Chicago Publicist Trevian Kutti Indicted Alongside Trump In Georgia

CHICAGO — A Chicago publicist is among the 18 associates and supporters of former President Donald Trump to be charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment delivered Monday in Fulton County, Georgia.

Trevian Kutti faces three counts — violation of the state's racketeering law, influencing witnesses and conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writing — in connection with alleged efforts to pressure a Georgia election worker to lie about election fraud.

Kutti, a cannabis lobbyist who previously worked for R. Kelly and Kanye West, showed up at the election worker's home in the Atlanta suburbs on Jan. 4, 2021, and falsely claimed to be a "crisis manager" attempting to help, according to the indictment.

After the election worker, Ruby Freeman, called 911, Kutti met with her at a Cobb County police station. Freeman, along with her daughter, had already begun to be the subject of intense harassment due to Trump associates falsely accusing her and her daughter ballot fraud during the November 2020 election.

In a conversation partially captured by police body-worn camera, Kutti can be heard making a series of vaguely threatening statements.

"I cannot say what specifically will take place, I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," Kutti tells Freeman, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

Freeman told Reuters, which first obtained video of Kutti's attempts to pressure Freeman through a public records request, that Kutti told her she would be arrested within 48 hours and repeatedly tried to get the election worker to implicate herself in voter fraud.

"You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up," Kutti said in the video. "I work with some of the biggest names in the industry, crisis is my thing, one thing we don't want to do for you is create another crisis."

According to the 98-page indictment, Kutti conspired with Stephen Cliffgard Lee, an Illinois pastor, Harrison Floyd, a former mixed martial arts fighter who led the group Black Voices for Trump, and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman in the Atlanta area.

"There are federal people who are involved here, and I don't know who is connected to who," the publicist said.

The Fulton County racketeering indictment is the fourth felony criminal case to be filed against the former president in the past four months.

Freeman and her and daughter later testified for the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"I lost my name, I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security — all because a group of people, starting with Number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen," Freeman said, according to a transcript of her testimony.

Kutti stopped working as a publicist for R. Kelly in 2018, according to Reuters. After the publication of the report, representatives of Kanye West, now known as Ye, told the newswire that Kutti had not been working for the rapper in January 2021.

According to past reports from the Chicago Sun-Times, Kutti is a native Nebraskan who previously ran luxury retail stores in the Old Town and Golf Coast neighborhoods that were known for racy window displays. More recently, she has lobbied state officials on behalf of a Canadian cannabis company whose CEO described her as a "f---ing pit bull."

Kutti did not respond to a request for comment, but she referenced the case on social media.

Kutti posted a screenshot of the headline "Kanye West's Former Publicist Indicted for Conspiring with Trump" from the celebrity news site TMZ with the caption "TMZ Wildin'" and a series of hashtags with the message "next to the best to EVER do it."

The post was accompanied by the Kanye West and R. Kelly song "To the World."

It is unclear if she is describing West, whose representatives have distanced themselves from her, and Kelly, who is currently serving a three-decade federal prison sentence in North Carolina — or the four-times indicted former president with whom she is accused of conspiring — as the "best to ever do it."

Related: MI Election Lies, Falsehoods Cited In Latest Trump Indictment