R. Kelly claims his life is in danger, seeks help from judge — or Trump

R. Kelly launched a legal assault on his twin federal convictions Tuesday, alleging government misconduct amid his high-profile prosecution in Chicago and New York and insisting he should be released to home detention because his life is in danger.

The former R&B superstar’s lawyers said he’s the target of a murder plot — hatched by federal prison officials who they claim enlisted a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood to assassinate him.

That extraordinary allegation appears in a new document filed by Kelly’s attorneys in Chicago’s federal court. It’s sure to be met with skepticism in many corners. But at its core, it signals Kelly has not given up on freedom. His attorneys told the Chicago Sun-Times, “This is precisely the kind [of] prosecutorial corruption that President [Donald] Trump has vowed to eradicate.”

“We believe [Trump] is the only one with both the power and the courage to do it,” defense attorney Beau Brindley said. “And we will surely seek whatever help he can provide us in this fight.”

Brindley later told reporters he is “not seeking clemency through the normal avenues” because time is of the essence. But, he acknowledged, “we are seeking a conversation with the president.”

Federal prison officials declined to comment. So did a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. Prosecutors later asked a judge to seal the new court filing because it named one of Kelly’s victims.

For now, Brindley is asking a judge to release Kelly to home detention, claiming Kelly’s “life is threatened by governmental powers that have now sought his literal destruction.”

To support that claim, Brindley offered a five-page declaration, “signed, sworn and affirmed” by the inmate allegedly recruited to kill Kelly, Mikeal Glenn Stine.

It says a prison official told Stine “to execute R. Kelly” to prevent the disclosure of damaging information. It also says Stine is dying of cancer. Brindley told the Sun-Times he and his colleagues have investigated Stine’s claims.

“To those who would disbelieve him, my question is simple,” Brindley said. “Why would an avowed white supremacist ensure that the last months of his life will be absolute misery in an effort to try to help R. Kelly of all people? There is no logical answer to that question unless Glenn Stine is telling the truth.”

The filing says attorneys are also preparing a motion to undo Kelly’s convictions.

Presiding over the matter is U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold, a nearly six-year veteran of the bench assigned to Kelly’s case earlier this year. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, who handled Kelly’s federal trial here in 2022, died in 2024.

Kelly inspired millions with his “I Believe I Can Fly” anthem in the 1990s. But in 2021, jurors in New York found that he used his fame to recruit women and girls into illegal sexual activity. The next year, jurors in Chicago found that he also sexually abused a 14-year-old girl on camera after she asked him to be her godfather.

The singer is serving a 30-year prison sentence for the New York conviction. Leinenweber in 2023 handed Kelly a prison sentence that effectively added one year to his term.

Prison records show Kelly is being held in a medium-security prison facility in Butner, North Carolina. The 58-year-old is not due to be released until December 2045, when he’d be nearing his 79th birthday.

Stine, 67, is also being held in Butner, records show.

The lawyer leading Kelly’s new fight, Brindley, faced legal troubles of his own 10 years ago. He went to trial in 2015 for an alleged perjury conspiracy.

But Brindley was cleared at trial, continued his law practice, and in 2022 won acquittal for Derrel McDavid, the former Kelly business manager who faced trial with the singer.

Kelly’s own fate seemed sealed just a few months ago, after two appellate courts shot down his attorneys’ arguments. Jennifer Bonjean, the lawyer who previously defended Kelly in Chicago, admitted last year he “probably will die in prison” under those circumstances.

Now it turns out lawyers for the singer have been preparing to challenge his convictions.

Bonjean’s name did not appear on the new court filing, though.

Kelly’s prosecution followed the airing of the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” in the midst of the #MeToo movement. Bonjean previously accused the Justice Department of an “obsession” with Kelly. She suggested it was born out of racism.

