Young Thug's lawyer Brian Steel arrested and tried for contempt

ATLANTA — Things got heated in the YSL RICO trial after an attorney for rapper Young Thug was taken into custody in court Monday.

Attorney Brian Steel was held in contempt of court by Judge Ural Glanville after refusing to disclose his source regarding information shared during an ex parte meeting between the judge, the State and key witness Kenneth Copeland.

Judge Glanville threatened Steel with contempt on several occasions, but he consistently refused. Steel insinuated that the court was being “coercive” since no representative of his client was invited to the meeting.

“I'll give you five minutes. If you don't tell me who it is, I'm going to despise you,” Glanville said.

To which Steel replied, “I don't need five minutes.”

After a heated exchange, the court was temporarily suspended. When he was brought back into session, Glanville again asked Steel to tell him how he had learned of the private conversation.

“Mr. Steel, I'm going to ask you again. I need you to tell me how you got this information. It's so sacrosanct to have a conversation in my chambers being parroted to you ” exclaimed Glanville.

Steel refused one last time before asking for a mistrial, which was later denied. He was taken into custody shortly after.

Nearly an hour later, Steel was brought back into the courtroom and Glanville said he would be allowed to be present while the court was in session. However, Steel had until the end of the day to reveal the source of the information or risk being returned to custody.

In an update Monday evening, Glanville ordered Steel taken into custody and held in the Fulton County Jail for “no more than 20 days for this contempt.”

“Those 20 days including every weekend for the next 10 weekends,” Glanville added. “And you will report to 901 Rice Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30318. On Friday at 7 p.m., you will be released on Sunday at 7 p.m. And that is scheduled to begin this Friday, June 14 at 7 p.m. and will not end until Sunday August 18, 2024, at 7 p.m.

You can watch the exchange unfold in the video below:

On May 9, 2022, the hip-hop world was rocked by news of the arrest of Grammy-winning rapper, pioneer and Atlanta icon Young Thug.

The artist, whose legal name is Jeffery Williams, has been behind bars for more than two years now. The central accusation against him is that the three letters with which his name became synonymous due to his artistic success in launching the “Young Stoner Life” label, YSL, actually denote a violent gang: Young Slime Life.

Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis named Williams, among other metro Atlanta rappers and those with ties to the alleged gang, to file charges against a total of 28 people in an act of 88-page indictment. The case alleges that Young Thug is not only a member of the gang, but he is also its kingpin.

“He’s the one they’re all afraid of,” a prosecutor said at a hearing in June 2022. “He’s the one who’s the Slime King.”

A lengthy pretrial process turned into an even longer jury selection process, and during that time the list of co-defendants shrank because of plea deals and other circumstances, preventing some of the people charged to remain in the case.

The trial finally began in earnest in November 2023, already considered the longest in Georgia history.

Now that it's in full swing, 11Alive is tracking key developments in the case and highlighting highlights from the courtroom. Follow the timeline below.