'I will ask President Trump to help us': R. Kelly's lawyer makes public ask for his client's release from prison, alleging threats, conspiracy

Jason Meisner and Caroline Kubzansky, Chicago Tribune on Jun 10, 2025

Published in News & Features

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CHICAGO — Lawyers for imprisoned R&B superstar R. Kelly on Tuesday 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.

An emergency motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago alleged that Kelly’s life is in immediate danger at the federal penitentiary in North Carolina, where he’s serving a 30-year sentence for sexual misconduct.

Attorney Beau Brindley admitted at a news conference Tuesday point-blank that he was targeting Trump, who 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, he said.

“R. Kelly does not have the time, with his life in danger, to go through the normal channels,” Brindley said. “I will ask President Trump to help us, because we need him.”

Trump has been on a clemency spree recently, including the commutation of Hoover. The president has also been unpredictable in doling out clemency, largely avoiding the formal process of going through the Office of the U.S. Pardon Attorney.

But Kelly would seem to have a high hurdle even in the current political climate, particularly since the Trump administration has made human trafficking and sex crimes against children one of the highest priorities in the Justice Department.

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.

Asked about the feasibility of such a plan, Brindley said that the entire scenario alleged in the motion was outlandish, but that the conduct his client claimed by prison officials was in line with the rest of “the stunning quality of these allegations.”

“If prison officials are willing to solicit a man to commit murder, does anybody think then that it’s outrageous for them to be willing to help him?” he said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago could not immediately be reached for comment. Later Tuesday, prosecutors asked a judge to strike Kelly’s motion or place it under seal because it names child sex victims.

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 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.

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