1MDB’s Jho Low paid US$20 million for Obama photo op, US rapper Pras Michel says
- The ex-Fugees member says the Malaysian tycoon was willing to ‘spend any type of money’, but his ‘party guy’ reputation made it hard to get fundraiser invites
- After paying Michel to be his ‘celebrity surrogate’, Low eventually got his chance to be photographed with Obama at a White House Christmas party
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 would try to help, but at a price.
“I basically asked for US$1 million to begin to think about how I would get this photo,” Michel said. “I was going to try.”
Ultimately, Low paid Michel US$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 US$18 million of the US$20 million that Low paid to gain access to Obama. They also say he made another US$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.
In his testimony, Michel said he helped with a July 2012 fundraiser for Obama in Miami, where the price of entry was US$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 could not 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 did not attend the second event, where Low’s father sat next to Obama. That event was at the Washington house of Obama fundraiser Frank White Jnr, 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.
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.
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Jurors also heard from Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Session, who testified as a defence witness. Michel lawyer David Kenner asked him about two Justice Department meetings involving Chinese authorities. One meeting involved China’s request to extradite Guo. Sessions testified he could not remember Guo’s name “had it not been refreshed to me”, and he attended a meeting where Guo’s name did not 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 did not know Michel. Defence lawyers appeared to call him to reinforce him to reinforce the notion that the rapper did not carry weight in the Justice Department. Sessions spent 11 minutes in the witness box before leaving.
