Singer R. Kelly, showing in courtroom in Chicago in June 2019.
E. Jason Wambsgans/AFP/Getty Pictures
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E. Jason Wambsgans/AFP/Getty Pictures
Singer R. Kelly, showing in courtroom in Chicago in June 2019.
E. Jason Wambsgans/AFP/Getty Pictures
On Friday morning, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York filed a superseding indictment towards R&B singer R. Kelly. They charged him with 9 counts that embrace racketeering and eight violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits sexual trafficking throughout state traces.
On this indictment, the prosecutors newly allege that in 2015, Kelly had intercourse with a woman below the age of 18, and that he gave her herpes with out disclosing that he had the illness. In complete, the New York federal costs now embrace six alleged victims, together with three women.
That is one in every of two units of federal costs towards Kelly. Final month, federal prosecutors in Illinois additionally filed a set of superseding costs towards the singer, to which he has pleaded not responsible. In all, he now faces 22 federal felony costs that contain allegedly abusing 11 women and girls over the course of greater than twenty years, from 1994 to 2018.
On Twitter, one in every of Kelly’s attorneys, Steve Greenberg, wrote Friday afternoon that the singer’s group does “not imagine it [the new set of charges] basically adjustments something.” Kelly pleaded not responsible in August to the earlier set of New York-based federal costs.
As of their earlier indictment, the New York prosecutors allege that Kelly and his associates — together with “managers, bodyguards, drivers, private assistants and runners for Kelly, in addition to members of Kelly’s entourage,” have been appearing as an organized crime ring.
Kelly was arrested in Chicago final July, and has remained in jail with out bond. Along with the practically two dozen federal costs, he nonetheless faces 4 separate indictments of sexual assault and abuse in Cook dinner County, Ailing., to which he pleaded not responsible final June, in addition to an array of civil fits and allegations from different girls. He additionally has two pending felony costs towards him in Minnesota.
Kelly’s Brooklyn trial is slated to start on Jul. 7; his Illinois federal trial is scheduled to start out on Oct. 13.