Now Trump has shown a similar level of disdain for federal prosecutors. Since inauguration, he’s referred to the Justice Department under his predecessors as the “Department of Injustice”; pardoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and hundreds involved in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot; and commuted the life prison sentence of Gangster Disciples co-founder Larry Hoover.

Recently, Trump even mused about pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is on trial in New York for crimes similar to Kelly’s.

Kelly’s claims

Kelly’s new claims stem, in part, from past controversies in his case. They include the unauthorized access of Kelly’s communications by Bureau of Prisons officials.

Additionally, Brindley once accused the former lead prosecutor in Chicago of having inappropriate communications with a journalist and a key witness, identified in court as “Jane.”

Now Brindley claims Kelly’s stolen communication was used to secure the cooperation of Jane and another crucial witness, Azriel Clary. Both women testified during Kelly’s trials, but Jane’s cooperation was particularly notable.

That’s because Kelly had faced trial once before over his abuse of Jane, in state court in Cook County. Jane refused to testify during that 2008 trial. So the jurors acquitted Kelly and pointed to Jane’s absence from the witness stand.

In 2022, Jane reversed course and testified during Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago. She explained to jurors that she’d become “exhausted with living with his lies,” and she detailed how Kelly sexually abused her as a teenager.

Separately, Brindley claims a former cellmate of Kelly’s in Chicago admitted stealing the singer’s correspondence, including legal mail, to pass along to prosecutors. The inmate, Kishan Modugumudi, allegedly did so in exchange for a sentencing break.

Modugumudi has faced federal prosecution since 2018 over the sex trafficking of Indian actresses. He pleaded guilty in 2020, and his sentencing is set for August. He’s still being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown.

Neither the alleged use of Kelly’s stolen communications or theft of his legal mail by Modugumudi was disclosed to defense attorneys, Brindley says.

Modugumudi signed a statement about the theft and his cooperation with prosecutors, according to Brindley’s filing.

Not long after, Brindley says a prison official in Butner contacted Kelly.

That official allegedly warned Kelly that authorities knew about Modugumudi’s contact with his lawyers, and that Kelly was in danger.

Stine’s declaration says he was actually recruited to kill Kelly in 2023 and sent to Butner later that year. However, it says he was moved to Kelly’s unit just last March.

Prison officials allegedly promised Stine that, though he would be charged with Kelly’s murder, evidence would be mishandled and he’d be allowed to escape.

Stine found Kelly, followed him and considered his task, according to the declaration.

“I was prepared to carry out the execution I was directed to complete,” it says. “But, in the moment when I got near Mr. Kelly, I made a different choice. I told him the truth. I told him that I had been sent to kill him. I told him how and by who.

“And I told him his life was absolutely in danger.”

A ‘stark’ criminal history

The document says Stine has been a federal inmate since 1982. It says his decadeslong incarceration was briefly interrupted once “by a successful prison escape.”

And it says Stine has terminal, untreatable cancer that’s left him with months to live.

Federal prosecutors laid out Stine’s “stark” criminal history in a court filing earlier this year in Colorado.

“Beginning in 1978, when he was 19 years old, [Stine] embarked on what would seem a largely uninterrupted career of criminality that has resulted in his having spent the bulk of his life since 1980 imprisoned for one crime or another,” they wrote.

His list of crimes ranged from dealing marijuana to contempt of court, to grand theft, to bank robbery to a gang sexual assault of a cell mate, they explained. In Colorado, he’d also been convicted of threatening a federal judge and prosecutor after a crackdown on his filing of lawsuits aimed at the supermax prison in Colorado, where he was being held.

Stine allegedly said if he could get his hands around the prosecutor’s neck, he “would snap it.”

Though Stine spent time in the supermax, the court filing acknowledged that Stine had also been sent to Butner by 2025, where he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.

In their filing, the feds say Stine had previously been diagnosed with an antisocial personality, and they listed the ways it manifested itself.

They said it’s revealed through “frequent anger outbursts, his aggressive and hostile posture, and his deceitfulness.”

Contributing: David Struett