Grammy-winning rapper Pras Michel told jurors Tuesday at his illegal-lobbying trial that the party-boy Malaysian tycoon Jho Low — once a friend and now a fugitive — paid him $20 million to get a photo with President Barack Obama in 2012.
(Bloomberg) — Grammy-winning rapper Pras Michel told jurors Tuesday at his illegal-lobbying trial that the party-boy Malaysian tycoon Jho Low — once a friend and now a fugitive — paid him $20 million to get a photo with President Barack Obama in 2012.
Michel told a federal jury in Washington that Low hired him to be a “celebrity surrogate” to get the photo. The rapper is accused of funneling illegal donations from Low into Obama’s campaign and later illegally lobbying President Donald Trump’s administration to drop a US probe of Low’s alleged looting of billions of dollars from the Malaysian development fund 1MDB.
Michel, a member of the hip-hop band the Fugees, said he witnessed Low’s wild lifestyle filled with celebrities, nightclub, models and free-flowing cash. He described the tycoon as a “wealthy man willing to do anything, spend any type of money” to get his photo with Obama, but that Low’s reputation made him “too hot” get an invited to fundraisers. Michel said he’d try to help, but at a price.
“I basically asked for $1 million to begin to think about how I would get this photo,” Michel said. “I was going to try.”
Ultimately, Low paid Michel $20 million over nine months, which led to the tycoon getting photographed with Obama at a White House Christmas party, the rapper said.
During the first three weeks of the trial, prosecutors alleged Michel, 50, was driven by greed and pocketed $18 million of the $20 million that Low paid to gain access to Obama. They also say he made another $70 million for his role in a scheme to lobby the Trump administration to drop its civil investigation of Low. Michel was later indicted along with Low, who remains at large and is believed to be in China.
Michel said he never made any donations on behalf of Low and that he never believed any of the political donations he funded were illegal.
‘Party Guy’
In his testimony, Michel said he helped with a July 2012 fundraiser for Obama in Miami, where the price of entry was $40,000 a head, saying he used his own money — not Low’s — to pay for three Haitian friends to attend. But Michel said he couldn’t convince Obama’s campaign to let Low attend that event or another one that September.
“My understanding is that the campaign thought he was too hot,” Michel said. “They didn’t want the optics at that time. At that point, Jho Low was a party guy — Vegas, champagne, parties with Paris Hilton. The campaign just didn’t want that.”
Low didn’t attend the second event, where Low’s father sat next to Obama. That event was at the Washington house of Obama fundraiser Frank White Jr., who asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than testify at Michel’s trial. Jurors saw several photos of Obama at the event.
After Michel discussed the holiday party photo, he answered questions about his efforts to push the US to extradite Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a vocal critic of Beijing. Michel said he met voluntarily several times with FBI agents to discuss Guo and three Americans being held hostage in China, including a pregnant woman.
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Michel denied that he acted as an agent for China in the Guo extradition push. He also said he never knew that he had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for helping to try to scuttle the US probe of Low.
Earlier on Tuesday, jurors heard Michel’s lawyers read a transcript of White’s grand jury testimony.
Jurors also heard from Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Session, who testified as a defense witness. Michel attorney David Kenner asked him about two Justice Department meetings involving Chinese authorities. One meeting involved China’s request to extradite Guo. Sessions testified he couldn’t remember Guo’s name “had it not been refreshed to me,” and he attended a meeting where Guo’s name didn’t come up.
Sessions appeared hazy on the details on the meeting he attended.
“Sometime there was a meeting at the Department of Justice that I believe I participated in,” he said.
Sessions said he didn’t know Michel. Defense lawyers appeared to call him to reinforce him to reinforce the notion that the rapper didn’t carry weight in the Justice Department. Sessions spent 11 minutes on the witness stand before leaving.
The case is US v. Michel, 19-cr-148, US District Court, District of Columbia.
(Updates with details from Michel’s testimony.)
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