In 2018, Lev Parnas says he was offered ten percent of what became America’s biggest weed company. Trulieve says that never happened. Then Rudy Giuliani pulled him into Ukraine, and the case that later put him in federal prison included a scheme prosecutors said was aimed at buying political influence tied to marijuana licenses with money from a Russian businessman.

In 2018, Lev Parnas says, he was offered a piece of what became the biggest cannabis company in America. He never got it. According to Parnas, he got pulled away to do Donald Trump’s dirty work in Ukraine instead, and ended up in a federal prison cell. The case that later put him in federal prison included a scheme prosecutors said was aimed at buying political influence to secure marijuana licenses with money from a Russian businessman.

He joins the call in a white t-shirt, a horseshoe on a chain around his neck, AirPods in, South Florida through the window behind him, and a volcano vape within reach.

Parnas grew up, by his own account, the sober one. The powerful men he ran with around the world drank and snorted their way through the night. “I was always like the clear-minded one in the group,” he says. Then, around twenty, somewhere near 1992, a friend at a club told him he was too wound up and handed him a joint. He says he took cannabis up deliberately, after reading about it. “The more I studied it,” he says, “the more I started understanding there were benefits to it.” He once carried it into Russia by accident, he admits.

Plenty of people in this industry pose as stoners, which is its own kind of strange, given how long stoners were marginalized for it. Parnas tells me he is not posing. Whatever else he is performing, the weed is real.

It was around then that he met Joseph Bondy, the cannabis lawyer and NORML advisor who would later become his criminal attorney. Together, they pitched legal weed to the newly elected Donald Trump.

The First Attempt at Legalizing Weed Was a MAGA Play

In 2018, Lev Parnas brought Donald Trump a memo on legalizing marijuana.

Bondy helped write it. Congressmen were involved. Parnas’s gateway was Don Jr., whom he claims was backing him, and he says Trump floated putting him in charge of lobbying a bipartisan cannabis committee. To Parnas, the sales logic was pure 2018: cannabis was going to be for Trump what crypto became six years later. A populist applause line, a young-voter magnet, free political juice.

“We were doing that same thing with cannabis,” he says, and it was going great until it ran into Pete Sessions. The Texas congressman has been kryptonite to cannabis legalization for the better part of a decade, a true believer who treated weed as the root of all evil and would not let anything through the House.

As everybody in Florida knows, a cannabis license is worth whatever scarcity makes it worth. When a state hands out only a handful, each one becomes an asset. Florida, Parnas recalls, started with five. A monopoly by design, structured so that you could not “pierce through.”

Which is arguably why Trulieve grew into what it is: the dominant operator in the country, roughly 240 dispensaries and about 1.2 billion dollars in annual revenue.

Florida’s medical program dates to 2015, when the state issued five regional licenses; voters broadly expanded it with Amendment 2 in November 2016. Trulieve was there from the start. It grew out of one of those five licenses, won in 2015 by a group of nurseries applying as Hackney Nursery, and opened the state’s first medical dispensary in July 2016, before voters even approved the expansion. Parnas nonetheless claims he is “the one who legalized cannabis in Florida.” He says he was offered ten percent of the company in 2018, as it was breaking out, before any of the rest of it happened.

“I tried to do it, but I couldn’t get the deal done,” he says. “I got side-railed with my political stuff, going to Ukraine, doing Trump’s work.”

Trulieve disputes both claims. “The statements concerning Trulieve are incorrect. Trulieve did not offer Mr. Parnas a ten percent stake in 2018,” the company told High Times. On the legalization claim, it added: “Florida’s medical cannabis program was established through years of work by patients, physicians, advocates, policymakers, and millions of Florida voters. No single individual can claim sole responsibility for that achievement.”

Who Is Lev Parnas?

He was born in Odesa in 1972, in Soviet Ukraine. His family fled when he was four and settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn—little Odessa. Before Trump, he had recently reassembled his life after the 2008 crash. Trump himself would later call him a “conman.”

Then, in 2018, Rudy Giuliani recruited him and his partner Igor Fruman into what Parnas himself, in his 2024 book Shadow Diplomacy, calls being an “operative.” The off-books campaign to pressure Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden, and to remove the U.S. ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, who stood in the way. That effort, documented at length in Billy Corben’s 2024 documentary From Russia with Lev, put Parnas in rooms with the most powerful people in the country. On October 9, 2019, it put him in handcuffs at Dulles airport, holding a one-way ticket out of the country. 

He became a central figure in Trump’s first impeachment. Then the case that had nothing to do with impeachment closed around him. In October 2021, a federal jury convicted Parnas on multiple counts. Prosecutors proved that he, Fruman, Andrey Kukushkin and a Russian businessman named Andrey Muraviev had moved roughly a million dollars through a chain of accounts to fund illegal U.S. political donations, including a $325,000 donation to America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. The purpose, as the government put it, was to buy influence with officials who could hand them recreational-marijuana licenses in Nevada and beyond. 

