- Douglas Anton, the attorney for singer R. Kelly, says he doesn’t know where he is
- Anton says the authorities have not told him in which jail he is being held
- R. Kelly was flown to Teterboro, New Jersey on Thursday from Chicago
- He is due in Brooklyn federal court for an arraignment on Friday morning
- R. Kelly is likely to plead not guilty to having sex with underage girls
Hours before he is scheduled to appear in Brooklyn federal court, R. Kelly’s lawyer doesn’t know where his client is.
‘I have not been able to see my client yet to intelligently discuss with him what is to transpire tomorrow, which is something I must be able to do,’ attorney Douglas Anton wrote in a letter to a federal magistrate judge on Thursday.
The singer, who stands accused of raping underage girls, was flown from Chicago to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on Thursday afternoon, according to Page Six.
He is due in Brooklyn federal court on Friday morning.
R. Kelly, the Grammy Award-winning singer, is due in Brooklyn federal court on Friday. He is seen above in Chicago on June 26
Douglas Anton, Kelly’s lawyer, says he has been trying to track down his client, who is in federal custody. Anton is seen arriving to Brooklyn federal court on Friday
Anton says that the authorities have not told him where his client is being held.
‘I have spent the hours that followed his landing on the phone with the [Bureau of Prisons] at both New York [Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan] and Brooklyn [Metropolitan Detention Center] trying to locate my client, but no one would provide that information to me, even recognizing I am his attorney, instead directing me to bop.gov to find out where he would be,’ he wrote.
‘Indeed, its 11:00pm now and the bop.gov website still lists this client as being located in Chicago MCC.’
As of Friday morning, Kelly is listed as being detained at Brooklyn’s MDC.
Anton wants to see Kelly before his arraignment, which is scheduled for 10:30am local time.
He asked the judge for ‘some understanding’ if he’s late.
R. Kelly is expected to plead not guilty in New York on Friday to charges that he ran a criminal scheme in which he recruited women and underage girls to have sex with him, isolating them and often controlling what they ate and when they went to the bathroom.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say that Kelly and his entourage invited women and girls backstage after concerts, kept them from friends and family and made them dependent on him financially.
The R&B artist is scheduled to enter the plea at a 10:30am hearing before a federal magistrate to charges including racketeering and violations of a federal trafficking law.
Anton said in a court filing on Wednesday that Kelly’s fans were ‘dying to be with him’ and that the charges amounted to ‘groupie remorse.’
Recent online records indicate that Kelly was being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (seen in the above stock image)
Gloria Allred, a lawyer representing three of Kelly’s accusers, said Anton’s filing had given prosecutors a preview of what Kelly’s defense may be.
‘If that’s all he’s got, I think he’s going to have major challenges in this case,’ Allred said.
The singer, 52, known for such hits as I Believe I Can Fly and Bump N’ Grind, was arrested in Chicago last month on the Brooklyn charges and a separate set of charges brought by federal prosecutors in Chicago.
The charges were brought after seven women including his ex-wife, appeared on a Lifetime television documentary which aired in January and accused him of emotional and sexual abuse.
The R&B singer has denied abuse allegations for decades.
In 2008, he was tried on child pornography charges and found not guilty.
Chicago prosecutors said that Kelly had sexual contact with five minors and recorded sexually explicit videos of some of them.
They also accused Kelly of obstructing justice by using threats and bribes, including payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to keep his victims quiet.
Kelly has pleaded not guilty to those charges. A judge in Chicago ordered that he remain jailed while he awaits trial.
In addition to the two federal cases, Kelly was charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse in a Cook County, Illinois state court in February.
The Cook County prosecutors have accused Kelly of abusing a victim between the ages of 13 and 16 between May 2009 and January 2010.
Kelly pleaded not guilty to the state charges.
Kelly faces a maximum prison sentence of more than 200 years for all the charges pending against him.
source:dailymail