ABC News Live: R. Kelly found guilty of racketeering in federal court

and hello everyone thanks for streaming with us here on abc news live i'm kyra phillips and i'm terry moran at the white house today the national traffic safety board is investigating what caused an amtrak train to derail and split apart killing three people and injuring more than 50 others the train derailed near joplin montana with more than 150 people on board sending passengers flying through cars some even escaping by breaking windows and crawling out and a federal judge is set to rule that the man who shot president reagan can go free john hinckley jr has been living in virginia since his release from a washington hospital in 2016 but has been under court ordered restrictions barring him from owning a gun or contacting reagan's family hinckley wounded reagan secret service agent tim mccarthy and press secretary james brady in the 1981 shooting but was found not guilty by reason of insanity the judge says hinckley hasn't shown any symptoms of active mental illness or violent behavior and that quote if he hadn't tried to kill the president he would have been unconditionally released a long long long time ago and instagram is pausing work on its app experience for children amid claims that instagram is quote toxic for teens a report from the wall street journal recently revealed that instagram increases body image issues for a third of all teenage girls on the app but facebook which owns instagram says the report misinterprets the data despite the pause here instagram says that building instagram kids is the right thing to do and that they'll continue to build parental supervision tools for teams so president biden's agenda is at a crossroads this week democrats up on capitol hill uh they are considering what to do because they're in charge of both houses of congress and they're deciding how to compromise with each other to get his bipartisan infrastructure deal and a 3.5 trillion dollar spending plan on what they call human infrastructure across the finish line a senate vote today to keep the government funded seems doomed at this hour a lot going on here and to talk about it all terry is and what it means to the american people we've got all angers angles covered we've got terry there at the white house abc congressional correspondent rachel scott at the capitol and abc news political director rick klein all of us to have a discussion here rachel let's start with you house speaker pelosi originally scheduled this infrastructure vote for today now it's been pushed back until thursday why'd she do that and what's going on behind the scenes well kyra this is crunch time this is an enormous balancing act for democratic leadership and for president biden house speaker nancy pelosi originally scheduled that bipartisan infrastructure vote over in the house for today a promise that she made to moderate democrats well she had to push that back because as pelosi says herself she does not come to the floor to lose and that vote would have not gone well if they moved ahead with it i talked to progressives just days before this this vote that was supposed to be today they told me that they would have voted against it if they did not have you know a framework or some type of agreement on this much larger economic package that's supposed to be 3.5 trillion dollars the big problem here though is that many moderates say that price tag is just too high and so now you have this enormous challenge for president biden for democratic leadership to try to pull together all these different wings of their party they'll be meeting behind closed doors today at 5 30 to try and iron out their issues they are optimistic that they can do it but the margins in the house and senate are just so small there are no room for error here 50 50 split in the senate and they can only afford to lose three votes over in the house and terry as you mentioned up at the top of the show we're talking about two bills here one focused on hard infrastructure the roads bridges and the like and then the other one it's the trillions of dollars in so-called human infrastructure which includes a huge boost to the social safety net so you were just in the white house briefing what does the success or failure here mean for this presidency well curious as the president himself might put it it is a big flipping deal and he wouldn't use the word flipping either because this is his agenda his ambition to be a transformational president uh these items in this agenda especially that social spending package a child care for for uh so many families free community college climate change all kinds of things that that he wants to go down in history as providing for the american people lifting people up he calls it this is all writing in the next few days here in washington and he knows it now as jen saki was just telling us in the briefing room you know this is not his first rodeo joe biden has been around washington for 40 years and so he has seen these big cliffhanger weeks where the it goes right down to the wire on big bills and he is working the phone she noted he doesn't really have uh much on his schedule this week that's so that he can be flexible to respond to the demands and the questions and the deal making that the moderates in his own party want to do and that the progressives want to do too he's trying to bridge that gap uh and as she said we're all eating our wheaties here this this week so rick what's going on with this divided democratic party and what kind of challenge is this presenting for speaker pelosi and the president here this is all about trust we talk so much about how democrats and republicans don't get along these are democrats that don't trust other democrats to go along with the commitments they've made uh in in the immediate term the reason that the vote on the hard infrastructure bill is pushed back is because progressives say they're not going