(RepublicanPress.org) – At the end of 2018, a documentary premiere and panel discussion about the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” came to an abrupt halt when someone called in a threat to the Manhattan theater. The caller said an armed individual was coming to the venue to shoot up the place. That individual was none other than R. Kelly’s former manager, Donnell Russell.
On December 19, the court sentenced the guilty party to a year in federal prison for his crime. Assistant US Attorney Lara Pomerantz argued that the manager wanted to stop the showing of the documentary because he wanted to keep making money from the songwriter turned convicted criminal, according to a Fox News report.
R. Kelly's ex-manager Donnell Russell gets year in prison for calling in theater threat https://t.co/sU2DzQhnZA pic.twitter.com/h4B5TzIwJo
— New York Post (@nypost) December 19, 2022
The defendant admitted in court he made a mistake, insisting he wasn’t a bad person. US District Judge Paul Gardephe, however, was having none of it, stating Russell was involved in “serious criminal conduct” with the intention of protecting a proven abuser, The New York Post reported.
Russell’s defense team said the prosecution didn’t have enough evidence to prove their client’s guilt; they were wrong. In July, a jury of his peers convicted the ex-manager on the charge of threatening physical harm through in-state communications. He also pleaded guilty in another case to stalking one of Kelly’s alleged victims.
Copyright 2022, RepublicanPress.org
