Former Kanye West Associate Among Those Indicted Alongside Donald Trump in Georgia Election Case

A former associate of Kanye West and R. Kelly is listed among the 18 names in the 41-count indictment against former President Donald Trump that was unsealed in Fulton County, Ga., Monday night (Aug. 14). Trevian C. Kutti is facing three charges under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law — a statute typically associated with organized crime — wherein prosecutors claim the former president and his compatriots ran a “criminal enterprise” to keep Trump in the White House after his 2020 presidential election loss.

Kutti was associated with West for a period of time following his own failed 2020 presidential run, according to a source formerly close to West’s team.

Previously, Kutti worked with disgraced singer R. Kelly as his publicist until 2018, according to a 2020 Chicago Sun-Times article covering her work as a lobbyist to legalize marijuana in Illinois. Kelly is currently serving a 20-year sentence in Chicago after convictions on child pornography and enticement of a minor charges.

Kutti, whose unverified Instagram bio lists her as a “solutionist… equal opportunity capitalist… media manipulator,” is facing charges of conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings and influencing witnesses. She did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment on the charges at press time.

The latest indictment against Trump includes 41 criminal charges against 18 Trump associates alleging acts aimed at trying to reverse his election loss, including Trump famously calling Georgia’s Republican secretary of state in a bid to have him “find” enough votes to help him win the pivotal state, as well as harassing an election worker with false claims of fraud and trying to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the state’s citizens and appoint their own slate of pro-Trump electors. In one of the most shocking claims, the indictment says the Trump team allegedly attempted to gain access to voting machines in a rural county in order to steal data from the voting machine company.

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.

A spokesperson for Ye could not be reached for comment at press time.

Trump is facing 13 charges in the case, which contains the most potential legal jeopardy for the twice-impeached MAGA real estate mogul who 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.

While Kutti is not well-known, some more familiar names were in the Fulton County indictment, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyer (and the mastermind of the bogus elector scheme) John Eastman, another Trump attorney, Sidney Powell, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“I believe that the charges that were filed on me are for a lack of better words baloney,” Kutti reportedly said in a text to the Wall Street Journal. “I completely stand by what I said to the election worker that I was simply a crisis manager.”

Forbes reported on Tuesday 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.

Kutti also made headlines as the person who Reuters said was caught on video trying to convince frightened Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman — whom Trump had attacked in public and who later faced death threats — to confess to Trump’s false voter fraud allegations by saying that if she didn’t she would be hauled off to jail.

Count 30 of the indictment says that Kutti and two others, “unlawfully conspired to solicit, request, and importune Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County, Georgia, election worker, to engage in conduct constituting the felony offense of False Statements and Writings, O.C.G.A. § 16-10-20, by knowingly and willfully making a false statement and representation concerning events at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.” It also claims that Kutti “traveled to Fulton County, Georgia, and placed a telephone call to Ruby Freeman while in Fulton County, Georgia, which were overt acts to effect the object of the conspiracy, contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof.”

Count 31 alleges that around Jan. 4, 2021, the trio, “knowingly and unlawfully engaged in misleading conduct toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County, Georgia, election worker, by stating that she needed protection and by purporting to offer her help, with intent to influence her testimony in an official proceeding in Fulton County, Georgia, concerning events at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia, contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof.”

While Trump continues to be the Republican presidential front-runner by a wide margin despite his multiple layers of legal jeopardy, CNN noted that Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ case is insulated from any potential Trump meddling if he is re-elected in 2024 because he would be unable to pardon himself or any of his allies on the state charges or dismiss Fulton County prosecutors who brought the charges.

In a predictable pattern, Trump described his latest indictment as part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” while labeling DA Willis as “racist and corrupt.” Giuliani, who famously used RICO statutes to combat organized crime in New York, called the charges “an affront to democracy.”

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