to vote for it unless they also get that larger package and they think that moderates are going to jump ship on that on that it comes down to the fact that they have different uh they represent different districts different constituencies in the party they see different politics involved and knitting that together at this time with those narrowest of majorities is just the biggest challenge perhaps of pelosi's career up to and including the passage of the affordable care act a little bit more than 10 years ago all of this comes down to the democrats realizing that the the failure potential failure is a worse option than than anything else and that really is the motivating factor that that can potentially unite democrats and i'll tell you biden and pelosi both there's a lot of questions about how they've handled it to date those get answered if they were able to get the votes done if not it is going to be one big swing and a miss that's going to have big implications for the country and for the party and rick one other thing that jen saki was telling us in the briefing room here that this is similar to the big package that he passed the american rescue plan at the beginning of his presidency and that that was there were a lot of questions around whether that could get done whether democrats could come together with it get any republican support they aren't going to get any support for these bills republicans have made that clear but president biden is in a very different political position right now isn't he him and his polls have have sagged considerably he was over 50 back then now he's kind of hovering around 45 maybe heading south how do you read the political situation in the president's clout to get something this big done yeah terry the premise that this is based on is that this is a relatively popular president pushing relatively popular things well to the extent that his own personal approval rating is down that's a factor and on the individual items the democrats have spent so much time arguing with each other about the details uh that that's even taken a hit so that's what makes this difficult is you have a president perhaps at a lowest at the lowest point yet in terms of his political sway inside his own party and i'll tell you terry i've been thinking a lot about the history i'm here in chicago now because robin roberts just did an interview with president obama we'll have more of it tonight on worldness tonight and on gma tomorrow but the historical perspective of president obama i think is important in this moment obama and biden both remember what it took to get things done with narrow majorities uh in in the in the obama biden years and they're going to have to pull off some kind of a magic trick because it's even narrower now and the democrats right now are even more divided against themselves and rachel while we have you up on the hill there let's just talk about for a minute the government spending in debt ceiling deadline this week what would it mean for the government to shut down during a pandemic and we can imagine how that's going to impact a lot of people it really would karen i think dr fauci said it best when he said there could not be a worse time for the government to shut down in the middle of a pandemic he said it would have a tremendous effect he believes on the way the government operates at this point i think that is the big question that everyone's trying to figure out at this moment some reports suggest that some workers with the cdc could possibly be furloughed others may deemed essential workers but i think all together democrats and republicans are going to want to try to avoid this obviously republicans say that they will not push past a government shutdown unless democrats raise the debt ceiling on their own at this point but even the debt ceiling not raising that would have a significant consequence for for america as well by october the treasury secretary says we would not be able to pay our bills some analysts also suggest that millions could lose their job as well uh and rick as as you mentioned today uh you're in america's greatest city my hometown chicago uh for this very special reason this interview that robin roberts has with the obamas tell us more about it why why are they doing this now and and what are they saying greatest city maybe not maybe not the best football team terry after yesterday's performance but this is a it's a big moment for the obama post presidency the groundbreaking of his presidential center taking part taking place on the south side of chicago and i'll tell you the president is very very passionate about choosing that location to empower the community that he and michelle met in that he raised his family in uh you see there the the miniature model of the presidential center he's excited about that and fired up about that and about this moment he just turned 60 years old he's got a lot of years ahead of him uh to to bring in new generations and talk about what that legacy can mean uh for chicago and well beyond all right rick klein you cruel man thank you very much for that ricky scott as well thanks very much for being with us all right now now to some serious breaking news for a moment we do have breaking news here the jury has reached a verdict in the trial of musician r kelly uh and the singer faces racketeering and sex trafficking charge we're going to bring that verdict to you live as soon as we have it meanwhile president biden got his booster shot of the pfizer vaccine today saying that while boosters are important the most crucial thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated meanwhile officials are taking drastic action now to prepare for mass firings and staff shortages at new york hospitals as the state's health care worker vaccine mandate takes effect today it's estimated 72 000 unvaccinated hospital workers could lose their jobs for refusing to comply and the governor is prepared