Feds Probing Payments To Marc Kasowitz, Chris Christie, Recently Single Biglaw Partner
Their client may have been feeding them tainted funds.
Marc Kasowitz (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s been a few months since we’ve checked in on Marc Kasowitz. At that time, it was hard to imagine that we’d be remembering him wistfully as Donald Trump’s “successful” Russiagate counsel. There was a cameo in the ongoing Harvey Weinstein controversy, but more or less Kasowitz has gone back to his day job as a bulldog of a NY attorney.
But now federal authorities are digging into Kasowitz’s fees — not for any wrongdoing on his part — but because the feds have some reason to believe he’s been getting paid with laundered money. Kasowitz represents a fugitive Malaysian money man named Jho Low who used to have a little, but now has a lot in the form of $4.5 billion that he allegedly stole from a fund called 1MDB which sounds like a new strain of ecstasy. The government has the sneaking suspicion that Low is paying his legal fees — tens of millions of dollars worth at this point — out of these stolen funds by funneling payments through a Thai businessman named Phengphian Laogumnerd and Fugees co-founder Pras Michel.
Can we stop for a second and seriously consider if there’s ever been a band more weirdly dogged by complex financial misconduct claims than the Fugees? Lauryn went to prison for tax evasion, there’s all that stuff about Wyclef’s charity, and now this. There are MDs at Goldman that raise fewer eyebrows.
Anyway, Kasowitz isn’t alone on Low’s legal team. Former Kool-Aid Man Chris Christie is working a case out in California where folks are trying to seize Low’s assets, and King & Spalding’s Bobby Burchfield is also representing Low in the various investigations into the guy’s conduct. While Kasowitz may have been off our radar for a bit, Burchfield most definitely has, having seen his ex-wife nolo charges of hooking up with an inmate in the back of a Maserati. When it rains, it pours.
Burchfield says he’s not gotten any inquiry from the federal government over these payments at this time, but one suspects that’ll change if the government finds reason to believe the lawyers have been duped into taking laundered money.
It’s an occupational hazard when working with accused criminals on the run from the law. Still, Kasowitz must be a lot happier to be in this boat than joining the bunker mentality in D.C. today.
U.S. Probing Whether Malaysian Fugitive Laundered Funds to Pay Chris Christie and Trump Lawyer [Wall Street Journal]
Report: Feds Probe Payments to Kasowitz, Christie [Law.com]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
