Convicted sex trafficker R. Kelly is hoping for President Donald Trump’s help, said his lawyer, who has alleged that federal prison officials have devised a plot to kill the disgraced R&B singer in prison.
“Bureau of Prisons officers and officials are actively taking actions to kill R. Kelly,” Kelly’s Chicago-based attorney, Beau Brindley, told Business Insider in a statement on Tuesday.
Brindley did not provide any evidence of the alleged plot to Business Insider, and prosecutors have called the accusations a “fanciful conspiracy” in court documents.
“It is now undeniable. And, it is because of this growing and imminent threat that we continue to seek the intervention of President Trump,” Brindley said in a written statement. “He may be the only power in this country that can save a life and end this corruption before its too late.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider about whether Kelly’s camp has reached out or whether Trump would ever consider a pardon for Kelly.
Brindley alleged in court documents filed this week that the incarcerated “Ignition” singer was rushed to a North Carolina hospital after officials at a prison in the state intentionally gave Kelly an “overdose” of his medication.
Kelly, given name Robert Sylvester Kelly, was taken by ambulance from the prison in Butner, NC — where he is serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering — to Duke University Hospital on Friday, Brindley said in the court papers.
“At the hospital, Mr. Kelly learned that he had been administered an overdose quantity of his medications that threatened his life,” his lawyer wrote.
Brindley said in the court documents that Kelly had been moved to solitary confinement “against his will” last week after the attorney filed an emergency motion for his client’s temporary release, alleging that Bureau of Prisons officials had solicited another inmate to have Kelly killed.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment to Business Insider, saying the agency does not comment on pending litigation or matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.
“For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual, including medical and health-related issues,” the spokesperson said in response to questions about Kelly’s hospitalization.
Brindley wrote in the court papers filed this week in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that “within two days of the filing of his motion, Bureau of Prisons officials administered an amount of medication that significantly exceeded a safe dose and caused Mr. Kelly to overdose, putting his life in jeopardy.”
“They gave him an amount of medicine that could have killed him,” Brindley wrote in the court documents, which said Kelly takes medication for anxiety and to help him sleep, in addition to other medications.
Kelly awoke on Friday feeling “faint” and “dizzy,” Brindley wrote in the court papers, adding that Kelly “tried to get up, but fell to the ground” and later lost consciousness.
Brindley wrote that while at the hospital, blood clots were discovered in Kelly’s legs and lungs, and that Kelly was told he would need surgery.
“Within an hour, officers with guns came into his hospital room and removed Mr. Kelly. He was taken from the hospital against his will and against the directives of the doctors,” the court filing says. “He was denied the surgery he needs to clear blood clots in his lungs that threaten his life.”
In another filing this week, Brindley wrote, “These are outright acts by prison officials to put in jeopardy the life of a man who has endeavored to expose crimes committed by these officials themselves.”
Brindley represented Kelly’s former business manager in the singer’s federal sex crimes trial in Chicago.
That case was tried in front of the same federal judge who, in 2015, acquitted Brindley of charges connected to a scheme to present perjured testimony in a 2009 trial.
Prosecutors, in court filings of their own, responded to Kelly’s motion, saying: “This is the behavior of an abuser and a master manipulator on display. Kelly is always the victim.”
“This Court should not allow Kelly to turn its docket into a grocery store checkout aisle tabloid,” prosecutors wrote in a Monday filing.
In another filing, prosecutors called Kelly a “prolific child molester” who “has never taken responsibility for his years of sexually abusing children, and he probably never will.”
They wrote that Kelly was asking for indefinite release from prison “under the guise of a fanciful conspiracy.”
“Kelly’s motion makes a mockery of the harm suffered by Kelly’s victims and flouts this Court’s previous ruling that this Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain Kelly’s complaints about the conditions of his confinement,” prosecutors wrote.
The prosecutors also called Kelly’s motion “repugnant to the sentence that this Court imposed for deeply disturbing offenses.”
Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in 2022 in a New York court, and later sentenced to 20 years behind bars in 2023 in Chicago on sex crimes charges, including child pornography. He was ordered to serve 19 years of his 20-year sentence concurrently with his 30-year sentence.
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