to bring in state workers even the national guard to help let's bring in tom quitrochi the president of the erie county medical center corporation there in new york along with dr darian sutton our abc news medical contributor and also emergency physician for more on this dr sutton let's start with you president biden continued to stress that while he was happy to get his booster this is still a pandemic of the unvaccinated so how important do you think it was for the president to get that booster shot live on our air as america watched i think it's incredibly important for anyone with a public platform to express their trust in science and we know that the president is 78 years old and more than eight months beyond his initial dose of the vaccine so he's listening to the science which shows that he has some additional protection with getting an additional shot but we also know that vaccines continue to prove effective regardless of someone's age or their medical history and just to add some numbers to this of the more than 181 million people who have been fully vaccinated only approximately 19 000 have sustained a breakthrough that has required a hospitalization and of that small fraction the majority are over the age of 65. so the president is listening to the science and understands that he attains some additional benefit but of course like he said we cannot distract from the primary issue which is that the unvaccinated are the primary source of infection hospitalization and current death rates vaccinated are obviously healthcare workers that's an issue that here at the white house the white house press secretary jensachi was asked about the situation in new york there the vaccine requirement for health care workers how is it affecting your facilities how concerned are you about how many workers do you think you might stand to lose because they don't comply with the vaccine requirement and don't want to get vaccinated well i have to say terry that is understanding and my personalities through the pandemic and one of our issues is staffing um in general let alone uh with the vaccine mandate we're in favor of the vaccine mandate but feel we just need a little more time to work through some issues we have about five percent of our workforce and while that may not sound like a lot uh the bottom line is that we already have a staffing shortage to begin with and have over 400 positions open one of the other things that's happening is downstream the nursing homes uh really are having issues so our nursing home has about 20 percent of its workforce that's going on unpaid leave as of today because they have not received a vaccination that's happening all over the community so we can't discharge patients into the community which ultimately backs up our emergency rooms so it's it's a real concern again we're trying to work through the issues we're trying to educate people we're trying to explain them the importance of getting vaccinated but it continues to be a challenge for all of us and darian one argument you hear from healthcare workers is that so many of them have already had copids so they have some immunity and don't need the vaccine do they have a point i understand this point um but there are some faults to this argument i'll first say that someone who has had a relatively recent infection has a very low risk of getting a reinfection within the first three months but there are some issues with that we've seen in studies that those who have had a natural infection have variable responses to the infection some have elevated antibody levels and we can presume that they have more protection and others do not and we also don't yet have a test to determine who is immune and who isn't so with that being said the safest lowest risk option still remains to get vaccinated and as healthcare workers we have an obligation to take care of our vulnerable patients and not spread additional disease and so this isn't new for us to require something like vaccinations as we have medical clearances for other diseases that we commonly have to go through on a yearly basis and dr sutton if i can follow up on that there are all kinds of reasons people might not get vaccinated libertarian reasons for some people misinformed whatever religious reasons for some but health care workers can you help us understand why public health worker would choose not to be vaccinated in have you seen that in in your own work given all the available information that they've got working on the front lines about how effective and protective these vaccines are well terry i have to say that i have seen it in small percentages albeit but i have certainly seen it i know that in my large tertiary care hospital here in los angeles and the hospitals that i've worked with in new york city we've seen lower rates of this and i think that the farther attached or the farther associated someone is to a surge in covet 19 the more likely and more susceptible they are to misinformation as as healthcare workers we're not immune to misinformation and some of us require a little bit more help to parse through the information to feel more comfortable in the decision but it still stands that vaccines are proving effective and if we have to we use science in every other format in medicine and we have to use it in this discussion and we know that those who are vaccinated have a lower risk of infection and therefore we can assume that they are lower risk in transmitting that virus and to our vulnerable patients who are immune compromised and immune suppressed so it still stands that vaccines are proving effective and they work and they should be used in hospital care systems and tom's state data shows that 84 of hospital workers in new york are fully vaccinated so what impact could this requirement have statewide well again it goes back to the staffing shortage we're all very concerned that we're going to be able to take care of patients and we're