EXCLUSIVE: Feds Say Lil Durk Told Co-Conspirators To Delete Texts; Oppose Attempt To Split New Murder Charges

Feds push back on Lil Durk’s motion to split charges, dropping new evidence including Chicago hitmen guilty pleas and a damaging text.

The feds hit back at Lil Durk on July 6, filing a 30-page response to his request to split his charges or get the whole case thrown out. The government’s answer was simple: no on both.

Prosecutors opened with a reminder about how this all started. When agents arrested Durk’s five co-defendants in Chicago on October 24, 2024, Lil Durk was in Florida booking international flights. The FBI caught him near the tarmac of a private jet before he could board. That detail is still very much on the government’s mind.

Durk’s lawyers had asked the judge to separate the new gang murder charge, added on June 3, from the original murder-for-hire counts tied to the 2022 Beverly Hills gas station shooting that killed Lul Pab.

His team argued that keeping both sets of charges together would force another trial delay, putting Durk’s right to a quick trial at risk after more than 21 months locked up.

The government is not buying it.

Prosecutors wrote that all six counts share the same evidence, witnesses, and core story. Splitting them into two trials would mean witnesses testify twice.

That is a serious problem in a case that already has real safety concerns. People have taken photos inside the courtroom and posted them online. Threats have been made against witnesses and their families.

The government argued that “requiring these witnesses to repeat their testimony in multiple trials strongly militates in favor of a joint trial.”

The filing also explains why the Chicago murder of Stephon Mack came back into the case after prosecutors set it aside earlier this year. Two Chicago men, Anthony Montgomery-Wilson and Preston Powell, pleaded guilty in separate federal cases in April and May 2026. Both admitted under oath that they killed Mack to collect a cash bounty.

Text messages show one shooter asking the other about payment, writing that they were waiting on Durk Banks to come to Chicago on the 17th. One of the men also made a recorded confession while behind bars. The government says none of that evidence existed in usable form until those guilty pleas dropped this spring.

The feds also pushed back on the speedy trial argument. Durk himself signed the first continuance that pushed the trial from late 2024 to October 2025.

Every delay after that was his co-defendants’ doing. The court approved each one. Prosecutors noted that the cases where courts have actually found a trial rights violation involved delays of six to eight years, not 22 months.

The sharpest detail in the entire filing was a text message Durk allegedly sent to co-conspirators in July 2023.

Someone in the group had warned that police were asking questions about the crew. According to the government, Lil Durk responded by telling everyone to “delete thread and start new one.”

Prosecutors say that message, along with the use of burner phones and coded language, is a core reason the investigation took as long as it did.

The filing states that “defendants went to great lengths to conceal their criminality,” arguing that the defense’s own client deliberately made investigators’ jobs harder.

The hearing is set for July 27 before Judge Michael Fitzgerald. The August 20 trial date remains on the calendar for now.

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