Last week, after the season finale of Law & Order: Gwyneth On The Slopes, it quickly became apparent that we, as a society, need more celebrity trials, if only for the spectacle that is rich people interacting with normal folks. Well, we didn’t have to wait long for another star-studded courtroom appearance (not including James Marsden’s mockumentary Jury Duty) as Leonardo DiCaprio took the stand today, though not for any winter sport-related injury, but for art!
DiCaprio was called to the stand in the trial of Pras Michel of the Fugees, who was allegedly part of a multimillion-dollar conspiracy in which Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman, reportedly gifted DiCaprio with paintings that had been bought with embezzled funds.
The actor said in court that he and Low attended “a multitude of lavish parties” while working on The Wolf Of Wall Street, which Low possibly paid for with those illegal funds. “I understood him to be a huge businessman with many connections,” DiCaprio said of Low in court, according to BBC. “He was a prodigy in the business world.” Do you know who else was a business prodigy at one point?
DiCaprio also testified that Low had once expressed interest in donating a “significant” contribution of $20-30 million to the Democratic Party ahead of the 2012 election. DiCaprio recalled, “I basically said ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money.” Legally, this checks out as a lot of money to most people. Prosecutors claim that Michel funneled money from Low into Obama’s 2012 campaign and hide the source of the funds which would be, as you might have guessed, not legal.
While Prais Michel denies any wrongdoing, there still haven’t been any elaborate stick figure diagrams to help the audience understand how this alleged embezzlement went down. How are we supposed to understand what’s happening when it isn’t drawn out in the simplest of terms? And when will Margot Robbie show up to take the stand?!
