Shadow Diplomacy: Lev Parnas and his Wild Ride from Brooklyn to Trump’s Inner Circle

Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan

Dr. Steven Hassan

Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 684 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, we spoke with Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman and former Trump insider turned whistleblower. He has withstood intimidation, threats, and time in prison to present evidence and help America better understand the truth about the cult of Trump. His book, Shadow Diplomacy: Lev Parnas and his Wild Ride from Brooklyn to Trump’s Inner Circle, is the story of a self-described “wheeler-dealer” who moved through Moscow, Wall Street, Miami, Hollywood, and the White House. It was in prison after he’d been indicted and sentenced for unlawful campaign donations when he realized he was being “used as a pawn” to protect Trump. His biographical memoir gives an insider’s look into how money and power influenced international politics under the 45th presidency with Donald Trump, ultimately leading to his first impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Lev continues his brave work to enlighten Americans with his attained insider knowledge of how Trump ran his administration on his Substack podcast Lev Remembers. He was also the subject of the 2024 documentary film produced by Rachel Maddow, From Russia with Lev, where he shared his vast knowledge and archived data from his time working with the first Trump administration. This is one not to miss! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Steve Hassan with another episode of my podcast, cult conversations,
0:12.3	The Influence Continuum. And I am so excited to finally have on my show Lev Parnas, who is a superstar in my life,
0:23.6	one of the original cult of Trump true believers,
0:28.6	who was used by Giuliani with his Ukrainian American business connections
0:35.6	with Trump became a whistleblower, and he was one of the first
0:40.8	people to say I was in the cult of Trump and validating that intelligent, educated people
0:48.9	can be taken in and used and then thrown aside.
0:59.2	And Lev, you have a powerful memoir called Shadow Diplomacy,
1:04.7	and you have an acclaimed documentary from Russia with Lev,
1:09.9	which I loved, and I especially was so touched by you crying when you met with Hunter Biden at the end.
1:12.6	It was just like, oh, my goodness, what a good guy.
1:16.4	I just think you have a big heart.
1:19.3	You want to help others.
1:21.3	You're a big whistleblower.
1:23.1	Your information was critical to the first impeachment process of Trump, and you just have failed to
1:31.5	succumb to the intimidation and the threats and all of that. You're just being a righteous
1:38.2	stand-up guy. And so welcome. And thank you for doing this with me.
1:45.0	Steve, thank you for having me.
1:47.0	It's been a while, I know we've known each other for a little bit over spaces.
1:51.0	We met over X or Twitter, whatever you call it, and we built a pretty good relationship.
1:56.0	I consider you my friend. We've been fighting together, the good cause, trying to help people out.
2:01.3	And your story itself is fascinating, incredible,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 13 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr. Steven Hassan, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dr. Steven Hassan and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.