The slowly moving YSL RICO case against rapper Young Thug and several other co-defendants, already beset by secret meetings between the prosecution and the court to such an extent that the case was taken away from Fulton County’s chief judge , was a source of controversy again Friday, this time because of an email DA Fani Willis sent (D).
Early on in the Friday proceedings, Douglas Weinstein, an attorney for rapper Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick , fumed that Willis sent an email to the court and others on Thursday morning unbeknownst to the defense. Weinstein said it was troubling that the state, even after the secret Lil Woody meeting fiasco ended up with Judge Ural Glanville’s removal from the case, was once more inappropriately engaging in ex parte communications — involving the prosecution and the court only.
“I appreciate you forwarding to us the ex parte communications that you received from Madam DA Fani Willis. Given the sensitivity and the history in this case of ex parte meetings or maybe communications, would you just please request the state — I understand what was probably behind that communications, and of course it is great for a boss to buck up and underling who has perhaps been attacked or maligned,” Weinstein told Judge Paige Reese Whitaker. “But I don’t believe that — and I don’t think the court does either — that the court should have been copied on that communications.”