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David Kenner faced up to six months behind bars on the misdemeanor charge, but U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta gave the Los Angeles entertainment lawyer one year of unsupervised probation and a $5,000 fine after he accepted responsibility in a guilty plea and sentence handed down under an agreement. with prosecutors.
Kenner represented Michél last year when he went to trial on charges related to a sprawling foreign influence scheme linked to the looting of $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund.
“I am deeply sorry to stand before you and I fully accept responsibility,” Kenner, 82, told the judge in Washington in a video conference hearing. “I had a wonderful 56-year career, and while I tried to be an enthusiastic advocate in my cases, including Mr. Michél’s, this is a low point.”
In court, Kenner admitted responsibility for what the government alleged was the publication of a photo of Michél at a 2012 fundraising dinner with President Barack Obama with a grand jury evidence sticker on one of the two Bloomberg News articles that ran on March 3, 2023, previewing his defense at trial later that month. The lawyer also acknowledged having revealed to two journalists evidence that prosecutors provided to Michél’s lawyers, such as grand jury witness testimony, investigative reports and communications, that they were subject to a judicial protection order and that they used them only in the court.
“It was my responsibility to ensure that only people” subject to the protective order had access to the evidence database, Kenner said. “I was reckless in not taking steps to ensure journalists’ access to the database was terminated.”
Mehta initially opposed a probation sentence, saying it “sent the wrong signal” to attorneys who might “affirmatively mislead” a judge, and called it at least “reckless” for Kenner to initially tell the trial judge Michél’s request that he had given access to journalists as such. defense “agents” as permitted by court order.
In fact, according to deposition documents, Kenner witnessed at least one of the reporters tear up a signed copy of his protective order in front of him and both expressed concern about having signed it. And Kenner’s authorized representative allowed reporters to access hundreds of documents through the database dozens of times, as reflected in an invoice he received.
Still, the judge said, after imposing the maximum allowable fine, that jail would be of no use as Kenner was retiring facing disbarment or other disciplinary consequences from his criminal conviction.
Kenner’s attorney, Barry Boss, argued the same, adding that Kenner was under financial constraints because he spent $1.4 million “out of pocket” for Michél’s defense that was not reimbursed. Chief and prosecutor Liz Aloi also said both sides acknowledged some mitigating facts about what Kenner knew about what Bloomberg would report.
Michél’s new defense attorney at the ArentFox law firm Schiff has claimed in court papers seeking a new trial that Kenner was paid $750,000. But they accuse Kenner of providing ineffective assistance for several reasons, saying the amount was insufficient and that Kenner otherwise did not adequately prepare for the trial. In court papers, they also alleged that Kenner, whose past clients include Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, had a conflict of interest in the trial because he was facing his own contempt charge. They also alleged that he He relied on artificial intelligence to help prepare his closing arguments.
In an emailed statement, Michél spokeswoman Erica Dumas said: “While Mr. Kenner argues that he was simply trying to mount the best possible defense for Pras Michél, his client, Mr. Kenner’s reckless actions crossed critical ethical lines, failed to fulfill their duties as a lawyer.” and, ultimately, they have cost him dearly. “This conviction represents a violation of client trust that strikes at the heart of the attorney-client relationship.”
Michél, 51, who rose to meteoric fame in the 1990s as a member of the hip-hop trio The Fugees, was convicted of 10 federal crimes for his role in a web of conspiracies involving money laundering, violations of campaign financing, illegal lobbying and witness tampering. . He has not yet been sentenced.
Michél was not accused of participating in the gigantic looting of Malaysia’s development fund known as 1MDB, but rather of secretly working on behalf of its alleged mastermind, a spendthrift Malaysian financier named Low Taek Jho, and with authorities in China. , where the fugitive Low is believed to have taken refuge.
Michél earned more than $100 million through his dealings with Low, who led an extravagantly extravagant, globe-trotting lifestyle that landed him in the company of U.S. presidents and Hollywood celebrities, including filmmaker Martin Scorsese. , reality TV star Kim Kardashian and actor. Leonardo DiCaprio (who testified at the trial).
With those contacts, according to trial testimony, Michél helped Low funnel illicit campaign money to Obama and illegally pressure Donald Trump’s administration to close the Justice Department’s civil and criminal investigations into Low and secure his extradition. of Guo Wengui, a wealthy Chinese citizen. and prominent critic of the Chinese government who was then living in New York, under the direction of the Beijing authorities.
Low’s famous friends were not accused of wrongdoing, but DiCaprio testified that he used part of his embezzled fortune to finance the film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” directed by Scorsese and starring DiCaprio.
Michél and Low were co-defendants, and Michél was the only one of several alleged accomplices who took the government to trial while others pleaded guilty.
Of the money they paid him, Michél kept about 80 million dollars. Donald Trump’s former fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, received $9 million, and his partner, business executive Nickie Mali Lum Davis, received nearly $11 million. Broidy and Davis separately pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA. Broidy was pardoned by Trump on his last day in office. Davis was sentenced in January to two years in prison.
George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee, was awarded $170,000, some of which was unrelated to the scheme, and was sentenced to three months of probation in November and ordered to forfeit $70,000 after cooperating with the government and help prosecutors from the US Public Integrity Section bring down the case. curtain in the scheme.