working with the state hand in hand to make sure we do get individuals vaccinated but we're going to have to get obviously more aggressive when it comes to recruitment in the short term we've tried to work with agencies as you can imagine all over the country uh agency employees are being scooped up uh and the the price per hour keeps going up and up and up uh so it's a it's a real challenge but the impact is going to have to be watched we're going to have to see if there's some mitigating things that we can do uh to ensure that we have staff to take care of patients and we're working very closely with the current new york state administration and let me follow up on that with you tom so governor hochul your new governor there in new york she said she's prepared to send in the national guard to help you out and help fill these gaps that's just an extraordinary statement that's happened before in a public health emergency like this one would you welcome that in erie county do you think what would that look like we'll take all the help we can get uh at the end of the day we need nurses that's really the most important uh person that we need in our health care system to be able to take care of our patients and a significant amount of nurses have said that they won't get the vaccine we shouldn't forget the 95 percent of the individuals that said they would uh because that's very important we should applaud them and they continue to work here and work very hard and pick up extra shifts but uh you know at the end of the day we need health care professionals and we'll take the national guard or whoever else can help us if there's other nurses from down state that's been talked about also to help us up here uh whatever the case may be uh we're obviously working with governor hochul and their team around how we can mitigate some of these circumstances and darien meanwhile vaccine requirements are causing issues in the nba brooklyn nets star now kyrie irving missed the team's media day today due to coven 19 protocols declining to share his vaccination status what do you think about this what would you tell players who are skeptical of getting the vaccine in such close quarters with other players and fans and how can teammates or friends help convince others i would remind them that although the risk is lower given the fact that these professional athletes are in the best shape of their lives the risk is not zero and we've seen evidence of long-term effects of covet 19 as well as acute effects of covet 19 and healthy individuals and so we know that covet 19 vaccines are proving effective in preventing disease but also as a professional athlete you're traveling around the nation you're in close contact with bands and you're working out and breathing at higher rates with your teammates and so there's an increased risk there and so i think that the best way to protect against that is to get vaccinated but i do think that it just probably requires some time and some patience so that someone can feel understanding and their information around them and comfortable in their decision dr darian sutton and tom quatrochi gentlemen thanks for the great conversation thank you really informative there well another situation we caught up with a few of the millions of americans who are now eligible for boosters just as i just saw president biden get his here's what they had to say about these boosters i think everyone should get their booster shot as soon as possible i intend on getting the booster shot because of my age and i have some uh immune deficiency so i think it's it's prevalent that i get the booster shot i will be getting a booster shot as soon as they are available to us i understand the cdc has approved them and we're just waiting for the time on it i haven't decided yet wife and i actually were talking about that today we wouldn't be eligible for the third shot until november december range because of the six month time frame that they have so that gives us a little time to watch and make sure there's no other issues with people getting that third shot and because we keep hearing some people say you shouldn't get it some people say you should there's too much stuff out there yeah so we haven't decided whether we will or we won't i am going to get a booster shot because i'm going to wait till the moderna so it all matches because my i am immunity compromised so i definitely will get it all right coming up running on empty fears of a fuel shortage in the uk leading to panic buying long lines and gasoline rationing at several stations why a driver shortage may be to blame and what the government is doing about it when we come back [Music] now we have breaking news for you now a jury has found singer r kelly guilty of racketeering in federal court r kelly was facing charges for being the ringleader of a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex let's bring in abc news senior investigative reporter aaron katurski along with terry austin host and legal analyst with the law and crime network for more terri i want to start with you we were talking all morning about these uh charges and what was going to happen to r kelly we were both discussing how surprised we were also uh that he had been acquitted 13 years ago what do you think made this this time so different i think this time it was different because the federal prosecutors here brought that ricoh charge they were able to reach back over years and bring in multiple victims who testified and their testimony was extremely clear and it was consistent r kelly was controlling he was abusive and he trapped these women he did not let them quote unquote escape and i think the jury heard that they also saw video evidence so they saw what was going on and i think that was the major difference between this federal court case against him and the case back in 2008 when he was not found guilty and frankly there wasn't a witness in that case who could