Parnas calls all of it a made-up tale.

In a separate case, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud. A company called Fraud Guarantee, which claimed to protect people from fraud, took in more than two million dollars from investors who never got it back. Fraud Guarantee is also the vehicle that paid Giuliani a $500,000 consulting fee. 

At sentencing in June 2022, Judge J. Paul Oetken said fraud had become “a way of life” for Parnas, and rejected his claim that the prosecution was political payback. One investor, Dianne Pues, told the court Parnas “destroyed my life.” Another, Charles Gucciardo, told the court that instead of doing the work he had raised money for, Parnas “left to do marijuana work in Las Vegas.” The sentence was twenty months, three years of supervised release and roughly two million dollars in restitution. 

He served part of it at Otisville, New York, the same facility that held Michael Cohen, and came out by 2023 telling a very different story.

“My case was all political,” he says. He was Trump’s man in Ukraine, squeezing Zelensky, chasing Hunter Biden’s laptop, with a front-row seat to executive power. Then the first impeachment gathered momentum and the FBI came knocking.

They first tried to paint him as a Russian spy, he says. An espionage case. According to Parnas, when his own evidence showed he was working for Giuliani and Trump, that story collapsed, so in his telling, they superseded the charges and convicted him on something technical.

“Checking a wrong box,” he says, like overstating your income on a credit-card form. “Nobody’s ever gone to jail for these types of things. I went to prison for donating money to Trump’s campaign. What about the campaign that took it?”

“Scapegoat,” he says.

MAGA Is a Cult I Built

Parnas was part of a cult in the making, or so he describes it. MAGA, he says, “is not the Republican party.”

“I was one of the leaders of that cult. It happened naturally,” out of belief. A belief in a deep state, in a country that had turned its back on its own people. What sustains it is what he calls boxing: “right-wing media 24 hours a day,” one station, one view, until “your mind stops believing that there is another view.”

Many scholars who study this resist the word cult because of oversimplification: a cult is small, sealed and organized around a living leader who runs his followers’ daily lives. MAGA is a mass coalition of tens of millions who go to work, disagree, get disappointed in their own government, and vote. Sectarianism is the better word. Parnas is not making an academic argument, though. He is describing what it felt like from the inside.

Alongside Daniel Parnas and David Sugarman, he has built a business on that. It is called Deep State Media. Trump taught him that the Democrats were the deep state. Prison and his new friendships taught him that both parties are the same deep state, one machine, “the offshore money that comes into our lobbyist systems, into our Congress.” Deep State Media exists, he says, to expose it. “I’ve been a part of so much criminality and crooked stuff, and I want to help fight it.”

So now his business is radical transparency. This is the same man who, ten minutes earlier, said he had been the original source of a claim now circulating widely, that Zelensky banned opposition parties in Ukraine. “A lot of the lies that I was putting out,” he said, plainly. “Russian disinformation to make Ukraine look a certain way.”

A man who manufactured narratives he now admits were false, who was the deep state’s own instrument, has launched a media company to expose the deep state, and intends to live-stream his congressional campaign “like the Kardashians.” Cameras in the backroom meetings. Total transparency.

When I told him there is already a show about a politician who does exactly that, and that it is called House of Cards, he laughed. “We’re going to cause a lot of controversy,” he said. “It’s going to be fun.”

Running as a What

In March 2026, Parnas announced as a Democrat, running in Florida’s 27th district to unseat Republican María Elvira Salazar. By June he had re-filed as an independent in a different seat entirely, the redrawn 22nd, after Ron DeSantis pushed through a mid-decade redistricting designed to net Republicans as many as four additional House seats. He is now one of ten candidates in FL-22: eight Republicans, one Democrat and Parnas. He says he chose it deliberately, to “beat DeSantis and Trump at their own game.” 

Both parties failed us, he says, and a record share of Americans now call themselves independent. He is the candidate of the abandoned middle.

Except the abandoned middle barely exists. Gallup finds that only about 10 percent of adults are true independents leaning toward neither party, and half a century of political science shows that leaners vote almost exactly like the partisans they will not admit to being. Add the math of a system where most votes wins and everyone else gets nothing, which reliably collapses races into two viable candidates and hands the third the role of spoiler, and FL-22 was drawn to produce a Republican regardless of who runs.

Beating them at their own game is nonetheless how this ex-operator has decided to take back what he believes was stolen from him.

A New Man?

In the Corben documentary, Parnas apologizes in person, face to face, to Hunter Biden.

“Hunter Biden did not deserve what he got,” he says, and for once, it appears there is no angle in his voice. They are friends now.

