Prakazrel “Pras” Michél, the Grammy Award-winning former rapper on trial for his alleged involvement in political influence peddling, money laundering and campaign finance violations, testified Tuesday that an accused Malaysian embezzler who wanted his picture taken with President Barack Obama in 2012 gave $20 million to an Obama fundraising official to arrange for the photograph.
The official, Frank R. White Jr., head of a private equity firm and a national vice chairman of Obama’s reelection campaign, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify at Michél’s trial in U.S. District Court in Washington. White has not been charged with criminal wrongdoing.
Michél, 50, a founding member of the short-lived but influential 1990s hip-hop trio the Fugees, is charged in several alleged criminal conspiracies related to his dealings with Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, who authorities say orchestrated the theft of $4.5 billion from his country’s sovereign wealth fund starting in the late 2000s.
On the witness stand Tuesday, Michél said he was first introduced to the wild-spending, celebrity-obsessed Low in 2006 at a New York nightclub, where Low bought champagne bottles for everyone in the house. They saw each other again in 2008. Then in 2012, Michél testified, Low contacted him, knowing that Michél was a passionate Obama supporter who had met the president. He said Low wanted a photograph of himself with Obama.
“With all the money and resources he had, he had no one who could give him a way in,” Michél told the jury. Low, now 41, is a fugitive from justice and believed to be in China.
In June 2012, White was helping to organize a fundraising dinner for Obama at the Miami home of singer Marc Anthony, Michél testified. He said he met with White at a South Beach hotel. He said he left the meeting with the understanding that he should buy five tickets to the dinner, at $40,000 apiece, as a step toward Low getting his coveted photo.
Michél said he bought the tickets with his own money and attended the dinner with four acquaintances. Prosecutors in the trial have alleged that the arrangement was a sham by which Michél and Low funneled stolen foreign money into the Obama campaign.
Three months later, Michél testified, he used his own money to buy “a bunch” of $40,000-a-head tickets to an Obama fundraiser at White’s home in Washington. A defense lawyer showed jurors emails that White sent to Michél in the weeks before the event, urging him in strong language not to renege on his agreement to purchase the tickets.
“I felt like he was putting pressure on me to fill these seats,” Michél said in court.
All told in 2012, Michél said, Low gave him $20 million to help arrange for a photograph. Michél said that once he received the money, he considered it to be his, and he used about $2 million of the funds to buy tickets to Obama fundraisers for himself and acquaintances. He said he did not think he was doing anything illegal.
Michél testified that White did not want Low to attend any of the fundraisers, given his flamboyant lifestyle, including his frequent hosting of bacchanalian parties with celebrities. Michél said he and White traveled to one such party together, an outlandishly extravagant birthday bash in 2012 that Low threw for himself in Las Vegas.
At that point, Low still had not gotten his photograph. Michél testified that Low then gave White $20 million to arrange for the picture — meaning that the Malaysian money man, by Michél’s telling, doled out a total of $40 million for a chance to pose with Obama. He finally got his picture taken with the president at a Christmas event at the White House.
Michél, on trial since March 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, campaign-finance violations, acting as an unregistered agent for foreign nationals, witness tampering and lying to banks. Low is an absent co-defendant in the case.
Former attorney general Jeff Sessions made a brief appearance at the trial Tuesday, offering about 15 minutes of unremarkable testimony, before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asked Michél whether he intended to address the jury in his defense.
“After consulting with my attorneys and the universe, I have decided I will testify,” he told the judge. Then he settled himself in the witness chair.
“Good morning, Mr. Michél,” said his lawyer David E. Kenner.
Leaning forward, speaking into the courtroom sound system, the long-ago recording star replied, “Mic check one-two, mic check one-two, good morning, Mr. Kenner.”
Another part of the prosecution’s case against Michél involves alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of foreign nationals, including the Chinese government.
By 2017, authorities in the United States and elsewhere were investigating Low in connection with the looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, known as 1MDB. Elliott Broidy, a former top Republican fundraiser, testified at the trial that he was recruited by Michél and Low to lobby the Trump administration, seeking to end the federal probe.
As that effort evolved, Broidy said, Low seemed to think that Chinese authorities could help him with his legal problems. Because of that, Low wanted to please the Chinese. Broidy said Low and a top Chinese domestic security official asked him to use his influence in the Trump administration to secure the extradition of a wealthy Chinese national, Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic of China’s government who was living in New York under a temporary visa.
But the lobbying campaign came to naught.
Broidy, who said he received $9 million from Low, eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA, and was pardoned by President Donald Trump. Others involved in the lobbying — including Nickie Lum Davis, a business associate of Broidy’s; and George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee and friend of Michél’s — also pleaded guilty to federal crimes.
On the witness stand, Michél, who is charged with FARA violations, was asked by defense attorney Kenner whether he understood in 2017 that the lobbying was illegal.
“No one ever told me,” he said. “Elliott Broidy never told me. Nickie Lum Davis never told me. Higginbotham never told me to register. No one I ever spoke to ever mentioned FARA to me.”
He said, “If I knew about FARA in 2017, I would have registered.”