get on the stand and talk about what r kelly did and also his personal assistant right of 16 years came forward with some pretty explicit details i mean when you're working side by side with someone as a personal assistant for almost two decades you know a lot that's right she saw all of the women coming in and coming out she actually was their escort at certain times she took them shopping she sort of took care of them but she knew what was going on she heard about the abuse that was going on she saw what was going on behind those closed doors in terms of his assaults against those women and so i think the jury looked at her and they believed her because it wasn't second hand it was firsthand she was very close to everything that occurred and so i think this is one of the reasons we got the verdict and it's relatively quickly they only started let the end of the week and now it's monday so not that many hours they've been deliberating in fact i think it's probably six to nine hours so i think relatively speaking it's a very fast verdict and when you get a verdict back that quickly it means that the jury was very very careful but it also means that they were pretty consistent in the way they were thinking there were probably not that many individuals who were disagreeing with whatever the consensus was if you recall they did have one or two questions about sonia who was one of the witnesses and they wanted to know whether or not they could see the map of the studio and whether or not she had the ability to escape but other than that it doesn't sound like they had too many questions about the guilt or innocence of r kelly and our investigative reporter erin cotersie uh calling in as this verdict has been read erin apparently r kelly sat motionless in the courtroom i'm seeing some of the detailed color from inside the courtroom coming out right now is facial expression hidden by his mask what can you tell us about how things went down when the verdict was read and also finding out that he was found guilty on all nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking charges today this was a relatively quick verdict the the jury did not even deliberate on a full on a full day this was the second day of deliberations after they got the case uh in the middle of the day on on friday they took the weekend to think it over but it doesn't appear they had a lot of doubt kira instead we have a jury coming back with a a verdict that suggests that r kelly was the ringleader of a criminal enterprise as prosecutors put it that not only bolstered his music and his image but that was also there for his sexual gratification and recruited women and girls sometimes threatened them held them against their will forced them into not only different sex acts but into certain behaviors that were uh you know that were dictated by kelly and this went on over a number of decades almost three decades worth of criminal conduct and kira the the specific allegations here involve six women including the the late singer aaliyah but we know that there are others and he will stand trial in chicago next on additional federal charges and and terry austin if i can come to you on a question this charge uh is a landmark charge in the music industry there's been a lot of sex with underage girls in the music business there's been exploitation of underage girls it was it was kind of almost boasted about it at one point in songs that that groups sang is this is this a moment of reckoning for that business and also someone noted that this is really the first major metoo case uh that involved the accusations of black women being heard how do you read this you know i think that's exactly right this is a landmark decision for so many very reasons first of all it was kind of unique that we have a ricoh charge for sexual activity generally speaking you have this type of charge for a mob crime or something that has an enterprise that really is an incorporated company that is doing things that are illegal here what the prosecution did is they said that he set up this enterprise for his brand obviously and for his music but also to conduct this sexual activity that was illegal and so this case is definitely landmark for that reason the other reason and tara you mentioned it this is the first time that we've seen in the media like this a case where we have women young girls and young black girls who are being used for the sexual pleasure of someone who is in the industry someone who is famous and yet it was a prosecution and it was a guilty verdict and i think the me too movement the time's up movement definitely contributed to that and no longer will jurors be accepting the fact that just because you have a public image and a big name and you are a grammy award winner you will no longer be able to take advantage of people particularly young girls underage the way r kelly did for decades so aaron what's next what does this verdict mean uh for r kelly well it means he faces decades in prison but it's not the end for him he's got another federal trial in chicago he's got state charges in illinois uh to to contend with after he was already uh acquitted of uh of of certain charges back in in illinois some decades ago you know his uh we just heard from his defense attorney who said the jury has cherry-picked uh some inconsistencies in in testimony but i'm not sure there were that many inconsistencies to be honest kyra the the the testimony was fairly clear and straightforward and prosecutors built a case that was basically the documentary surviving r kelly the the uh the federal agents from homeland security investigations saw the documentary they said wow and they built a case based entirely on that and and ended up with a with a conviction here it it wasn't terribly complicated uh once federal agents actually bothered to uh to to bring the case and and so now r kelly uh is unlikely in all honesty to to see you know the light of day