R. Kelly’s Lawyer Claims Singer Has Blood Clots in His Lungs — and That Prison Is Denying Life-Saving Surgery

R. Kelly will remain in prison after a judge denied his bid for a temporary furlough — but the singer and his lawyer are not giving up their fight. 

Beau B. Brindley, the attorney for Kelly, tells PEOPLE he is prepared to file a new motion seeking his client’s release from prison, despite Judge Martha Pacold’s decision to dismiss the initial emergency motion due to lack of jurisdiction.

The motion for a temporary furlough was filed in the Northern District of Illinois, where Kelly was criminally convicted. However, the singer based his request on alleged incidents that occurred in Arizona and North Carolina — the districts where he is currently in custody at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, N.C. Details of the initial motion were first reported by TMZ.

“We are not surprised by this ruling as we knew that technical jurisdiction would be a challenge under these circumstances,” Brindley tells PEOPLE. “However, we had no choice but to act immediately given explicit evidence of a threat to Robert Kelly’s life.”

Brindley said he is deeply concerned about his client’s well-being after making an emergency visit to see the singer on June 18.

“Mr. Kelly remains in prison with blood clots in his lungs — this threatens his life every minute that he is denied the surgical intervention (pulmonary embolectomy) that Duke University hospital doctors sought to perform, but were prevented from executing,” Brindley claims. He adds: “The danger could not be more imminent.”

Brindley says he plans to file a motion to vacate Kelly’s convictions in Illinois, citing newly discovered evidence — along with a request for immediate release on bond pending the outcome of the motion.

The initial emergency motion alleged that Bureau of Prisons officials were conspiring to have Kelly killed. It included a declaration from a fellow inmate who claimed he was approached about carrying out the killing while in an Arizona detention facility — and then transferred to Kelly’s North Carolina complex, where he was housed in the same wing to allegedly complete the assignment.

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Mikeal Glenn Stine, the inmate who wrote the declaration, is no stranger to the legal system — he has filed more than 100 civil suits and petitions in federal court over the past two decades.

He also has a 2015 criminal conviction for threatening the lives of a federal magistrate judge and an assistant U.S. attorney in letters sent from his prison cell.

A few days after he filed the motion on behalf of Kelly, Brindley filed a supplement alleging that Kelly had been placed into solitary confinement after the motion as a form of punishment.

In a subsequent filing. Brindley alleged that Kelly had been given a potentially lethal cocktail of drugs by the prison officials tasked with providing his medication while he was housed in solitary confinement.

The BOP has declined to comment on the matter, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien said in his answer to the emergency motion that placing Kelly in solitary confinement was an effort by prison officials to protect him.

He then said that Kelly “is a serial child molester whose criminal abuse of children dates back to at least President Bill Clinton’s first term in office — decades before Kelly was taken into federal custody.” He later noted, “Kelly has never taken responsibility for his years of sexually abusing children, and he probably never will.”

Kelly is currently serving a 30-year sentence after being convicted of multiple charges of racketeering predicated on criminal conduct in the Eastern District of New York.

That conduct included the sexual exploitation of children, forced labor and violations of the Mann Act involving the coercion and transportation of women and girls in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sexual activity.

Brindley is also attempting to get President Donald Trump to pardon Kelly, and tells PEOPLE  that he remains in talks with people close to the president.

Kelly has no known ties to the president but did live in Trump Tower in Chicago prior to his incarceration.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Brindley said, in part, “We will not rest until Mr. Kelly is free.”

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