Federal prosecutors allege Kelly and two co-defendants, McDavid and former assistant Milton "June" Brown, fixed the state trial in 2008 in which Kelly was acquitted. In 2002, Kelly faced 21 counts of making child sexual abuse videos. Police and the FBI verified the authenticity of one particular recording, but a jury in 2008 could not prove that the person in the recording was a minor, and Kelly was set free. The disgraced singer is accused of arranging for the girl and her parents to travel overseas to prevent them from talking with police before his indictment and later instructed them to lie to a grand jury about the case.

According to The Chicago Sun Times, on Wednesday (Sept. 7), McDavid said on the stand that he didn’t believe the accusations against Kelly. He also stated one accuser dropped a $10 million lawsuit against Kelly for a $250,000 settlement after a lawyer caught her in “so many lies I couldn’t count.” He claimed a different woman was offered somewhere between $10,000 and $12,000 “to give false evidence under oath against R. Kelly.” McDavid said when he questioned Kelly about the 2002 tape with a minor, Kelly said, “F*** you. This is my goddaughter. … Don’t ever question me about this again.” McDavid also said former Kelly managers Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah's uncle, and Demetrius Smith had a plot to destroy Kelly. He stated Smith “couldn’t be trusted.”

In 1994, Kelly married the late RB songstress Aaliyah in Chicago. At the time of the marriage, according to the testimony of Demetrius Smith in the New York trial, Kelly was 27, and Aaliyah was just 15. Rolling Stone magazine reported false documents stating she was three years older. This falsification, Smith testified, was intended to show that she was a legal adult of 18, thus able to consent to marriage. Darrell McDavid is expected to retake the stand today (Sept. 8). In June, the 55-year-old was sentenced in New York to 30 years in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking. Kelly has maintained his innocence in both the New York and Chicago cases. R. Kelly did not testify in the New York trial and will not testify in the Chicago trial.