{"id":40824,"date":"2020-01-23T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/01\/23\/the-cannabis-lawyer-at-the-center-of-giuliani-trump-ukraine-scandal\/"},"modified":"2020-01-24T00:36:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T08:36:22","slug":"the-cannabis-lawyer-at-the-center-of-giuliani-trump-ukraine-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/01\/23\/the-cannabis-lawyer-at-the-center-of-giuliani-trump-ukraine-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cannabis Lawyer at the Center of Giuliani Trump Ukraine Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

For two nights earlier this month<\/a>, viewers of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC were treated to an exclusive barrage of bombshells in the Ukraine-Trump scandal<\/a>, delivered by would-be international fixer Lev Parnas. <\/p>\n

As Parnas, one of the four associates of presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani indicted last fall for soliciting foreign help for President Donald Trump\u2019s reelection effort, outlined exactly what he did \u2014 digging for dirt that would hurt Joe Biden, spooning damaging fabulism on former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch back to the president \u2014 a stone-faced man with close-cropped gray hair in a dark blue suit sat silently at his client\u2019s left: Joseph Bondy<\/a>. Bondy is Parnas\u2019s lawyer, a prominent New York criminal defense attorney<\/a> and, prior to his turn in Twitter-age international political intrigue, a prominent figure<\/a> in cannabis legal defense and legalization advocacy circles.<\/p>\n

As Trump\u2019s impeachment trial begins in the U.S. Senate, Parnas is seizing a central role in both the legal proceedings and the attendant media circus. Bondy is also proving up to the task of keeping his client in a favorable spotlight, advocating for him to testify in the Senate with the #LetLevSpeak hashtag; and of releasing information at just the right time<\/a>, to a variety of sources<\/a> in the media as well as the House Intelligence Committee. <\/p>\n

\n

Join Lev Parnas and I for his second TV interview this evening, with @andersoncooper<\/a> on @cnn<\/a>, discussing @realDonaldTrump<\/a> @RudyGiuliani<\/a> and others. #LetLevSpeak<\/a> #LevSpeaks<\/a> #LevRemembers<\/a> #TheyAllKnew<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/mSK2fsNBBP<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Joseph A. Bondy (@josephabondy) January 16, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Through Bondy, Parnas is releasing more documents and evidence to Congress that would appear to back up his assertions that the president was tuned in to what he was doing. And when Trump denied so much as knowing Parnas, it was Bondy who responded by releasing a video off the two of them chatting amiably in an intimate group at Mar-a-Lago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may well ask: What\u2019s a
\nwell-known weed lawyer doing representing an alleged would-be Mar-a-Lago fixer?
\nAnd who is this guy, anyway? Bondy did not respond to requests for comment sent
\nvia his website or via Twitter DM, but there\u2019s ample information out there to
\noffer a brief sketch.<\/p>\n

A native New Yorker, Bondy is
\none of the members of the pro-bono legal team suing the federal government, in Washington
\nvs Barr,<\/em> to overturn federal cannabis prohibition on constitutional
\ngrounds, as the New York Law Journal observed on Jan. 18.<\/p>\n

As CelebStoner\u2019s Steve Bloom posted last week<\/a>, Bondy is also volunteer director of the Cannabis Cultural Association<\/a>, a New York City-based nonprofit that advocates and \u201cprovides resources\u201d for people of color to obtain entrepreneurship and job opportunities in the cannabis and hemp industries. <\/p>\n

He seems effective in cannabis business. Two of his clients have won one of New York State\u2019s 15 CBD-processing applications. Out of a pool of 352 applicants, that\u2019s no mean feat. And Bondy<\/a> has also spent enough time representing defendants against the might of federal marijuana law in federal court to earn accolades from the national leadership of NORML, where he\u2019s a \u201clifetime member\u201d of the organization\u2019s legal committee. <\/p>\n

And small wonder: Bondy has a track record of rescuing clients caught with cannabis from lengthy sentences According to his website<\/a>, he managed to get a defendant accused of trafficking 6.5 tons of cannabis a 15-month sentence and managed to get another client, accused of both trafficking and conspiracy and cultivating more than 2,000 plants, an offense that would trigger a mandatory minimum of a decade in jail, 36 months.<\/p>\n

He gave a talk at the 2016
\nNORML National Legal Committee seminar, held in Key West, Florida, in 2016.
\nHe\u2019s also been since 2016 a member of the National Cannabis Industry
\nAssociation. Of course, none of this repetition of his resume answers the
\nquestion of how he came into Parnas\u2019s orbit, or why Parnas would hire him. <\/p>\n

One simple answer is that
\nBondy is a criminal defense attorney licensed to practice in the Southern
\nDistrict of New York, the federal court district in Lower Manhattan where
\nParnas and his alleged associates have been charged. Then again, there are an
\nawful, awful lot of criminal defense attorneys licensed to practice in the
\nSouthern District of New York \u2014 this is the district where, coming full circle
\nhere, Rudy Giuliani made his bones as a U.S. attorney, prosecuting Mafia
\nfigures in the 1980s. <\/p>\n

It is true that there\u2019s a
\ncannabis angle to the Parnas saga: one of the three other men indicted along
\nwith him is Andrey Kukushkin, who had interests in California cannabis
\ndispensaries, and allegedly engaged in an illegal scheme to funnel money from
\nUkraine and Russia to straw donors in Nevada in an attempt to change cannabis
\nlaws to his favor.<\/p>\n

And as the Daily Beast reported last week,<\/a> Parnas in part gained access to pro-Trump political players \u2014 invited to attend an October 2018 dinner with Ivanka Trump and her husband, first-son-in-law Jared Kushner \u2014 in part because he was a \u201cTrump loyalist\u201d who was also \u201cpro cannabis.\u201d Fundraisers wanted him there because they wanted Ivanka and Jared\u2019s help in convincing Trump to relax federal marijuana law, a cause shared by plenty of MAGA Republicans in Florida, probably chief among them Rep. Matt Gaetz.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the most likely avenue
\nfor Bondy and Parnas to know one another\u2014and, after his arrest Oct. 9 at Dulles
\nInternational Airport in Washington, D.C., with a one-way ticket to Vienna,
\nParnas could conceivably have flipped through his contacts list, seen Bondy up
\ntop, and given him a call. For now, seems like to have been a smart move.<\/p>\n

TELL
\nUS,<\/strong>\u00a0are
\nyou following the impeachment trial?<\/p>\n

The post The Cannabis Lawyer at the Center of Giuliani Trump Ukraine Scandal<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n
\nRead More: The Cannabis Lawyer at the Center of Giuliani Trump Ukraine Scandal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For two nights earlier this month, viewers of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC were treated to an exclusive barrage of bombshells in the Ukraine-Trump scandal, delivered by would-be international fixer Lev Parnas. As Parnas, one of the four associates of presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani indicted last fall for soliciting foreign helpContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,95,81,12653,429,4267],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40825,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40824\/revisions\/40825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}