again a as a free man and and just to follow sorry i'm sorry kyra no no terry go ahead we're we're enrolling coverage go all right so uh terry just to follow up on what aaron was talking about a lot of people might have heard about racketeering it is a very serious crime he's looking at hard time isn't he he absolutely is this is up to 20 years for the rico and for the man act another 10 years and he's 56 so it does mean essentially that this will be quote unquote a life sentence because it looks like if in fact he's sentenced to the maximum number of years he will be in prison for a number of decades and you're absolutely right this is a very serious charge and it could be a precedent for others to follow now that it has been accomplished in federal court we could very well see when we have this sort of ring of enterprise where you are using your managers your bodyguards your security people to actually bring in these individuals take them across state lines you may very well be seeing other high-powered people who could be brought in with this type of angle under the ricoh act many people thought that it was unusual that it would not succeed but i think the prosecution i agree i think the prosecution did an excellent job of tying it all together sticking to the facts making sure they wove that story so the jury could understand why this was an important case where they had to find him guilty of rico and violation of the man act terry erin stay with us we want to get straight to the press conference gloria allred just stepped up to the mics in new york city there as you know she was representing these victims let's go ahead and take a listen attorney gloria allred today r kelly has been convicted of very serious federal crimes mr kelly who once described himself as a quote genius end quote to one of my clients who testified is nothing but a convicted felon i attended this trial because i represent three of the six victims for whom charges were filed in this case and who testified at this trial in addition i represent two other key witnesses who testified and another victim jane doe number nine who was prepared to testify but was not called to testify i have been practicing law for 47 years during this time i have pursued many sexual predators who have committed crimes against women and children of all the predators that i have pursued however mr kelly is the worst for many reasons first he used the power of a celebrity to recruit vulnerable underage girls for the purpose of sexually abusing them these were not may october relationships which is what his defense attorney wanted the jury to believe these were crimes against children and some adults second he used the power of his business enterprise and many of his inner circle employees to assist him and enable him in his plan and his scheme to lure his victims to him isolate them intimidate them control them indoctrinate them punish them shame them and humiliate them all of which made mr kelly more powerful and more dangerous than many other sexual predators who operate without a network of financial and businesses to support and enable them third the government proved that mr kelly had genital herpes that he knew that he had it but failed to disclose it to his underage victims and adults and that he failed to use condoms to protect them and lower the risk of contracting it as a result many of his victims contracted this sexually transmitted infectious disease from him and will be forced to suffer from it for the rest of their lives fourth in many cases kelly after grooming isolating and intimidating his child victims recorded them being sexually abused and humiliated by him he directed these videos and produced them not only for his own sexual gratification but in some instances for the purpose of using these videos to silence and threaten his victims with public explosion exposure of these tapes if they ever revealed what he had done to them these tapes were not sex tapes they were child pornography which is a crime in their closing argument the defense had the nerve to bring up the name of reverend martin luther king jr what they failed to mention is that martin luther king jr said that quote i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character end quote that is what the jury did today based on the evidence the jury must have concluded that the defendant r kelly was no martin luther king jr instead r kelly is a sexual predator who is guilty of very serious federal crimes the defense should be ashamed of even mentioning the name of reverend martin luther king jr in any discussion of r kelly a dangerous sexual predator who has harmed so many women and underage girls the defense also argued that mr kelly treated his victims quote like gold end quote targeting them recruiting them isolating them from their family and friends forcing them to follow his abusive rules in order to control them punishing them if they did not follow his rules to the letter hitting them threatening them sexually assaulting them giving many of them genital herpes and victimizing them by recording many of their them on child pornography tapes is not treating them like gold r kelly thought that he could get away with all of this but he didn't because despite the fact that he thought he could control all of his victims he was wrong many of his victims had the courage to speak up and tell their truth under oath in a court of law i am very proud of my clients who agreed to testify in this case i thank them for trusting me law enforcement and the jury to find the truth my clients who testified fought through their fear and relived their painful experiences with r kelly and his enablers r kelly's victims handled themselves with dignity and survived intense cross-examination the by the defense because of their courage and the outstanding work of federal agents and prosecutors in this case justice has been done let this be a message to other celebrities