A federal judge delivered a crushing blow to Lil Durk and his defense team when he rejected their motion to dismiss the rapper’s murder-for-hire case over death threats made against another judge.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald called the motion baseless during a heated court hearing in Los Angeles, where Durk’s lawyers argued that prosecutors should have disclosed threatening voicemails much sooner than they did.
“There is just absolutely no basis for this motion. Just none. Absolutely none,” Fitzgerald said from the bench, shutting down the defense’s arguments completely.
Lil Durk has been sitting in federal custody since October 2024 on charges that he orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot targeting rival rapper Quando Rondo.
The attack killed Quando Rondo’s cousin Saviay’a “Lul Pub” Robinson but missed its intended target, according to federal prosecutors who say the hit was revenge for the November 2020 shooting death of Durk’s friend King Von in Atlanta.
Durk’s legal team, led by Atlanta attorney Drew Findling, had asked the court to either dismiss the entire case or compel the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles to step aside from the prosecution, according to Meghann Cuniff.
The motion centered around four threatening voicemails that U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue received in February 2025, plus one threatening call that prosecutor Ian Yanniello got in April 2025. Donahue had denied Durk’s bail requests twice, making her a target for anonymous callers who apparently wanted to intimidate her into changing her mind about keeping the rapper locked up.
Prosecutors didn’t tell Durk’s lawyers about these threats until October 2025, which the defense team said was way too late and showed the government was hiding important information.
“Nobody has heard of a case where there was apparently a death threat to a sitting judge and the government does not turn around and tell counsel, you should know before this goes forward that this took place,” Findling argued in court.
Findling suggested that prosecutors might have kept quiet about the threats to ensure Donahue wouldn’t grant Lil Durk bail at his second hearing in May 2025.
But prosecutor Yanniello fired back, calling the defense motion “stunning in respect to its factual inaccuracy” and saying any claim that the government tactically withheld information was completely false.
“There was no conversation about whether to produce or not produce this information before we all decided it became relevant,” Yanniello told the judge.
Judge Fitzgerald agreed with the prosecution and said there was zero evidence that the threats caused any prejudice to Durk’s case or affected any judge’s decisions.
“It cannot possibly have affected Judge Donahue or me or any other judge that some hothead who has an interest in the music industry did something stupid,” Fitzgerald said.
The judge noted that threats against federal officials are unfortunately common and emphasized that no one has suggested Durk himself had anything to do with the threatening voicemails. Fitzgerald also rejected the defense team’s request for an evidentiary hearing, saying it would require prosecutors to disclose work product without legal justification.
Durk faces conspiracy charges along with five co-defendants, including Kavon London Grant, Keith Jones, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, Asa Houston, and David Brian Lindsey.
The case has been delayed multiple times, with the trial now scheduled to begin either April 21 or April 28, 2026.
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