Lawyer Michael Avenatti, holding a press conference in Chicago, said singer R. Kelly paid $2 million to keep his alleged victim off the stand in his 2008 trial on child pornography charges.
“R. Kelly bought his acquittal,” Avenatti said.
Avenatti’s accusation comes after a federal indictment unsealed last week in Chicago in which prosecutors alleged that Kelly’s acquittal then was the byproduct of a concerted effort by him and his entourage to conceal evidence and intimidate and bribe witnesses to prevent their cooperation with law enforcement.
The Los Angeles-based Avenatti in February brought a VHS tape to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx that, he claimed, showed Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Two weeks later, Kelly was charged in four sexual abuse cases involving four victims, three of them underage.
Kelly faces nine counts of enticing a minor, three counts of child pornography and one count of obstruction of justice in the indictment, unsealed Friday. Other criminal charges were unsealed in New York.
Avenatti said he represents three of the victims in the federal indictments; two in Chicago, one in New York. He provided two videotapes to federal prosecutors through Foxx’s office; the feds have said they have three tapes in all.
Kelly on Friday appeared in U.S. District Court in Chicago. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
“Defendant actively obstructed justice during the pendency of this trial,” federal prosecutors wrote. “Defendant threatened witnesses, he isolated the victim at issue in this case, and he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to at least three separate people to collect and round up videotape evidence that would prove his guilt.”
It continued: “The defendant undermined the integrity of the state court trial, and his efforts obstructed the fair administration of justice. ... It further discouraged victims from cooperating with law enforcement for years, which allowed defendant to get away with his conduct for so long. Not anymore.”
The memo states the victim identified as “Minor 1” in the current case is the same girl who was the victim at Kelly’s 2008 trial; she did not then cooperate with investigators.
Prosecutors say they have “disturbing, explicit and crude” videos of Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old girl in his former home in Lake View. In two of the videos, Kelly and the girl mention the girl’s age — 14 — a total of 15 times. Two videos also show Kelly subjecting the girl to “sadomasochistic abuse” by urinating on her.
Prosecutors allege the girl and other victims have all testified to the existence of a fourth video that investigators have not located, in part because Kelly hired someone — who now is apparently cooperating with the government — to collect videos, and paid one of his victims $100,000 to return a tape. Kelly required other government witnesses involved in seeking out the tapes to take lie detector tests to prove they had turned over all copies to the singer.
Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown, former members of Kelly’s entourage, also were named as defendants in the Chicago case.
The conspiracy count mentions five minors, saying Kelly “engaged in sexual contact and sexual acts” when they were under 18.
It also says four videos “depict Kelly engaged in sexual contact and sexual acts” with a girl under 18.
Contributing: Andy Grimm, Sam Charles
