A publicist for the music superstar and erstwhile Donald Trump supporter Kanye West (now legally known as Ye) traveled to the home of a Georgia election worker in the days before Jan. 6, 2021, and pressured her to confess to false allegations of manipulating votes in the 2020 presidential election, according to a Reuters report.
Trevian Kutti reportedly went to the home of Ruby Freeman, a 62-year-old woman who had volunteered to process ballots for the election, on Jan. 4, Reuters reported Friday.
Kutti “gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump,” the Reuters report said. “She said she was sent by a ‘high-profile individual,’ whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.”
Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, had recently been targeted by Trump and his allies. Starting on Dec. 3, Trump had repeatedly accused Freeman and Moss, an employee of the Fulton County elections board, of manipulating votes. Those accusations were amplified by the right-wing website Gateway Pundit, whose owners Freeman and Moss have since sued for defamation.
A lawyer for Trump released an edited video containing surveillance footage and falsely claimed that election workers in Fulton pulled 18,000 fake ballots from a suitcase and illegally fed them into the voting machines, the New York Times reported.
“The accusation, which was quickly debunked by Fulton County and Georgia elections officials, was nevertheless amplified by Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump allies,” the Times reported earlier this month. “A week after the first Gateway Pundit story, Mr. Giuliani compared Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman to drug dealers and called for their homes to be searched during a hearing with Georgia state legislators.”
Trump himself said Freeman’s name 18 times during his Jan. 3 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which was “among the president’s most egregious efforts to overturn the results of the election he lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr., who defeated Mr. Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes,” the Times report said.
The allegations were quickly shown to be baseless; the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers, Reuters reported, and state and county officials confirmed that the votes had been properly counted.
However, the accusations and resulting threats didn’t stop, and by the time Kutti knocked on Freeman’s door, Freeman was so suspicious that she called 911 instead of answering, Reuters reported.
“So Freeman asked a neighbor to come over and talk with Kutti, who was with an unidentified male,” the Reuters report said. “Like Freeman, Kutti and the other visitor were Black. Kutti told the neighbor that Freeman was in danger and that she’d been sent to provide assistance. Freeman said she was open to meeting them. She asked Cobb County Police to send an officer to keep watch so she could step outside, according to a recording of her 911 call.”
Kutti didn’t give Freeman her name at the time, but instead said she was sent by a “‘high-profile individual,’ whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail,” the Reuters report said.
An officer who had come to Freeman’s house suggested that Freeman and Kutti meet at a police station, Reuters reported. The Reuters story includes video taken of that meeting by a Cobb County police officer’s body-worn camera.
“We have put in placement a way to move you, to secure you, from what may be authorized in the next 48 hours,” Kutti is heard saying to Freeman at the station. “I cannot say what specifically what will take place, I just know that it will disrupt your freedom … and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”
“You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up,” Kutti also says.
Kutti tried to get Freeman to talk to someone she called “Harrison Ford,” who she described as a “Black progressive crisis manager, very high level, with authoritative powers to get you protection that you need.”
Kutti then apparently tries to issue a disclaimer that their conversation is “a conversation between private citizens. I am hoping that you are trusting that this information doesn’t go any further.”
“There are federal people who are involved here that I don’t know who is connect to who,” Kutti says on the video. She tells the officer that “I really need her to be as nonchalant as possible with this conversation that we are going to have so that if she does make a decision, she’s protected in her decision.
According to Reuters, Kutti said to Freeman: “If you don’t tell everything, you’re going to jail.”
“Growing suspicious, Freeman said she jumped up from her chair and told Kutti: ‘The devil is a liar,’ before calling for an officer,” Reuters reported.
Freeman told Reuters that the next day, Jan. 5, an FBI agent called Freeman and told her to leave home because it wasn’t safe.
“The following day, Jan. 6, Kutti’s prediction that people would descend on Freeman’s home in 48 hours proved correct, according to a defamation lawsuit Freeman and Moss filed last week against a far-right news site. Freeman, the lawsuit said, left hours before a mob of angry Trump supporters surrounded her home, shouting through bullhorns,” Reuters reported.
Reuters said its story was based on “previously unreported police recordings and reports, legal filings, and Freeman’s first media interview since she was dragged into Trump’s attempt to reverse his election loss.”
The Cobb County police did not respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment on the video.
West’s alleged connection to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election came after West’s own failed bid for the White House. That campaign, according to Reuters, “drew media attention when several publications revealed that allies and supporters of Trump were working on the ground to advance West’s campaign.”
As Reuters reported, Kutti is featured on the website for the Women’s Global Initiative, a global networking organization. In addition to representing clients including Queen Rania Noor of Jordan and boxer Terence Crawford.
Kutti has also been recognized in political circles.
“Trevian received the Global Activism Award presented by Senator Elizabeth Warren for her work with Maestros Leadership Team, a Malawi based global social enterprise,” her WGI bio reads. “Kutti serves as a member of the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump.”
Kutti has also been professionally linked to singer R. Kelly, who was convicted in September on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges, according to Reuters.
[Photo via SEBASTIAN SMITH/AFP via Getty Images]