who also use their fame to prey on their fans and others who are unfortunate enough to come into contact with them you're also likely to face serious consequences for your criminal conduct the issue is not if the law will catch up to you the only question is when i also have a very short statement from one of my clients and that soldier sonya i know that she is happy with the verdict that mr kelly has been convicted and thankful that the jury listened to her and to the rest of the witnesses she says i've been hiding from robert kelly in fear due to threats made against me and i'm ready to start living my life free from fear and to start the healing process i want to thank the jury for considering the evidence and truly listening to my testimony i want to thank the u.s attorney's office and the federal prosecutors in this case thank you for shining a light and helping me to get out from under that rock that i stayed under for far too long also thank you to the federal agents who have listened to my story and for all that you have done to protect myself and others over the last two years if you've been in a similar situation i urge you to come forward as well it will be like a weight lifted off of your shoulders no one should have to live like that well i mean since the verdict was not just announced i've not had a chance to consult with all of them but i know that a number of them feel that if he's been convicted of any crimes whether or not it was crimes for which he was charged in reference to them that they're happy that he's convicted it's taken so long to get physically i'm sorry i can't hear the question are they upset that it's taking this long for this to happen are they upset that it's taken this long for things to happen well they understand that justice moves at a glacial pace it's not like it is on television which i've said many times everything doesn't happen within one hour in regards and if you're just tuning in just to bring you up to date r kelly uh once atop the world of the r b charts uh found guilty of all nine counts of the racketeering and sex trafficking charges against him gloria allred representing three of the six victims who actually spoke in court hearing just gut-wrenching details of how this man sexually abused young children for years even using the name of the reverend dr martin luther king jr just sick behavior terry austin just looking back at the fact that r kelly was acquitted on child pornography charges in 2008 and it just allowed his career to keep flourishing keep abusing children now finally he has been found guilty on these charges but think of all the kids that were sexually assaulted uh during that time period and then aaron katurski pointing out that really it was this documentary series surviving r kelly that woke up law enforcement in many ways to really pursue this case what does that tell us um about about the power of of someone like r kelly and his ability to just evade any type of of of persecution um you know or arrest and and the ability to keep abusing kids for so many years because of who he was and the power that he had you know cara on the one hand he is a powerful figure a huge industry of music was backing him up and it was all about the finances he brought in money for the record companies and he brought in money obviously for his brand and he was allowed to continue this behavior even though there were rumors way back when about the fact that he was spending a lot of time with young girls obviously aaliyah was the youngest and ultimately he ended up marrying her before she was tragically killed but there were so many other young girls and he paraded them around he did not hide the fact that he wanted to be with them that he gave his telephone number to so many of them and they lived with him but it was because of our culture of allowing these powerful generally speaking male figures to dominate the industry and to dominate young girls and in a couple of instances young boys as well but now i think with the help of the media with the help of these movements like me too we are actually playing a role and when i say me i say we i mean the media is playing a role here as far as bringing to light what is going on and actually assisting the prosecution in where to look how to gather this evidence who to talk to many of the people that we heard on the stand and we heard 45 witnesses over the course of four weeks or so and most of them said the same thing and many of them were on the show the video of surviving r kelly that series and so i think we're going to see in the future that the media is going to assist and i think we're going to see in the future that the public is going to assist when it comes to making sure we get these people who are acting too powerful and we're going to get right to the acting u.s attorney in the eastern district of new york who's giving a press conference right now we'll come back to you terry and horrific details of their lives with him no one deserves what they experienced at his hands or the threats and harassment they faced in telling the truth about what happened to them [Music] we hope that today's verdict brings some measure of comfort and closure to the victims this conviction is the latest in a long line of prosecutions by this office to protect women and vulnerable minors from sexual predators today's result was made possible by the outstanding work dedication and skill of the prosecution team ausa's elizabeth gettys nadia shahada and maria cruz-melendez and senior investigator keith kolovich and paralegal specialists kira wentham and alyssa fagle their grace under pressure was truly extraordinary i want to commend and thank the special agent special agents ryan chabot and sylvette reynoso of the department of homeland security homeland security investigations under the supervision of supervisory special agent alvin hernandez for their outstanding work on the case along with detectives