Politicians can handle incriminating news in two ways: Come clean, apologize if necessary and defuse the story. Or evade, obfuscate and hope the story goes away.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has chosen the latter with indicted fundraiser Lev Parnas. His problem is Parnas not only isn’t going away, he’s become a focal point in the world’s headline political story.

They met at least six times.
Gov. Ron DeSantis met with one of the Ukrainian-Americans arrested last month amid allegations of scheming to violate campaign finance laws.

Lev Parnas met with DeSantis at least six times, according to the Orlando Sentinel. That’s more meetings than had previously been reported.

Both Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, had ties to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and were allegedly involved in the pressure campaign to get the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

In the wake of their arrests, the media reported that their company gave $50,000 to DeSantis’ campaign a day before Donald Trump endorsed him in Florida’s Republican primary. It also came out that they had invested $20,400 to elect former Gov. Rick Scott to the U.S. Senate and gave $2,432 to Rep. Brian Mast, R-Palm City.

Texts have surfaced between Gov. Ron DeSantis and a right-wing donor indicted for helping Rudy Giuliani siphon foreign cash into American elections from Ukraine.

The texts between the second-year governor and Lev Parnas were turned over, reports The Wall Street Journal, as evidence in Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) announced on Wednesday new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19 as the race to develop an easy-to-administer treatment for the potentially fatal illness heats up.

Pfizer said its latest mid-to-late-stage trial will enroll 1,140 non-hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus infection who are not at risk of severe illness. Patients in the trial will be given Pfizer's pill, known as PF-07321332, and a low dose of ritonavir, an older medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV infection.

Pfizer's drug is designed to block the activity of a key enzyme that is needed for the coronavirus to multiply.

Merck said its new trial will study experimental drug molnupiravir for the prevention of COVID-19 among adults in the same household as someone diagnosed with symptomatic coronavirus infection. Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics are already conducting a late-stage trial of the treatment in non-hospitalized patients to see if it reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.

Merck said Friday that an experimental pill it is developing with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics reduced the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by around 50% in a clinical trial.

Why it matters: An oral antiviral drug designed to prevent or treat COVID-19 could be a key tool to combat the pandemic, since not all people will get vaccinated and because it will take potentially years to vaccinate people in certain countries around the world.

Merck said it will apply for an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration "as soon as possible" to begin distributing molnupiravir because of the results.
It will also submit applications to international regulatory agencies.