A father of six, Parnas says the cult made him forget that the people he was destroying were somebody’s sons too. It is the realest thing he says, and it arrives, like everything good in him, wrapped around cannabis. He believes weed weans people off the hard stuff. He points to a California rehab that treats with it. He swears that if he gets to Congress, he will push past mere rescheduling toward the real thing.

He is still on federal supervised release, the three-year tail of his sentence, which squares with the timeline. And a federal judge, he says, granted him written permission to use cannabis while he serves it. High Times could not obtain the court order, and Parnas’s team did not provide it. He smoked on camera during the interview.

“That’s a big deal for the cannabis movement,” Parnas said. 

So here is where we land. Lev Parnas spent years moving money and stories through the shadows, got caught, recast the catching as a crucifixion, and re-emerged selling the exact commodity he spent years trading away: the truth about how it actually works.

“To go after and uncover the corruption on both sides. It’s not about the left or the right. It’s about for the people, the corruption, the offshore money that comes into our lobbyist systems, into our Congress. My platform is running to uncover and explode all of this corruption.”

Out loud, in his campaign, and probably for a subscription fee.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by the interviewee in this article are solely those of the interviewee, and do not necessarily reflect the position of High Times Media, LLC (“High Times”), its affiliates, or any other individuals associated with High Times. High Times is not liable for any content that may be considered offensive, inappropriate or inaccurate.

Editor’s note:  This publication shares stories and information about real-life events, including personal activities. Everything you read here is based on reliable sources, public records, or personal accounts, but it is not meant to be the final word on what happened. Only a court of law can decide someone’s guilt or innocence. We do not support or promote any illegal actions, and we encourage readers to approach these topics with care and respect.

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Twenty years after the world memorized his phone number, the Houston legend is lighter, calmer and weirdly into the tax code. He’s still doing what he’s always done best: being Mike Jones.

Mike Jones shows up in Los Angeles looking healthier than he has in years, calm and confident, and wearing a jacket in the California heat. There’s a reason for the jacket, he laughs. He’s been putting in the work on his weight-loss journey.

“I’ve been really trying to get it right and get it together,” he says with a smile.

For the artist whose “Still Tippin’” helped define an era of Southern hip-hop, longevity isn’t a given. Plenty of his early-2000s peers faded into nostalgia. Jones still tours, still records, still has fans who never left. Before every show, the routine starts the same way.

“I pray to God,” he explains. “I thank the Lord for me being able to still be here this long and the fans still appreciate me and what I lay down and what I’m doing still.”

That gratitude runs through everything, cannabis included. Asked how much he smokes in a day, he just grins. As for the internet’s favorite debate, brushing your teeth before or after smoking, he doesn’t hesitate.

“Before, during, and after.”

Only Mike Jones could make dental hygiene sound like a lifestyle.

On the best cannabis in America, there’s no hesitation either.

“Cali for sure.”

High praise from a Texas legend. But for Jones, the session is less about the flower than the company. Asked about his biggest pet peeve when he’s smoking, his answer has nothing to do with someone hogging the blunt.

“Somebody who ain’t motivated.”

For him, the room matters. Cannabis is part of a productive environment, not an excuse to sit still.

The sense of humor is intact, too. Asked what’s at the top of his playlist that isn’t one of his own, he answers with his signature hit.

“Back Then They Didn’t Want Me.”

The punchline lands because everyone already knows the next line.

More revealing is the lesson he says changed everything. Not music, not fame, not cannabis.

“Learning the IRS tax code.”

Understanding taxes, he says, changed how he approached wealth, moving him from earned income toward passive income.

“It’s not what you make,” he explains. “It’s about your classification.”

It’s the answer of a man thinking about ownership and generational wealth, not just the next record.

And when the session leads to snack time?

“Crunch n’ Munch.”

These days, it looks like a jacket in the California heat, a workout before the interview, a working knowledge of the tax code and a session full of people who actually want to do something. Twenty years after “Still Tippin’,” Mike Jones is still here, still tipping, and apparently flossing before, during and after.

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On Brightside, the eldest Marley finally wrote the song about his father he’d avoided for four decades, and found a better relationship with himself in the process.

The first time Ziggy Marley was on set for the 2024 Bob Marley: One Love documentary about his father, he got a “creative jolt.” So much so, he was inspired to make another album, Brightside, a dense, nine-track spiritual experience that doubles as medicine for the soul. Co-produced by his brother Stephen Marley and recorded in the 432 Hz frequency for meditation, the project includes songs like “Sweet Divine” and “Racism is a Killa,” and they uplift as much as they educate, much like Bob’s music does. As Bob’s eldest son, Ziggy had 12 years with his father and absorbed a lot of life lessons that were passed down to him.

