R. Kelly hospitalized in what lawyers call an ongoing prison assassination plot
R. Kelly has been hospitalized after surviving what his lawyer alleged was an assassination attempt, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.
Kelly, whose legal name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was taken to Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C., on Friday after he “was administered an overdose of his medication” by prison officials, court documents filed by Kelly’s attorney state.
The disgraced musician was serving time at the Federal Correctional Institute facility in Butner, N.C., after his 2021 conviction of racketeering and sex trafficking.
“Mr. Kelly’s life is in danger, and that danger is coming from Bureau of Prisons officials and their actions,” one of the court filings reads. “Mr. Kelly needs this Court’s intervention. His life actually depends on it.”
The allegations were the latest among a slew of similar claims by Kelly’s defense team that prison officials are trying to kill the 58-year-old, according to court documents filed within the last week.
They also come days after Kelly’s attorney, Beau Brindley, confirmed with media outlets that he is attempting to seek a presidential pardon for his client on behalf of President Donald Trump. Brindley did not immediately return NBC’s request for comment.
A spokesperson for the BOP said in a statement that “for privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual, including medical and health-related issues.”
“Additionally, the Bureau of Prisons does not comment on pending litigation or matters that are the subject of legal proceedings,” the spokesperson added.
The legal saga began on June 11, when Kelly’s team filed a motion accusing the Bureau of Prisons of soliciting another inmate, Mikeal Glenn Stine, to kill the disgraced R&B singer while he was in custody at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, this spring.
The court document claims that BOP officials offered Stine, an alleged member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang who has a terminal cancer diagnosis, an opportunity “to live out the last of those months as a free man” in exchange for killing Kelly.
Instead, the court documents allege, Stine told Kelly “the truth” and “that his life was absolutely in danger.”
To protect his client, Brindley requested that the court move Kelly to home detention.
The next day, Kelly’s attorney filed supplemental material stating that Kelly was moved to solitary confinement and was denied speaking with his attorney.
“And what’s the reason? Because he was the victim of a murder threat,” the court document states. “That makes no sense. He is being housed in the same solitary confinement conditions as inmates who commit the acts of prison violence that he fears.”
In the midst of the accusations, Brindley said he would contact the Trump administration to request a presidential pardon for Kelly.
“President Trump has been fighting against this kind of criminal weaponization of the DOJ against public figures since he took office,” Brindley told USA Today. “And we will ask him to now stand up with us as we advance his fight and as our client fears that he might be killed to cover up the corruption that we seek to expose.”
After Kelly’s attorneys filed a third motion on June 13 to move Kelly to home detention, the government responded on Monday.
In a 69-page filing, prosecutors called Kelly’s request “deeply unserious and theatrical” and “repugnant to the sentence that this Court imposed for deeply disturbing offenses.”
“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,” the filing said.
Kelly’s attorney filed additional motions on Monday and Tuesday detailing that the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer was hospitalized.
The court filings allege that on Friday, Kelly “fell to the ground” after feeling “faint” and seeing “black spots in his vision.” They claim that while Kelly was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, “he heard one of the prison officers with him state: ‘This is going to open a whole new can of worms.'”
At the hospital, Kelly learned that he had been “administered an overdose quantity of his medications that threatened his life,” according to the court filings.
The filings also alleged that doctors found blood clots in Kelly’s legs and lungs. They also accused prison officials of removing Kelly from the hospital and putting him back in solitary confinement, despite the hospital’s request that he be kept under medical care for seven days and undergo surgery to remove the clots.