A prominent attorney known for representing stars like Snoop Dogg and Tory Lanez has pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court for leaking evidence to reporters in the federal conspiracy case against Fugees rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michél.
David Kenner was hit with one year of probation and a $5,000 fine after copping to the charges Friday, according to the Department of Justice.
“I am deeply sorry to be standing in front of you, and I fully accept responsibility,” he told U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta, according to The Washington Post. “I had a wonderful 56-year career, and while I tried to be a zealous advocate in my cases, including for Mr. Michél, this is a low point.”
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Kenner represented Michél last year in a case over a massive foreign influence scheme involving Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. The Fugees rapper was accused of accepting money to help Malaysian businessman Jho Low and the Chinese government get access to top officials like Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and he was ultimately convicted.
Several weeks before Michél’s conviction, Kenner apparently sought to enlist the help of the news media in his defense of Michél. In court documents, Kenner admitted to sharing materials that were under a court protective order with two reporters from Bloomberg News. He said he thought that “they could provide invaluable assistance as part of the defense team,” since they “had been investigating the underlying circumstances leading to the charges against” Michél.
While they had initially signed the court’s protective order promising not to share the materials, court documents note, a short time later, at least one of them “in the presence of Kenner, ripped up their signed copy” and “expressed concerns with having signed it.”
But Kenner still allowed them access to the evidence, and they “accessed hundreds of documents within the discovery materials” before ultimately going on to publish “multiple articles” based on the protected information.
Kenner now faces potential disbarment over his conviction. And Michél, in a bid for a new trial, has accused the celebrity attorney of being woefully unfit to mount a defense in his case.
In court filings submitted in October, Michél’s new attorneys described Kenner as having been lost and in over his head shortly before the high-stakes trial.
“Two weeks before the trial, a member of Kenner’s trial team was so alarmed by the state of Kenner’s preparations and understanding of the case that he asked a law school classmate, a trial attorney in Miami, if he would fly to Los Angeles to help,” the defense team wrote.
