Lil Durk Demands Removal Of Judge Over Threats Of Death, Mass Destruction & Hidden FBI Investigation.
Rapper Lil Durk’s lawyers on Thursday called for the dismissal of his murder-for-hire case in Los Angeles after learning that a judge and prosecutor received death threats that weren’t disclosed to the Chicago superstar’s legal team for seven months.
Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, was initially charged in the conspiracy in October 2024 — the same day five other men were indicted in the killing of the cousin of rival rapper Quando Rondo in L.A. in August 2022. In an explosive court filing, Banks’ lawyers and the attorneys for three of his co-defendants hold that secretive investigations and closed-door meetings about the threats have “irreparably compromised the structural integrity of these proceedings.”
Government officials knew in February that U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue had received four voicemails “threatening her life and courthouse personnel” as she oversaw the early phases of the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello, the lead prosecutor, got similar threats in April — days before seeking a superseding indictment. The “violent, case-specific death threats” invoked the name of Banks and one of his co-defendants, Deandre Wilson, the filing states. Every judge in the Central District of California was warned while a “secret investigation” was conducted, but the defendants weren’t told until Oct. 1.
Prosecutors alleged the threats were made by Banks’ “supporters” and said the claims of a cover-up were “frivolous.” In pushing to have an anonymous jury empaneled, the prosecutors argued that Banks’ allegedly vindictive gang has also threatened and intimidated “suspected government witnesses” and that Banks obstructed an investigation into his “clandestine, unmonitored jail communications.”
Donahue got four voicemails from a male caller on Feb. 22 that “contained explicit death threats, and invoked acts of mass destruction accompanied by sounds mimicking gunfire,” the defense attorneys said. The caller told Donahue to “do the right thing” and “free” Banks and Wilson. Federal law enforcement officials soon started investigating and looped in the prosecutor’s office, Thursday’s filing states. An FBI agent arranged an interview with the suspected caller and reported back to prosecutors and the U.S. Marshals Service.