Trevian C. Kutti, a former Kanye West and R. Kelly associate, is one of 18 people named in the indictment against former President Donald Trump that was unsealed on Monday night (Aug. 14).
Others on the Fulton County, Ga., indictment include former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyer John Eastman, another Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Kutti is facing three charges under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, as prosecutors are claiming that Trump and his compatriots ran a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in the White House after his 2020 presidential election loss. Kutti’s charges that she’s facing include conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings and influencing witnesses. Trump, meanwhile, is facing 13 charges in the case,
This is Trump’s most potentially dangerous indictment legally, and comes just five months after he was indicted in March in a New York case tied to hush payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. He was indicted again in June by a federal grand jury in Miami in his classified documents case and earlier this month by special counsel Jack Smith in a federal probe into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
See below for five things to know about Trevian C. Kutti.
Kutti worked as a publicist to the disgraced singer until 2018, according to a 2020 Chicago Sun-Times article. Kelly is currently serving a 20-year sentence in Chicago after convictions on child pornography and enticement of a minor charges.
In early 2020, she registered as a lobbyist for cannabis company Red White and Bloom, according to Chicago Sun. “I do feel there’s a problem within Springfield as far as cannabis legislators purposefully and unethically blocking legislation that will make the changes that will remedy a lot of problems that we’re having,” Kutti told the publication.
Kutti also made headlines for her comments against Toi Hutchinson, a cannabis advisor for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D), saying that she would “keep my knee on Toi W. Hutchinson’s neck,” an apparent reference to the police killing of George Floyd.
The exact timeline of her employment with Ye is unclear. Reuters reported that Kutti’s online biography from 2021 identified her as a member of the “Young Black Leadership Council under President Trump,” while also claiming that beginning in Sept. 2018 she was “secured as a publicist to Kanye West” and served as his “director of operations.”
In Dec. 2021 a spokesperson for West said that Kutti was not “associated” with the rapper at the time she is accused of pressuring a Georgia election worker to confess to false allegations of committing voter fraud.
Forbes reported that leading up to the 2020 election, Kutti worked as a campaign manager for QAnon conspiracy supporter Angela Stanton King, who lost an election for the congressional seat of late civil rights icon John Lewis.
On her Instagram account, where she regularly supports Trump, she describes herself as a “solutionist,” an “equal opportunity capitalist” and “media manipulator.”