Fugees rapper Pras Michel wants to remain out of prison while he appeals the verdict on his convictions of conspiracy, money laundering, and illegal lobbying that led to his ensuing 14-year prison sentence. A new legal filing cites the appeal “presents substantial questions” surrounding alleged “egregious” errors during his trial, including issues over “improper jury influence” and “sufficiency of evidence.”
In the motion for bail pending appeal filed Friday, which was obtained by Rolling Stone, Pras’ lawyers argued Michel should be allowed to first appeal the verdict rather than report to prison. “Neither the D.C. Circuit nor any other Court of Appeals has ever confronted this extraordinary degree of improper jury influence, which appears to be unprecedented,” the motion states.
In the new filing, which followed Michel and his legal team’s official notice of appeal from earlier in December, the lawyers claimed that the trial judge said Michel “was guilty on at least eight occasions by referring to Michel and others as co-conspirators and ruling in front of the jury that the co-conspirator exception to the rule against hearsay applied, further influencing the jury.”
It also called “permitting FBI Agent Robert Heuchling to provide improper overview testimony and to opine on at least 25 occasions that Michel was guilty” the most “egregious example” that “further” influenced the jury.
“This wasn’t a fair trial. This was a coronation of guilt,” Michel’s spokesperson Erica Dumas said in a statement. “We’re confident the appeals court will recognize this case for what it is, an unprecedented trial that denies Pras’ constitutional right to an impartial jury.”
In 2019, the federal government indicted Michel on four criminal counts of making illegal contributions to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Two years later, the government added charges to the indictment, as discussed in a Rolling Stone feature, including bank fraud, concealment of material facts, witness tampering, violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and working as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China.
The charges stemmed from Michel’s relationship with a Malaysian, Low Taek Jho, who is alleged to have stolen $4.5 billion from 1 Malaysian Development Berhad (1MDB). The government claimed Michel helped move money from 1MDB to a campaign lobbying Donald Trump to drop an investigation into Low and a Chinese dissident. “What benefit would I get trying to break laws?” Michel told Rolling Stone in 2023. “It’s not worth it to me. I’m like a pariah now. I’ve got friends who won’t talk to me because they think there’s a satellite in orbit listening to them.”
Following his 2023 conviction, Michel requested a retrial, alleging that one of his then-lawyers, David Kenner, mishandled his case by using AI to write closing arguments. A judge denied the request.
In the motion filed Friday, Michel’s attorneys said, “If decided in Michel’s favor” the “substantial questions” outlined in the filing “would result in a new trial, reversal of nearly every count, and, at a minimum, a reduced sentence that would likely be less than the duration of Michel’s appeal.”