “recreational marijuana business” that would be funded by the Russian foreign national.
Correia drafted a table of prospective political donations. The table allegedly described a multistate licensing strategy that would funnel $1 million to $2 million in contributions to federal and state political committees.
The plan allegedly included a funding schedule of two $500,000 transfers. The foreign national arranged for the funds to be wired from overseas accounts to a U.S. corporate bank account controlled by Fruman and another individual, the indictment charged.
The alleged conspirators allegedly hid the foreign national’s involvement and role in the funding. In Kukushkin’s words, that was necessary because of the man’s “Russian roots and current political paranoia about it,” the indictment said.
Fruman contributed $10,000 of the foreign national’s funds on Nov. 1, 2018, to a Nevada state candidate, the indictment alleged. State campaign finance filings show Fruman contributed to the campaigns of two Republican candidates: Adam Laxalt, former state attorney general, and Wesley Duncan, former state assembly member.
Separately, Kukushkin has been involved with a firm called Legacy Botanical Company and a variety of other ventures, online business records show. The botanical firm was registered in 2016 at a Sacramento address.
Citing California state records and emails, a Mother Jones report last week said a Russian businessman named Andrey Muraviev previously worked with Kukushkin to develop a cannabis enterprise.
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