R. Kelly was arrested last month on 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse and now, the case may suffer critical vulnerabilities due to new charges brought against prosecuting attorney Michael Avenatti.
According to TMZ, Kelly’s attorney Steven Greenberg told the celebrity news outlet Avenatti’s charges for attempted extortion of Nike, bank and tax fraud place the attorney’s credibility under scrutiny.
Kellz lawyer believes Avenatti’s legal woes present an issue of “chain of custody” as Cook County Investigators received two alleged sex tapes featuring Kelly engaging in lewd sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl from Avenatti.
Avenatti, who is representing at least one of the four alleged victims, shared purported screenshots from one of the sex tapes to his Twitter account on February 22.
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TMZ’s sources claim Avenatti received the tapes from an alleged whistleblower with a history of extorting the dishonored R&B singer. Reportedly, the whistleblower recently confessed to prosecutors in Chicago for extorting nearly a million dollars from the singer’s team in the past to stop the public release of the tapes.
Greenberg also suggested the possibility the tapes were altered before they reached prosecutors is strong. He continued to infer even though Avenatti reportedly turned over two tapes to Cook County Investigators, he’s only aware of one.
His opposition of Avenatti and staunch support of Kelly isn’t surprising. Kelly’s lawyer has been open about his support of the singer’s innocence from the beginning.
“I think all of the women are lying, yes. This has become — hey, R. Kelly, I can say R. Kelly did something, (snaps) boom,” Greenberg told reporters in part on February 22.
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“There was a press conference yesterday — Oh these two girls were assaulted by R. Kelly — and the lawyer stood there with a picture of LL Cool J,” Greenberg stammered on.
On February 25, Greenberg entered a not guilty plea on behalf of his client. Though the recent charges against Avenatti pose a threat to the case, Greenberg will still be tasked with proving reasonable doubt to the jury in order to get Kelly off the hook.
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