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Photo/Andrew Harnik, Archive)
David Kenner, an attorney who unsuccessfully defended convicted Fugees rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, pleaded guilty Friday to misdemeanor contempt and was sentenced to a year of probation after admitting that he leaked confidential material to journalists in 2023.
Federal prosecutors said Kenner represented Michel in the federal conspiracy case over the rapper’s role in a multibillion-dollar government influence campaign involving the Obama and Trump administrations. After Kenner was provided discovery materials to prepare Michel’s defense, as is typical in criminal cases, the attorney agreed to share the materials with two Bloomberg reporters, prosecutors stated. While Kenner asked reporters to sign a protective order, which they did, “members of the media tore up the protective order, in the presence of the defendant,” shortly thereafter.
Despite this, Kenner allowed a person acting with his authorization to give reporters access to a database containing the discovery materials, according to prosecutors, and in March 2023, “they published several articles containing information derived from of the discovery materials.
Kenner told the sentencing judge that it was a “low point”in his 56 years of legal career. “I obviously made a terrible mistake,” she said. Kenner also agreed to pay a $5,000 fine.
Michel’s spokeswoman, Erica Dumas, said in a statement that although “Mr. Kenner argues that he was simply trying to mount the best possible defense for Pras Michel, his client, Mr. Kenner’s reckless actions crossed critical ethical lines, breached his duties as a lawyer and have ultimately cost him dearly.” She added: “This conviction represents an abuse of client trust that strikes at the heart of the attorney-client relationship.”
In April 2023, Michel was found guilty of all 10 charges against him, including money laundering, illegal lobbying, witness tampering, and campaign finance violations. As Rolling Stone previously reported, the charges against Michel were related to his relationship with Malaysian financier Jho Low, accused of stealing $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign fund. Prosecutors claimed Michel pocketed millions by helping Low run foreign influence campaigns against the U.S. government. (Low was named a co-defendant in the case, but is currently at large.)
Michel was accused of funneling money from Low to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, as well as pressuring Donald Trump’s administration to drop an investigation into Low and extradite dissident Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
Michel’s new lawyers are seeking a new trial pending before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington.