{"id":9130,"date":"2025-12-20T02:28:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fugees-rapper-pras-michel-wants-to-postpone-14-year-prison-sentence\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:46:12","slug":"fugees-rapper-pras-michel-wants-to-postpone-14-year-prison-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fugees-rapper-pras-michel-wants-to-postpone-14-year-prison-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Fugees Rapper Pras Michel Wants to Postpone 14-Year Prison Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tFugees rapper Pras Michel says he should stay out of prison while he appeals his illegal foreign lobbying convictions and resulting 14-year prison sentence, citing \u201cegregious\u201d errors during his trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rapper, who rose to fame alongside his Fugee bandmates Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, is set to surrender next month to serve his lengthy sentence for running a \u201cforeign influence campaign\u201d to get the U.S. to drop an investigation into fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut in a new filing on Friday (Dec. 19), his lawyers say he should be allowed to appeal the verdict before he reports to prison, since his appeal will reveal huge problems with his 2023 jury trial and could end in \u201creversal of nearly every count.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNeither 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,\u201d Michel\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, Michel spokeswoman Erica Dumas<\/strong> said: \u201cThis wasn\u2019t a fair trial. This was a coronation of guilt. We\u2019re confident the appeals court will recognize this case for what it is, an unprecedented trial that denies Pras\u2019 constitutional right to an impartial jury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tComposed of Hill, Jean and Michel, the Fugees rose to fame in the 1990s with hits like \u201cKilling Me Softly,\u201d \u201cReady or Not\u201d and \u201cFu-Gee-La.\u201d After splitting up in 1998, the three each had successful solo careers and mostly stayed separate until recent years, during which they\u2019ve attempted multiple reunion tours.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn 2019, Michel was hit with sweeping federal criminal charges over accusations that he funneled money from Low, the mastermind of the billion-dollar 1MDB embezzlement scheme, to a lobbying campaign aimed at getting the first Trump administration to drop its investigation into the disgraced financier. He was also accused of secretly funneling Low\u2019s money to Barack Obama\u2019s 2012 presidential campaign, and of later trying to influence an extradition case on behalf of China.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn April 2023, following a trial that included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Michel was convicted on 10 counts, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to forfeit a whopping $64 million allegedly linked to the scheme.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, Michel filed a notice of appeal, the standard first step to appealing a verdict. Such filings are typically sparse, leaving more detailed arguments to later briefings. But in his Friday motion seeking to stay out of prison, Michel\u2019s lawyers offered a detailed preview of how they\u2019ll appeal the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other major issues, they say the judge repeatedly told the jury \u201cthat Michel was guilty\u201d by referring to him as a \u201cco-conspirator\u201d in open court. They also claim the judge allowed an FBI agent on the witness stand to \u201copine on at least 25 occasions that Michel was guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf decided in Michel\u2019s favor, these and the other substantial questions below 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\u2019s appeal,\u201d the rapper\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Fugees rapper Pras Michel says he should stay out of prison while he appeals his illegal foreign lobbying convictions and resulting 14-year prison sentence, citing \u201cegregious\u201d errors during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7169,3644,3647,6894,3646,223,2278,4619],"class_list":["post-9130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-14year","tag-fugees","tag-michel","tag-postpone","tag-pras","tag-prison","tag-rapper","tag-sentence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9411,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9130\/revisions\/9411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}