Former Bureau Of Prisons Employee Investigated Over Possible R. Kelly Info Leak To Blogger
A now-retired Bureau of Prisons employee was reportedly investigated over whether they had leaked information in R. Kelly’s records to an entertainment blogger while Kelly was imprisoned in Chicago’s downtown federal jail.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, records show that prosecutors sought a judge’s permission in February 2020 to search the employee’s computer following a report to the BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs that a blogger known as TashaK had shared information available to BOP employees.
A Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General affidavit which revealed the investigation was unsealed in federal court in Chicago on August 18, as Kelly’s federal trial in Brooklyn began.
The Sun-Times reports that the R&B singer is identified only as “Inmate A” and it refers to him as “a nationally recognized celebrity whose criminal case has received media attention.” The BOP employee is only identified as “Officer A.” A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney John Lausch confirmed Kelly is “Inmate A,” according to the newspaper.
The BOP employee in question had been assigned to the Thompson Correctional Center from May 2019 until December 2019, when she retired. She was one of 60 that accessed Kelly’s records, doing so 153 times even though the officer was not assigned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center and had no official reason to access them.
The agent also reportedly made note of a January 2020 Instagram post from TashaK that depicted Kelly’s visitation list and revealed a date of December 5, 2019 at 8:07 a.m. He wrote that access logs showed the suspected employee accessed Kelly’s records at that same time.
Additionally, the BOP employee in question sent an email from her official work email address to a Gmail address on November 13, 2019, and attached a 12-page document containing Kelly’s records, including visitor and money logs and emails.
Some of the emails in that attachment were divulged by TashaK in a December 22, 2019 YouTube video, according to the affidavit.
