Federal prosecutors in Chicago on Monday called imprisoned singer R. Kelly a serial and unrepentant child molester and say his recent claims of a plot by prison officials to have him murdered are both “fanciful” and “repugnant.”
The 19-page filing from the U.S. attorney’s office also argued that, regardless of Kelly’s claims, the federal judge now overseeing Kelly’s criminal case here has no jurisdiction to order him released from the medium-security facility in North Carolina where he’s serving a 31-year sentence for separate convictions related to his sexual misconduct.
“Kelly refuses to accept responsibility for years of sexually abusing children and is using this court’s docket merely to promote himself despite there being no legal basis to be before this court,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien wrote. “Unfortunately, no court has the ability to enter an order freeing Kelly’s victims from the prison that Kelly put them in.”
In his motion, Julien said Kelly has failed to bring a grievance to prison officials or file a motion in federal court in North Carolina, where a judge could have the authority to look into his accusations. Julien also quoted lyrics from a song Kelly released in March from prison in which the Chicago-born former superstar made clear he doesn’t believe he belongs behind bars.
“Though I’m in this place, I know I don’t deserve this, no….” Kelly wrote in the song, which was part of a social media challenge, Julien noted.
“Kelly’s current motion is indicative of precisely this sentiment,” Julien wrote.
U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold is scheduled to take up the issue on Friday.
The response comes nearly a week after Kelly’s new legal team, lead by Chicago attorney Beau Brindley, made a public plea to President Donald Trump to release their client from prison immediately, alleging a far-fetched plot by federal authorities to steal his mail and turn witnesses against him, then have a convicted member of the Aryan Brotherhood murder him in prison to keep it all from being exposed.
The emergency motion filed last Tuesday alleged that Kelly’s life is in immediate danger and demanded his release to home confinement.
The 20-page motion alleged that federal prosecutors, prison guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and Kelly’s own former cellmate — a convicted sex trafficker from India — conspired to steal his communications with his attorneys and used those communications to turn Kelly’s onetime girlfriend, Azriel Clary, against him out of jealousy.
Kelly’s attorneys claimed in the filing that he recently got a phone call from a Bureau of Prisons official advising him to “avoid the mess hall” due to potentially poisoned meals and commissary goods and implying that he was in danger in prison.
One federal inmate, a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, allegedly approached Kelly and told him that federal prison officials had directed him to kill Kelly in exchange for authorities looking the other way and letting him escape prison, the motion stated.
Later, Brindley filed additional motions claiming prison officials had moved the singer to solitary confinement to retaliate, and that Kelly was denied calls with his attorneys and scared to eat the “chow hall” food.
At a news conference last week, Brindley admitted point-blank that he was aiming for Trump leniency. The president late last month commuted the federal prison sentence of Larry Hoover, the founder of the notorious Gangster Disciples. He and the rest of Kelly’s legal team are “seeking talks with the White House” about Kelly’s future, Brindley said.
“R. Kelly does not have the time, with his life in danger, to go through the normal channels,” he said. “I will ask President Trump to help us, because we need him.”
The prosecution’s response did not address Brindley’s comments about Trump, which were not in any of his legal filings. The response concluded by calling Kelly’s claims “repugnant to the sentence that this court imposed for deeply disturbing offenses.”
Kelly, 58, was convicted in 2022 in Chicago of child pornography for making explicit videos of himself and his then-teenage goddaughter, who testified at trial under the pseudonym Jane. He also was convicted of inappropriate sexual relations with Jane and two other teenage girls, “Pauline” and “Nia.”
The jury acquitted Kelly and two co-defendants on charges they conspired to retrieve incriminating tapes and rig his 2008 trial by pressuring Jane to lie to investigators about their relationship and refuse to testify against him.
Kelly was also found not guilty of filming himself with Jane on a video that jurors never saw. Prosecutors said “Video 4″ was not played because Kelly’s team successfully buried it, but defense attorneys questioned whether it existed at all.
Brindley represented Kelly’s former manager, Derrel McDavid, in that case, but has since been hired by Kelly.
Meanwhile, Kelly was also convicted in federal court in New York in 2021 of racketeering conspiracy charges alleging his musical career doubled as a criminal enterprise aimed at satisfying his predatory sexual desires.
He’s serving his time in a medium-security federal prison facility in Butner, North Carolina, and is not eligible for release until the year 2045, records show.
Kelly also has a pending lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons alleging a former employee leaked his jail calls and other information to a video blogger.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
