Tory Lanez’s Ex-Lawyer Denies Attempted ‘Bribe’ With Megan Thee Stallion’s Former Friend

Amid Tory Lanez’s imprisonment for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, more details are surfacing that reveal how low the rapper-singer was allegedly willing to go to clear his name.

Newly unveiled documents from the Tory Lanez trial reveal why his former lawyer, Shawn Holley, withdrew from the case. According to Legal Affairs and Trials, Holley decided to exit stage left after the Toronto rapper tried to use the “Kelsie defense” that would name Megan’s former best friend, Kelsey Harris, as the shooter.

The “Say It” singer was attempting to free himself from charges that he shot Megan in the Hollywood Hills in 2020 by convincing jurors it was really Harris who fired the rounds. Lanez allegedly wanted jurors to believe that Megan and Harris got into a fight over their shared romantic interest in Lanez.

Once Holley saw that was the route Lanez was trying to take, she sent an email telling him she wouldn’t be able to continue with that line of defense.

“As we discussed on Saturday, I am not comfortable advancing the ‘Kelsie Defense’, primarily because I don’t find it to be a viable strategy,” Holley wrote in aN email.

Holley said she wouldn’t change her mind unless Lanez and his driver, Jaquan Smith, were both “persuasive in the preview of his testimony and you are persuasive under mock cross-examination.” Even if they were, however, Holley was still “not certain that I would be willing to go forward.”

After Lanez hired new lawyers Matthew Barhoma and Jose Baez, they argued that Holley withdrew because she’d been helping Lanez try to bribe Harris as a witness. Barhoma and Baez cited an email Holley sent on December 18, 2022, stoking allegations Harris made that Holley “was somehow involved in facilitating an arrangement between you and she whereby you would finance her business (or something like that) in order to curry favor with her, thereby aligning your and her interests as far as the case was concerned.”

“You and I both know that this never happened,” Holley wrote.

She continued: “In any event, the fact that these false allegations have been made about me — and that they are now evidence in the case — makes it a conflict (as an ethical/legal matter) for me to continue to represent you and, as a result, I am obligated to withdraw as your attorney.”

Later that month, a jury deliberated for seven hours before finding Lanez guilty of first-degree assault, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, and having a concealed and unregistered firearm in a vehicle. The rapper is still awaiting his sentencing, which was pushed back to August. Prosecutors reportedly want him to serve a minimum of 13 years, as noted by Forbes.