R. Kelly's Manager Sentenced for Bomb threat

Four years ago the Lifetime network private debut screening for the Surviving R. Kelly documentary was shut down after a bomb threat was called in [click here if you missed that].

R. Kelly's former manager Donell Russell, who plead guilty in the case, has been sentenced to one year in Federal prison...

From Boston 25 News

Russell told a Manhattan federal judge Monday that he had “made bad judgments” while briefly working with the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer.

“I’m not a horrible person,” Russell said.

Russell said he reconnected with Kelly, a fellow Chicagoan he'd met decades earlier, as the "I Believe I Can Fly" singer was facing a growing series of accusations that eventually fueled Kelly's sex trafficking and racketeering conviction last year. Russell said he set out to help Kelly with intellectual property matters that he thought could yield the performer money to pay legal bills.

But prosecutors said Russell also worked on something else: trying to suppress the abuse allegations. He tried to intimidate at least one accuser, threatened to sue over Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” series and eventually phoned in the warning that shut down the documentary's 2018 Manhattan premiere, according to prosecutors.

A jury convicted Russell in July of threatening physical harm through interstate communication, while acquitting him of conspiracy.

Days after the verdict, Russell pleaded guilty to an interstate stalking charge involving one of Kelly's sexual abuse accusers. A Brooklyn federal judge sentenced Russell last month to 20 months in prison for conduct that included sending threatening messages to the woman and later publishing explicit photos of her online.

Russell, 47, is due to turn himself in next year to serve his sentences in both cases simultaneously.