R. Kelly faces new federal indictment charges in New York

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York have filed an indictment case against R&B hit maker R. Kelly. He was charged with nine counts of racketeering and eight violations of the Mann Act, which prevents sexual trafficking across state lines.

The New York federal charges now include six alleged victims of which three are girls. In this new indictment, Kelly had sex with a girl below age 18 and gave her herpes without coming clean about his diagnosis, according to the prosecutors.

This new charge is one of two R. Kelly, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is facing. Last month prosecutors in Illinois also filed a host of charges against the musician to which he pleaded not guilty.

Altogether, Kelly now faces 22 federal criminal charges which includes him allegedly abusing 11 girls and women spanning a period of two decades, 1994 to 2018, NPR reports.

His attorneys responded to the charges. Steve Greenberg took to Twitter saying his team of legal experts do “not believe it [the new set of charges] fundamentally changes anything.” 

According to CNN, one of his attorneys Douglas Anton also said, “How does an alleged victim ‘forget’ such things?” he wrote. “Or… perhaps… these alleged victims are not victims at all, but only women who have been told and instructed, even peer pressured if you will, years later, that the claimed relationship they freely and voluntarily engaged in, should now, in the #metoo era, be classified as ‘bad’ or ‘abusive,’ and they are continually seeking to add facts, even if not truthful, to their story, to make the alleged events as salacious as humanly possible.”

He added that the women should “hire a literary agent instead and put out your book of fiction, in which you can claim anything you want, subject only to the laws against defamation.”

This is not the first time he is pleading not guilty to charges in New York. Last August he pleaded not guilty to a previous set of charges.

In his hometown Chicago, he was arrested last July and held without bond in jail. In addition to his over 24 federal charges, he still faces four individual indictment charges of sexual assault and abuse in Cook County, Illinois all to which he pleaded not guilty last June.

Kelly also carries several civil suits and accusations from other women and has two pending criminal charges in Minnesota.

The disgraced singer’s Brooklyn trial begins on July 7 while his Illinois federal trial is slated for October 13 this year.