NORTH CAROLINA — R. Kelly has formally asked President Donald Trump to commute his 31-year federal prison sentence, according to court records made public this week by the Office of the Pardon Attorney. The commutation petition is now pending before the Office of the Pardon Attorney and represents a direct appeal to the president for relief from a sentence that would otherwise keep Kelly incarcerated until 2046.

The request is explicitly for commutation, not a full pardon, and is currently listed as pending in federal records. Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is 59 years old and serving his sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina. He is not eligible for release until January 2046, based on the combined terms of his convictions.

Kelly was found guilty in 2021 of racketeering, sex trafficking, and producing child abuse images, for which he received a 30-year sentence in June 2022. In a separate 2022 trial, he was convicted on three counts of child abuse images and three counts of child enticement, resulting in a 20-year sentence in February 2023. That sentence was ordered to run concurrently with his previous term, except for one additional year, yielding a total effective sentence of 31 years. Kelly has repeatedly denied all allegations against him.

Kelly’s attorney, Beau Brindley, has been publicly lobbying President Trump for more than a year to intervene in his case. In June 2025, Brindley filed an emergency motion seeking Kelly’s immediate transfer from federal custody to home detention. The motion alleged that Kelly’s life was in danger and claimed prison officials orchestrated a plot involving a terminally ill inmate to kill him. That emergency request was denied by the court.

Brindley has continued to press for presidential action, stating, "R. Kelly does not have the time, with his life in danger, to go through the normal channels. I will ask President Trump to help us, because we need him." He added, "the only thing that can protect Mr Kelly behind the prison walls now is the fact that now the world is watching. And we will call on the courts and President Trump to help put an end to the corruption that now threatens Mr Kelly’s life."

In another statement, Brindley argued that Trump is uniquely positioned to understand Kelly’s predicament. "I think it’s a particular interest to President Trump because, unlike most people who come to this with an air of skepticism, [he] has a personal unique understanding of what it’s like to be victimized by prosecution teams and put through that experience through corrupt and criminal hacks," Brindley said. "He understands what that’s like, and when he knows that it’s being escalated to the point of a death threat to hide the corruption that we’re trying to put out there, he’s perhaps the only person that there is who is going to have the courage to pull the trigger and say I want to stop it now."

The commutation request places President Trump in the position of potentially intervening in the case of a high-profile individual convicted of serious federal crimes involving minors. Commutations do not erase convictions but can reduce sentences, and such decisions by a sitting president often draw public and legal scrutiny, particularly in cases tied to vulnerable victims. This petition follows a denied emergency motion based on alleged threats to Kelly’s life, underscoring the legal team’s urgency in seeking executive intervention outside standard judicial channels.

Presidential commutation authority is broad, but its application in cases involving sex crimes against minors has historically been rare. The pending status of Kelly’s request means it remains under formal review by the Office of the Pardon Attorney, which typically evaluates petitions before forwarding recommendations to the president. No public response has been issued by the White House or the Department of Justice regarding this specific petition.