The lawyers representing disgraced musician R Kelly believe U.S. President Donald Trump is ‘the only person with the courage to help us’.
The American singer and producer, real name Robert Sylvester Kelly, was once credited as ‘the King of R&B’.
However, in 2019 his career came to a crashing halt when he was arrested and then sentenced to 31 years behind bars for racketeering and sex trafficking charges involving the sexual abuse of minors.
Last week it emerged that Kelly’s lawyers had filed an emergency motion calling from his immediate release from federal custody to home detention over concerns his life ‘was in danger’.
The 58-year-old’s attorney Beau B. Brindley claimed they had ‘explicit evidence that officials solicited an inmate to murder him while in custody’.
It was then reported yesterday that Kelly had been rushed to hospital after overdosing, with his lawyers claiming prison staff intentionally ‘gave him an amount of medicine that could have killed him.’ Here’s everything we know so far.
Why is R Kelly in prison?
via Getty Images)
For decades Kelly had faced repeated accusations of sexual abuse, also being tried in multiple civil and criminal trials.
In 2019 the documentary Surviving R. Kelly re-investigated his alleged sexual misconduct with minors, which lead to authorities looking into the claims made against him again.
In 2023 Kelly was then sentenced to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes in Chicago while already serving a 30-year prison sentence over sex trafficking and racketeering charges in New York.
The judge ruled he could serve 19 years at the same time, meaning the child sex crimes only added one year to his existing sentence.
His convictions included three counts of coercing minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor.
What have his lawyers said about the ‘murder plot’?
Last week Kelly’s lawyers claimed they had ‘explicit evidence that officials solicited an inmate to murder him while in custody’.
They filed a motion to get him out of prison immediately after providing a sworn declaration from Mikeal Glenn Stine, a terminally ill inmate, who said that officials ‘offered him freedom in his final days in exchange for Kelly’s murder’.
Stine, a member of the neo-Nazi prison gang Aryan Brotherhood, claimed officials told him he would be charged with Kelly’s murder, but that evidence would be mishandled and there would be no conviction.
Although Stine said he changed his mind about carrying out the murder, Kelly’s lawyers have claimed another member of the gang was then ordered to kill both Kelly and Stine.
‘The threat to Mr. Kelly’s life continues each day that no action is taken,’ they wrote in the filing.
A few days later Kelly was rushed to hospital after the overdose, which his lawyers say was orchestrated by prison officials.
‘This was no mistake. It was a dose that jeopardised his life and could have ended it.
Speaking to People, Brindley said Kelly was ‘not safe in federal custody’ and keeping him behind bars was ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.
The Bureau of Prisons and the White House declined to comment when approached by several publications.
Why did they ask Donald Trump for help?
Last week Brindley said Kelly’s legal team had turned to Trump for assistance, explaining he also understood what it felt like to be ‘victimised’ by the legal system.
They are appealing for Kelly to either be granted a pardon or have his sentence commuted.
‘We are in open discussions with people close to President Trump. And those discussions have expanded and intensified since we filed our motion,’ Brindley told People.
In a statement to USA Today, he also said that Trump was the ‘only person with the courage and the power to fight corruption in the prosecution of public figures and stomp it out’.
Brindley went on to say the need for a pardon became ‘more imminent by the day’, claiming that Kelly has now been thrown into solitary confinement and ‘cannot make phone calls to his family’. He is also reportedly refusing to eat over concerns his food ‘could be poisoned’.
Although Kelly does not have a personal relationship with Trump, he was a longtime resident of the Trump Tower in Chicago.
The President has not yet commented on Kelly’s pleas, but did say last month during an Oval Office press briefing that he would consider pardoning Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who is facing similar criminal charges in the same federal court as Kelly.
‘I would certainly look at the facts. If I think someone was mistreated it wouldn’t matter whether they like me or don’t,’ he said.
Prosecutors have opposed the request to release Kelly to home detention, sharing in a statement that he was a ‘prolific child molester’.
‘He is unapologetic about it. Kelly has never taken responsibility for his years of sexually abusing children, and he probably never will.’
They called the claims of a murder plot a ‘fanciful conspiracy’ and said it ‘makes a mockery of the harm suffered by his victims.’
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