R. Kelly has fired his old legal team and has hired Bill Cosby’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean to represent him.
The star is requesting a new trial and wants to be acquitted.
Bonjean wrote that his previous legal team “fell apart mere weeks before the commencement of trial.”
In a separate motion, she writes that Kelly’s federal prosecutors had been influenced by #MeToo: “Invigorated by an influential social movement determined to punish centuries of male misbehavior through symbolic prosecutions, the government brought a RICO prosecution against the Defendant that was ‘absurdly remote’ from the drafters’ intent.”
R KELLY THANKS HIS FANS FOR HIS SUPPORT
Prosecutors have until March 10 to respond.
Kelly was convicted of federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges for a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“Of course we are disappointed in the verdict,” Kelly’s former lawyer, Deveraux L. Cannick, said at the time. “I am even more disappointed in the prosecution for bringing this case,” he said, adding that it was “replete with inconsistencies.”