Ye walked into the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday and sat in the second row with Lil Durk’s family as cooperating witness Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester testified for a second straight day against the Chicago rapper. Outside, Ye posed for a photo with OTF artist Doodie Lo, both holding a “Free Durk” T-shirt. Doodie Lo, born David Saulsberry, posted the picture to his verified Instagram and wrote, “Ye We Love And Respect You For Showing Up At Our Darkest Times,” per a No Jumper post that pulled in more than 600 likes within hours.
The appearance came on day six of Durk’s federal murder-for-hire trial in U.S. District Court before Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, according to courtroom reporting from Los Angeles Magazine. Durk, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, is 33. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he helped arrange an August 19, 2022 attempt to kill rival rapper Quando Rondo at a gas station near the Beverly Center that instead killed Rondo’s cousin, Saviay’a “Lul Pab” Robinson, 24. Prosecutors say Banks put a bounty on Tyquian Bowman, known professionally as Quando Rondo, in retaliation for the November 6, 2020 shooting death of Banks’ close friend and collaborator Dayvon “King Von” Bennett outside the Monaco Hookah Lounge in Atlanta, a feud HypeFresh has tracked through its origins in the broader King Von dispute cycle.
An associate of Bowman’s, Timothy “Lul Timm” Leeks, was identified in connection with the King Von killing. Leeks was initially charged with felony murder in November 2020 but had those charges dropped in August 2023 under Georgia’s stand-your-ground law. Banks was arrested on October 17, 2024 near Miami International Airport after law enforcement learned he had been booked on multiple international flights. He has been held without bail since, and the federal case against him has since expanded. A third superseding indictment filed in June added racketeering counts tied to a 2019 Atlanta shooting and a January 2022 Chicago killing, but Judge Fitzgerald severed those counts on July 14, ruling that prosecutors had waited too long to add them and that keeping the Los Angeles trial on its August calendar outweighed the government’s preference to try everything together.
Hester, who raps as OTF Jam, took the stand Wednesday and continued Thursday as the government’s first cooperating witness. Hester, who has admitted to being one of three masked gunmen who fired some 18 bullets at Bowman’s car, described the August 2022 shooting to jurors as sloppy. “I wasn’t feeling good about it at all,” he said on Wednesday, according to Courthouse News reporter Hillel Aron. Hester has pleaded guilty to Robinson’s murder and is cooperating in exchange for the possibility of a reduced sentence, part of a pattern that prosecutors have tied to a wider Atlanta music and street network surrounding the original King Von dispute. He identified Banks as a participant in conversations prosecutors tie to the alleged plot, including a meeting in an Atlanta studio where Banks allegedly promised a cash reward for killing Bowman, a figure Hester put at either half a million or a million dollars, though he was never paid.
Hester’s account, if the jury credits it, is the central pillar of the prosecution’s theory. But his credibility is the central pillar of the defense’s case. Brian Steel, who represented Young Thug at his Atlanta racketeering trial, cross-examined Hester aggressively on Friday, getting the witness to acknowledge he had served 12 years on an attempted murder conviction, that he slipped a note to a jail guard reading “I know about murders” after his 2023 parole arrest, and that his story has shifted over multiple recorded interviews, one of thousands of pages of evidence federal prosecutors have introduced over the trial’s first week. Steel’s framing, as captured by Rolling Stone: Hester is desperate to go home and willing to say whatever it takes to get there. “Going home, that’s your mission?” Steel asked. “Me, trying to go home? Yes,” Hester replied.
Doodie Lo, born David Saulsberry on October 22, 1991, in Kankakee, Illinois, has been a visible presence outside the courthouse since opening statements, one of several OTF figures closely tied to the late King Von’s circle who have shown up at the building. The OTF rapper has handed out “Free Durk” shirts alongside G Herbo and Dreezy. Durk’s father, Durk Banks Sr., and his partner, India Royale, have also attended. Machine Gun Kelly watched proceedings from an overflow room on Monday and later called Durk “my bro for a decade” on X, writing, “when he called and asked if I’d pull up and support, I’m there no question, free durk.” The OTF circle has been publicly lobbying for release; Doodie Lo separately told HypeFresh that Lil Baby attempted to help post Durk’s bond, a claim neither the defense nor prosecutors have confirmed in court filings.
Ye’s appearance on Thursday carries a longer story. The two Chicago rappers share a documented working relationship: they appeared together on Cardi B’s 2022 single “Hot Shit,” on the title track of Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s 2024 album Vultures 1, and on the 2021 Donda track “Jonah.” In 2021, Durk released “Kanye Krazy,” a Cole Bennett-directed video that restaged several of Ye’s most-notorious career moments, from the white piano of “Runaway” to the motorcycle ride of “Bound 2” to the Taylor Swift VMA interruption. The visit is also Ye’s second high-profile trip to a federal rapper trial in roughly fourteen months: he briefly attended Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal trial in Manhattan on June 13, 2025, staying for about 35 minutes.
The defense, led in part by Marissa Goldberg and Brian Steel, has told the jury that Banks had nothing to do with the shooting. Lawyers argue that former assistant Kavon “Cuz” Grant, who has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify, organized the trip, bought ski masks at REI, booked flights and hotels on a credit card in Banks’ name, paid for the getaway car, and later shifted blame onto Banks to cut his own deal. Co-defendants Deandre “DeDe” Wilson and David “Browneyez” Lindsey, who may also be weighing plea deals, will not be separated from Banks for the Los Angeles trial. Keith Jones, known as Flacka, has also pleaded guilty and is expected to testify as a cooperating witness.
Banks, who won a Grammy for best melodic rap performance in February 2024 for “All My Life” featuring J. Cole, has been in federal custody since his October 2024 arrest. If convicted on the murder-for-hire count resulting in death, he could face up to life in federal prison, the statutory maximum under the charge, though federal sentencing is judge-driven and rarely hits the ceiling on a single-count conviction. The trial is expected to run several more weeks.
Outside the courthouse Thursday, supporters carried signs and handed out shirts as Hester’s testimony ran through the morning. Ye’s presence, the second in a year from a Chicago artist of his stature sitting in a federal rapper’s courtroom, is now a recognizable pattern in a year that has put several major hip-hop figures on trial. Whether that show of solidarity moves any juror, or any potential future juror, is a different question. Doodie Lo’s caption framed the visit as loyalty at a low point rather than a publicity stop. The trial will decide which framing survives.
Source reporting on the courthouse appearance includes TMZ, Billboard, Complex, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and Los Angeles Magazine. Court filings and procedural background draw on the trial’s Wikipedia entry, the U.S. Attorney’s Office press release via Legal Affairs and Trials, and Forbes’ trial-day-one explainer by Conor Murray.
