WASHINGTON — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two key figures in House Democrats' impeachment inquiry who worked with Rudy Giuliani in an effort to gather damaging information about Joe Biden, were arrested as they were about to board a plane at Dulles airport near Washington, DC, a spokesperson for the US attorney's office in Manhattan confirmed Thursday morning.

The two men were charged with conspiring to skirt federal laws that prohibit foreign nationals from contributing to US campaigns, according to the indictment, which was first published by the New York Times. They're accused of entering into "secret agreements" to hide the scheme from candidates and federal regulators, laundering foreign money into the campaigns through various corporate identities, and using "straw donors" to make the contributions.



The indictment does not name Giuliani or President Donald Trump, and doesn't directly refer to efforts by Parnas and Fruman to convince Ukrainian prosecutors to probe unsubstantiated claims that Biden improperly used his position as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a company where Biden's son Hunter Biden was a board member. The charging papers did say that at one point they had lobbied a member of Congress at the request of "one or more Ukrainian officials."

Parnas and Fruman had one-way tickets to fly out of the US, and were arrested at Dulles airport at around 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Wall Street Journal reported that they had planned to fly to Vienna, Austria.

"As alleged in the indictment, the defendants broke the law to gain political influence while avoiding disclosure of who was actually making the donations and where the money was coming from," Berman said. "They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests, but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official, a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the US ambassador to Ukraine."



Giuliani, who was also headed to Vienna Wednesday night according to the Atlantic, declined to comment. Trump said repeatedly Thursday that he did not know Parnas or Fruman, despite photographs of them together. "I don’t know those gentlemen. Now it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody," he said.

Two other defendants, Andrey Kukushkin and David Correia, a longtime business partner of Parnas, were also indicted for allegedly working with Parnas and Fruman "in schemes to violate the federal campaign finance laws by repeatedly using straw donors and foreign money," Berman said. Kukushkin was arrested in San Francisco Wednesday night, but Correia is not yet in custody, Bill Sweeney, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office, said Thursday.



"These allegations are not about some technicality, a civil violation, or some error on a form. This investigation is about corrupt behavior, deliberate lawbreaking," Sweeney said.



The arrests come after a year-long campaign by the two men to turn up information in Ukraine that would be helpful to Trump in the 2020 campaign. The effort, directed by Giuliani, included arranging meetings between the former mayor and prosecutors to find incriminating evidence on the Bidens, as BuzzFeed News reported in July.

Democrats had asked Parnas and Fruman to voluntarily comply with a request for documents about their overseas efforts and to appear for depositions in the House's impeachment inquiries into Trump. Dowd told the committees involved in making those requests that his clients would not cooperate, and they did not produce the documents by the Oct. 7 deadline set by Democrats.

On Thursday afternoon, House Democrats announced that they had issued subpoenas to Parnas and Fruman to provide the records by Oct. 16 and to testify at a later date. BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday that the committees planned to subpoena the two men if they continued to fail to comply with congressional investigations.



A senior Justice Department official speaking on background said that Attorney General Bill Barr was briefed on the ongoing investigation into Parnas and Fruman shortly after he was confirmed in February. He was made aware that they were going to be charged and has been supportive of the case, the official said.



Although the case is being handled by prosecutors in New York, Parnas and Fruman made their first court appearance on Thursday afternoon in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. A federal prosecutor from New York, Nicolas Roos, initially told the federal magistrate judge that they were discussing a bail package that was potentially acceptable to both sides, but Parnas and Fruman needed more time to go over the terms. The duo are being temporarily represented by Kevin Downing and Tom Zehnle, who previously served as lawyers for former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.



Parnas and Fruman didn't speak during the initial hearing or address the charges, aside from responding that they did not need interpreters when the judge asked.

Later Thursday, the judge approved a bail package for Parnas and Fruman that will require them to each pay a $1 million bond before they are released and will keep them in home detention with GPS monitoring. Under conditions of the bail agreement, they will only be able to travel to the Southern District of New York and the Southern District of Florida and will need permission from the court to do so. They must also have a third party agree to be responsible that all of those conditions are met.

Roos said the government was satisfied that those conditions would address the flight risk. Downing said their passports were seized by the government and that Parnas and Fruman have no travel documents. US Magistrate Judge Michael Nachmanoff approved the bail package, given the agreement between the two sides, but told the lawyers on Thursday that he was "reluctant" to do so given the lack of information in the record before him at the time.

Parnas and Fruman will remain in custody until the release conditions are met and can be processed by the court, which the judge warned can take time. Downing told reporters after the hearing he didn't expect Parnas and Fruman to be released today, but declined to comment otherwise.

The two men were booked into the Alexandria Detention Center late Wednesday evening and then released to federal law enforcement on Thursday morning, according to a spokesperson for the Alexandria sheriff's office.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the arrests and the nature of the charges.



Parnas and Fruman, who were born in Ukraine and Belarus respectively, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns and worked with Giuliani to push Ukraine prosecutors to investigate Biden and, more broadly, allegations that Ukraine tried to interfere during the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, as previously reported by BuzzFeed News.