Ziggy, a spitting image of Bob, had to tap into those years for “Many Mourn for Bob,” a song that acknowledges both his father’s imperfections and the seismic impact he had on the world as well as his own grief over losing his father to cancer in 1981. It’s a topic he doesn’t seem to shy away from, and there’s a sense the song was just as cathartic to write and sing as it was for his audience to hear. It was, after all, the first time he’d ever written a song specifically about his father.

“It was emotional,” he tells High Times of writing it. “It was emotional going back into my memories and into some things that I didn’t want to think about for a while. Also, connecting with him on a spiritual level in that way with this song, I would still have a strong connection, so it was emotional, but it was a very positive experience though.

“Even though it’s a melancholy type of story, it was positive because we understand existence goes beyond what we are taught is ‘real’ or what is ‘physical reality.’ There’s another reality we experience through creating songs, and through a song like that, it gives me a stronger connection to him and a way to understand him more.”

In many ways, Ziggy considers the song a collaboration with his father. He explains, “When I finished that song, I was like, ‘This is my father’s song.’ He wants people to understand that everything is not how it seems. ‘I am a man, I am a human being, I’m going to go through some things, too, emotionally and mentally.’ You think Bob is a machine or some kind of mythical figure or whatever, but the more people understand the human side of him, please have respect and pay respect to that and understand what he went through, understand him in that way also.”

Bob Marley died at only 36 and Ziggy, now 57, makes a conscious effort to prioritize his physical and mental health. In fact, prior to hopping on Zoom, he’d just completed a workout.

“I just finished exercising this morning, just before we talked,” he says. “I do swimming, lifting, jogging—I do everything. Everything I feel like doing, I do. For me, it’s very important because the physical activity—and I see it with my kids—is also helping the mental state of mind and the emotional state of mind. Everything is connected and works in balance with each other. If we’re missing a piece of it, then it’s going to affect the other piece of it, which affects the other piece of it and so on and so on.

“The physical exercise is not just about physical health, but the whole health of me as a human being. And it’s not even about exercising. It’s about doing stuff in the garden, getting up for a walk, cleaning up the garage or moving a box here. It’s about not being sedentary.”

Balance has been key to Ziggy’s life these days, especially when recording Brightside. He never forced it and instead, waited until the timing felt right. His first solo effort since 2020’s More Family Time, Brightside arrived in 2024 and went on to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album.

“I’m getting older,” he explains. “Things come into a different perspective as my consciousness grows, my emotional health grows and my mental state grows. It took that time. I’ve always believed in everything happens in its timely manner. When it’s supposed to happen, it happens. I flow that way.

“Everything fell into place for this record, including building a new studio, having my own space, trying different frequencies in music and being more educated in the science of music, because music is a science as well as an inspiration. I found a balance of science and inspiration that I put into this record.”

Naturally, he benefited from the process, too. Throughout the songwriting and recording process, he was able to tear down some of the barriers he puts in place that typically keep his private life private.

“I felt like I got a better relationship with myself on this record,” he says. “I was very certain of the direction I wanted to go in. I was very in touch with my emotional and mental state of mind. I’m a very introverted person in terms of my personal life, but I was willing to share some of that with people out there.”

Though Ziggy has written songs about cannabis in the past, including 1999’s “One Good Spliff” and 2011’s “Wild and Free” with advocate Woody Harrelson, Brightside is devoid of that. It seems to signal a shift in his perspective on marijuana and how it’s cultivated in the United States.

“I’m not sure about the corporatization of it,” he says. “Let’s compare it to food. Back in the day, people used to farm food and then it became this big industry. Now it’s being farmed in a very unethical and unfriendly way to the earth. They do all type of things to preserve it, make it taste better, make it look better and make it smell better.

“We’ve got to be careful with herb because herb is a natural plant. If we corrupt that, then it is a detriment to what the purpose of the plant is.”

Ziggy Marley

“Same thing with herb, because nature is just like food. The best food of nature is in its natural state—not how man manipulated it to include GMOs and all that. That’s the same concern I have with cannabis.”

Ziggy is much more interested in how the hemp side of the plant could be used to replace paper, serve as fuel and support other environmental purposes.

“The funny thing is that herb is supposed to be used for more than just for smoking,” he says. “We still need to explore the plant more. We cannot stop exploring it. There’s so much more potential to this plant that is still left. To explore that, we need to get into the future.”

Ziggy is currently on the Brightside Tour in support of the album and will embark on the Dreaming the Same Dream Tour with Gov’t Mule in September.

“My dream is really to see a better world,” Ziggy says. “That’s a dream we have. We’re trying to be a part of that through the music, through life and through interactions with other people. We would really like to see the world move on from this state. We’re in a time now where even though it seems to be this way, on the bright side, a lot of things are being revealed to us that were hidden. It’s like, ‘Oh, I see you now.’ That’s the bright side.”

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