In a new turn from a high-stakes legal battle, the rapper Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, is fighting back against the story that has kept him behind bars without bond. Now, as the Chicago star faces serious federal charges tied to an alleged murder-for-hire plot, his team is attacking what it claims is a fundamentally flawed cornerstone of the government's case: a paid informant with a checkered past and dubious credibility.
The charges are related to the 2022 shooting at a Los Angeles gas station of Saviay'a "Lul Pab" Robinson, an associate of the rapper Quando Rondo. Prosecutors contend that Durk was the mastermind behind the murder-for-hire plot, ordering six guys to make a hit a case his defense team says rests almost entirely on the word of a single federal informant who goes by the name "CHS 1."
'CHS 1,' Durk's lawyer Drew Findling said, is a former gang member with a criminal past who the FBI pays for providing information the type of source, Findling says, whose word should be received skeptically. "The government's evidence shows that the allegations against Mr. Banks are sourced largely to a cooperating human source," Findling said. "That source has a history that makes them unreliable."
Findling notes that some of the allegations against Durk are rooted in a totally different case in Illinois a case Durk has lost no time being charged in, even just over three years later.
Despite the gravity of the charges, Durk's lawyers are calling for a bond size that demonstrates all signs that they're not going anywhere in preparation for trial. They have offered a $4.5 million bond package with $3 million coming from Durk's funds, $1 million from Alamo Records, $500,000 from a business partner, and $700,000 in equity from his mother's home. They have also proposed rigid 24/7 home confinement, monitored by a private security firm, with live alerts to the court and law enforcement.
But prosecutors remain unconvinced, and they've also accused Durk of using his fame and wealth to encourage violence, pointing to another affidavit that accuses him of putting a bounty on a witness's family member and offering cash for retaliation in connection with his brother's killing. In that case, Durk has not been charged.
Also being examined is a jail phone infraction through which Durk used a fellow inmate's minutes. But Findling says the infraction was trivial, consisting of some phone calls home and not even being responded to by staff.
Prosecutors say the danger is real, however. Facing charges that include conspiracy and using a machine gun in a violent crime, they say cutting Durk free would be a roll of the dice the court can't afford to make. For now, attention is trained squarely on the judge, who has yet to decide whether Durk's next pretrial resting spot will be jail or home.
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