Well, R. Kelly wants to get out the slammer and he wants to get out now! Kelly is looking for an escape hatch and he’s hoping the key is sitting in the Oval Office.
The jailed R&B singer has formally submitted a petition for executive clemency to the Department of Justice, begging President Donald Trump to commute his massive 30 year federal prison sentence for sex crimes. The “Step in the Name of Love” singer is currently locked up at FCI Butner in North Carolina, and with a projected release date in 2045, when he’d be 78 years old, he is clearly trying to pull off his ultimate hail mary.
This move didn’t just come out of nowhere, though. This formal filing follows months of wild claims from Kelly’s lead defense attorney, Beau Brindley, who has been shouting from the rooftops that the feds are actively trying to have Kelly killed behind bars. Last year, Kelly’s legal team went on a press tour alleging that prison officials actually recruited a member of the Aryan Brotherhood to murder Kelly in his cell to prevent him from exposing “corrupt criminal conduct” within the justice system.
According to his lawyers, Kelly has even been warned by unnamed officials to “avoid the mess hall” because there was a plan to poison his food.
To get Trump’s attention, Kelly’s team is trying a very specific strategy: framing the singer as a fellow victim of deep-state corruption. During a press conference, Brindley literally aligned Kelly’s legal battles with Trump’s own political brand, stating:
<blockquote>“R. Kelly’s life is now threatened, because of his willingness to fight and to expose the very kind of corruption that President Trump has been fighting and standing up to since the day he took that office. … I will ask President Trump to help us, because we need him.”</blockquote>
Kelly’s camp is likely feeling optimistic after Trump commuted the sentence of Gangster Disciples co-founder Larry Hoover. But let’s keep it real: Kelly’s 2022 convictions for racketeering, sex trafficking, and child exploitation of minors carry some of the heaviest stigmas imaginable.
While Kelly is holding out hope that Trump will take mercy on him, the White House has been completely silent on the request. Only time will tell if the former hitmaker will be allowed to fly home early, or if he’ll be singing his tunes from a cell block for the next two decades.