Rapper Lil Durk’s lawyers on Thursday called for the dismissal of his murder-for-hire case in Los Angeles after learning that a judge and prosecutor received death threats that weren’t disclosed to the Chicago superstar’s legal team for seven months.
Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, was initially charged in the conspiracy in October 2024 — the same day five other men were indicted in the killing of the cousin of rival rapper Quando Rondo in L.A. in August 2022.
In an explosive court filing, Banks’ lawyers and the attorneys for three of his co-defendants hold that secretive investigations and closed-door meetings about the threats have “irreparably compromised the structural integrity of these proceedings.”
Government officials knew in February that U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue had received four voicemails “threatening her life and courthouse personnel” as she oversaw the early phases of the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello, the lead prosecutor, got similar threats in April — days before seeking a superseding indictment.
The “violent, case-specific death threats” invoked the name of Banks and one of his co-defendants, Deandre Wilson, the filing states. Every judge in the Central District of California was warned while a “secret investigation” was conducted, but the defendants weren’t told until Oct. 1.
Earlier this week, prosecutors alleged the threats were made by Banks’ “supporters” and said the claims of a cover-up were “frivolous.” In pushing to have an anonymous jury empaneled, the prosecutors argued that Banks’ allegedly vindictive gang has also threatened and intimidated “suspected government witnesses” and that Banks obstructed an investigation into his “clandestine, unmonitored jail communications.”
Donahue got four voicemails from a male caller on Feb. 22 that “contained explicit death threats, and invoked acts of mass destruction accompanied by sounds mimicking gunfire,” the defense attorneys said. The caller told Donahue to “do the right thing” and “free” Banks and Wilson.
“If they get life, I’m going to burn this [expletive] down. I’m talking ’bout the world, and I’m going to burn it, burn it to the ground,” the caller allegedly said.
Federal law enforcement officials soon started investigating and looped in the prosecutor’s office, Thursday’s filing states. An FBI agent arranged an interview with the suspected caller and reported back to prosecutors and the U.S. Marshals Service.
On April 28, another person called Yanniello and threatened to kill him and other courthouse staff while urging him to “free” Banks, court records show. Three days later, a grand jury returned a second superseding indictment, with a new charge of stalking resulting in death.
During a hearing on May 8, Donahue denied Banks’ petition to be released on bail because she deemed him a flight risk and a danger to the community.
“To state the obvious, Judge Donahue was in no position to consider whether Mr. Banks was too dangerous to be released while having been both personally threatened by someone purporting to act on Mr. Banks’ behalf, and having had her entire workplace physically and violently threatened by the same,” the defense lawyers said in the filing. “And not once did she reveal this potential for partiality and conflict to the defense or put the matter on the record for the good of the public’s faith in the impartiality of the proceedings in any way.”
She has since handed off the case to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald, and it’s typical procedure for a magistrate judge to only oversee the preliminary stages of a case.
When Fitzgerald took over, he denied Banks’ appeal of Donahue’s detention order in June and kept the threats secret. It wasn’t until August that the government raised “safety concerns,” according to court records. And even then, the threats and investigations weren’t disclosed.
Prosecutors ultimately began providing details of the threats on Oct. 1, prompting defense lawyers to press for more details. The lawyers framed the alleged cover-up as “institutional in scope” and said that Yanniello’s status as both lead prosecutor and victim of a violent threat presents “an irreconcilable conflict of interest.”
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office declined to comment. Banks’ lawyer, Jonathan Brayman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The defense lawyers are now calling for the case to be tossed out, arguing that “these violations strike at the core of due process and the constitutional guarantee of receiving fair hearings in front of an impartial decision-maker.” If that request isn’t granted, they want all the judges and prosecutors in the Central District of California to be disqualified.
The trial is set to begin on Jan. 20.