MadameNoire
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As per new reports, an associate of singer R. Kelly took a plea deal today (April 19) in a Brooklyn federal court for trying to silence Azriel Cleary — a witness in Kelly’s racketeering case and one of the singer’s ex-girlfriends and sexual assault victims — by burning down her SUV back in June.
If you recall, when we previously reported on Cleary’s SUV being set ablaze the then 21-year-old posted on social media that she suspected whoever had done the crime also had plans to burn down the Kissimmee, Florida residence where she and her family were staying at the time according to Page Six’s reports.
“… So, this is me at my lowest,” Clary had said at the time of the incident back in June 2020. “Someone not only set my car on fire at 3 a.m. but they also made a gas line around my entire house, with intentions to burn my entire home down. It was something that was premeditated, but the fact that someone would go to that extreme to harm me is sickening.”
In Page Six’s latest update on this story, Michael Williams’ plea deal posed him as the party responsible for the damage done to Clary’s car while in exchange “prosecutors have agreed to drop the witness tampering charge against him.” Being referred to as “an associate of R. Kelly” in all the current sources reporting on the case, Page Six additionally highlighted that the 38-year-old will face “a minimum of 60 months in prison and a maximum of 71 months under federal sentencing guidelines.”
According to the outlet, the defense lawyer Todd Spodek said on the most recent development, “The plea agreement is fair in that the witness tampering charge as it relates to R. Kelly will be dismissed at sentencing” — which is set to happen on Oct. 5 of this year.
From what else we know about Williams’ efforts to intimidate Clary, the former’s Google history included the searches “How do fertilizer bombs work?,” “witness intimidation,” and “case law for tampering with a witness,” as per the case’s court documents.
To read more about R. Kelly’s charges — which included the racketeering case related to this story — click here.
