Leonardo DiCaprio testified in federal court last week that fugitive Malaysian fraudster Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, sought to donate tens of millions of dollars to the Democrats during Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012.
By comparison, the total amount spent by the government of Russia in their microscopic Facebook “interference” case of 2016 was just $150,000, though the U.S. government managed to spend in excess of $32 million investigating the matter.
China, Of Course.
DiCaprio was in Washington, D.C. on Monday April 3rd, as news organizations found themselves consumed by the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump. DiCaprio even managed to slip in and out of the courtroom unnoticed, having given evidence in a trial featuring Fugees rapper Prakazrel ‘Pras’ Michel.
Michel is accused by the Department of Justice of failing to register as an agent of the Chinese government and of facilitating the transfer of money from Low, who is now in hiding, to the Obama campaign, earning close to $100 million for himself into the bargain.
The actor, interrogated by the FBI over his own links to Low, has said the Malaysian hosted a “multitude of lavish parties with many different people from all over the world”, himself and ‘Pras’ among them, and that it was at one of these events that the plan to bankroll Obama was revealed.
“It was a casual conversation about what party he was in support of,” DiCaprio told jurors, explaining that Low had said he planned to make “a significant donation” to the Democrats — “It was a significant sum — something to the tune of $20-30 million,” he testified. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”
Foreign nationals such as Low, wanted in his home country for embezzling $4.5 billion in public money from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) sovereign wealth fund, are prohibited from influencing American elections through donations.
Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has already been imprisoned for 12 years over corruption scandals linked to Low.
The Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera news network claimed in late 2020 that Low himself is hiding in Macau, a Portuguese colony turned Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, in “a house owned by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Malaysian authorities also believe Low is based in the gambling hub, though officials there have denied this.
