Every great song deserves a remix, and legal proceedings are no different. Consider last year’s trial of Pras Michel, the founding member of the Fugees who now faces 20 years in prison after being convicted of participating in a conspiracy. Michel’s legal odyssey revolves around his association with Jho Low and getting mixed up in illicitly funneling millions of the shady Malaysian social climber’s dollars into Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Subsequently, Michel tried to convince the Trump-era Department of Justice to back off its pursuit of Low for raiding Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund. Separately, Michel, prodded by Low, aided a scheme to have the Trump administration extradite Chinese dissident Guo Wengui to please China. Now, the pressing concern is whether the politically unsavvy Michel got a raw deal when he became one of the very, very few individuals in American history to be convicted of serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign power. 

This past week, D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly presided over an extraordinary hearing that probed whether that conviction should be vacated due to the alleged shortcomings of Michel’s octogenarian attorney, David Kenner. It was, in a sense, a trial about a trial—a proceeding that lifted the veil of usual secrecy between client and lawyer to dissect Kenner’s performance eight months ago. The prosecution found itself in the unusual position of defending the work of Michel’s former attorney, a departure from last year’s trial, which featured notable figures like Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifying about Low’s rise and lifestyle, all the back-channel lobbying efforts, and Michel’s connection to the affair. This time, the witness stand was reserved to those with an insider’s view of the trial preparation.