from the new york city police department together this superb team spent countless hours over years to sort through records and documents and interviewing over hundreds of witnesses to painstakingly marshall the facts and build a strong case i also want to thank the u.s attorney's office in the northern district of illinois and cook county state's attorney's office for its assistance last but not least i want to thank the men and women of the jury for their time and attention throughout the trial and for their careful assessment of the overwhelming evidence in this case in rendering its verdict today the jury delivered a powerful message to men like r kelly no matter how long it takes the long arm of the law will catch up with you i will now turn over the microphone to hsi special agent in charge peter fitzhugh thank you good afternoon everyone my name is and i'm the special agent in charge for homeland security investigations here in new york all right so there you heard it let's go back to terry austin we were just hearing from the acting u.s attorney who brought this case and successfully convicted singer r kelly on nine counts of racketeering in sex crime sex trafficking essentially looking at very serious punishment i want to ask you terry about what we've heard both from the acting u.s attorney there and from gloria allred the the lawyer for the victim of for the three of the victims in this case your heart just goes out to them i've covered some child sexual abuse trials and the verdict when it comes in you can almost sense it in them somebody listened their voice mattered somebody believed what they had to say i wonder what you think about the message this sends to all the victims out there whose cases have not been taken up because lack of resources lack of notoriety or who are still living with that pain and trauma uh without hope really of of being vindicated by do you think this is a moment for them i do terry i think this is a big moment for them even those individuals who aren't going to be able to bring charges against whomever their abusers might be what it says is our sisters our daughters our mothers are no longer and our brothers as well going to be allowed to be abused like this for any reason no matter how powerful the individual is or how much money that individual is making for any particular industry so the message i think is very clear and i think others who have been abused will feel some vindication obviously the 11 victims who were involved with this case will feel vindicated but i think others who weren't involved with this case who might have met r kelly in the past and maybe been abused by him or who may have been abused by other individuals will definitely feel as though people are listening to him and people are caring about how they feel you know terry you mentioned when we were talking about just how many years he was able to get by with abusing these kids countless victims and you mentioned it was the power of of who he was as a musician and his brand in the industry so what happens to his music now well he's going to have a lot of difficulty supporting himself much less you know he's trying to get out of paying child support to his second wife and he is claiming that he isn't making any money and that is the case because we know for a fact that there was a movement to shut down his music to boycott his music to mute r kelly and he is going to be in a very difficult position now to pay any money to anyone he may be owing money to and his brand obviously is extremely tarnished i think i said he was 56 he's 54. if he spends several decades in prison by the time he comes out he won't be in any position obviously to resume his career and if he's near bankruptcy now i think we're going to see that he's going to be destitute and he still has these other trials to defend himself both in illinois and minnesota he's facing some charges there as well illinois he has both a federal case and a state court case and he's facing charges in minnesota so he's going to have to get together a defense team he may actually he had a great defense team here although i think pointing to the victims and blaming them was not the right tactic but he is going to have to get a defense team for himself to prepare for these other charges against him again r kelly found guilty of all nine counts of the racketeering and sex trafficking charges against him he sat in that courtroom motionless as those charges were read terry austin thank you thank you and we will be back with more news in just a moment and welcome back thank you so much for streaming with us here on abc news live we have some wonderful news to report everyone our abc news family is growing our diane macedo and her husband tom have welcomed a baby girl diane says the whole family is back at home and that so far her two-year-old is reacting quote surprisingly well do his new role as big brother terry your heart melts adorable completely adorable the kids look good too now they're i'm saying they give that a little time exactly she always does she always does and they they look adorable blessings on the little one and and that whole family it is great news for us so from all of us here at abc news live congratulations to diane and to her family and a big welcome to new baby girl and that does it for us this hour thanks so much for joining us i'm kira phillips and i'm terry moran we'll see you back here at 3 p.m eastern tomorrow have a great day [Music] [Music] hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 84,748

Rating: 4.4526315 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Biden, Breakdown, COVID-19, Joe, Kelly, Live, News, President, R., Senate, The, booster, coronavirus, court, federal, found, guilty, infrastructure, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-80268028, racketeering, shot, vaccination, vaccine, vote

Id: gZIboTU1h80

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021