Hawaii woman gets two-year prison sentence for facilitating illicit lobbying campaign

Hawaii businesswoman Nickie Mali Lum Davis on Wednesday received two years in prison for facilitating an unregistered lobbying campaign seeking to stop a DOJ investigation into embezzlements from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund.

Lum Davis admitted that she and her co-conspirators "agreed to lobby the then-President of the United States, the Attorney General, and other high-level U.S. government officials to drop civil forfeiture proceedings and a criminal investigation into the embezzlement of billions of dollars from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)," the DOJ stated in a press release.

Malaysian businessman Jho Low allegedly got the group to also lobby the government "to arrange for the removal and return of a dissident of the [People's Republic of China] living in the United States."

"Lum Davis and her co-conspirators concealed from the officials whom they lobbied that they were working on behalf of Low and PRC Minister A, and were being paid millions of dollars by Low with the expectation of tens of millions more in success fees," the DOJ continued, noting that the effort failed.

Rapper Pras Michel of The Fugees also allegedly ranked among Lum Davis's co-conspirators and will face trial on March 27. On Thursday, his attorney informed the court that his team planned to subpoena former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama to testify in the case.