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A hip hop legend is headed to jail for a really very long time.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, who helped to make the Fugees one of the crucial profitable musical acts of the Nineteen Nineties, was sentenced to 14 years behind bars on Thursday.
The 52-year-old was convicted of funneling hundreds of thousands in overseas donations to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection marketing campaign.
Prosecutors say Michel obtained over $120 million from Malaysian billionaire Low Taek Jho — also called Jho Low — and illegelly directed a lot of it towards the Obama marketing campaign.
Michel was additionally convicted of tampering with two witnesses and perjuring himself throughout his trial.
Prosecutors alleged that Michel “betrayed his nation for cash” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to hold out his schemes” (per NPR).
The trial included testimony from Leonardo DiCaprio and former Legal professional Basic Jeff Periods.
“His sentence ought to replicate the breadth and depth of his crimes, his indifference to the dangers to his nation, and the magnitude of his greed,” prosecutors wrote.
Michel’s legal professional, Peter Zeidenberg, countered that his shopper’s 14-year sentence is “utterly disproportionate to the offense.”
“The Authorities’s place is one that might trigger Inspector Javert to recoil and, if something, merely illustrates simply how simply the Pointers could be manipulated to supply absurd outcomes, and the way poorly outfitted they’re, not less than on this event, to find out a good and simply sentence,” the protection crew wrote.
Legal professionals for Michel preserve that Low, who’s at present a fugitive, was not trying to govern US politics.
As an alternative, the financier — who was a producer on DiCaprio’s movie The Wolf of Wall Avenue — merely wished a photograph with Obama.
“Low’s motivation for giving Mr. Michel cash to donate was not in order that he might obtain some coverage goal. As an alternative, Low merely wished to acquire {a photograph} with himself and then-President Obama,” Michel’s attorneys wrote.
The decide beforehand rejected Michel’s request for a mistrial on the grounds that his legal professional used generative AI to assist craft his closing argument.
Michel’s attorneys say that he plans to attraction his conviction.
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