Not a lot of people know that the most reliable source for news related to the longest criminal trial in Georgia history comes from a 24 year old guy that lives in Texas, works a corporate job, and posts about the case as a hobby.
What was initially a Young Thug Stan account with just over a thousand followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, has somehow ballooned into the juggernaut that is ThuggerDaily, an account with more than 70K followers dedicated to surprisingly up-to-date and mostly accurate reporting on the sprawling YSL trial.
The state’s labyrinth-esque RICO case against Young Thug (Jeffery Lamar Williams) has been viewed by fans and some legal experts alike as a mess ever since the indictment dropped in May 2022. It revealed that a large portion of the state’s evidence accusing Youth Thug of being the leader of a criminal enterprise was pulled directly from his song lyrics.
Ever since then the case has devolved into a series of false starts and prosecutorial fuck-up’s, resulting in the YSL RICO case already becoming Georgia's longest criminal trial ever, with no real end in sight.
As evidence of the case’s overall dysfunction, former presiding Judge Ural Glanville was ordered to recuse himself from the trial on Monday, with the court saying the recusal is in service of "preserving the public’s confidence in the judicial system." (As this story was set to go live, Glanville’s replacement, Judge Shukura Ingram, also recused herself because her courthouse deputy had a prior relationship with Christian Eppinger, a co-defendant in the case.)
Young Thug’s attorney Brian Steel filed a motion to remove Judge Glanville from the case in mid-June, accusing him of misconduct and contending Young Thug can’t have a fair trial under Glanville.
Steel, who’s made headlines in connection with his work for 21 Savage and Playboi Carti, was found in contempt after the attorney declined to reveal his source in connection with an alleged meeting involving prosecutors and the judge himself.
Along for the ride for all of this is ThuggerDaily, whose rise in followers can be directly correlated with the increasingly absurd developments in the YSL trial. He’s covered the case since December 2022, right after Gunna took a controversial plea deal. He’s known for covering even minor developments with the fervor of a traditional Stan account.
Legal journalist Meghann Cuniff, who made her name reporting on Megan Thee Stallion’s assault trial against Tory Lanez, told Complex that ThuggerDaily shows there’s value in actually taking a stance and conveying information in an interesting fashion.
“It's not hard to see whose side he’s on and I think that helps him have a more authentic voice in his coverage that really attracts people,” Cuniff said. “There’s a real journalistic aspect to what he does, even though it's clearly Stan journalism, he's good at it, he gets the information out. It really exemplifies how if you have a passion for a subject, that can really help you in your coverage.”
Cuniff said the trouble with an account like ThuggerDaily, which only exists on X, is that it can become an echo chamber, capable of excluding reporting from more traditional outlets that have covered the YSL trial, like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“You don't realize that there's more mediums than just Twitter, and while it's a big audience and he's getting big numbers, only a small percentage of society is on Twitter,” Cuniff said. “But it's true that there just wasn't these kinds of minute by minute daily updates and he's been doing it since jury selection.”
It all started a few years ago when ThuggerDaily joined a discord channel he found through the Young Thug Reddit page. He was originally looking for leaks related to the Beautiful Thugger Girls album release. He ended up staying for years.
“That's what initially got me there and I stayed for the community,” ThuggerDaily told Complex. “We all had this thing in common.”
When Young Thug and 28 others were arrested in May 2022, ThuggerDaily became the go-to voice in the discord channel when it came to dissecting the indictment and keeping other users up-to-date on the trial.
Sooner or later, another member of the discord offered up what was then a defunct Young Thug Stan account on X. It had just over 1000 followers before ThuggerDaily took over in December 2022.
Since then, his work has been cited by legal experts and music outlets—like Complex or The Fader—who are forced to get their news from ThuggerDaily when nobody else is covering minor developments. He prefers to remain anonymous because of his corporate 9 to 5.
“My job would not be happy to find out I’ve been watching and listening to court during work time,” ThuggerDaily told Complex.
We spoke with ThuggerDaily over the phone in July about the latest updates on the trial and what it’s like doing the job of an anonymous reporter as a hobby.
Can you tell me a little bit about your taste in music?
It's pretty weird that for a long time the only rappers I actually listened to were Young Thug, Eminem and Future. Before that I didn't listen to any rap, and since then, I'm basically a Thug and Future fan. That's pretty much the only music I listen to. It's kind of a weird thing to say, but I'm not even a huge fan of hip-hop like that. It's such a specific niche that I'm into.
How did you get involved with a Young Thug discord?
The Discord was just connected to the Young Thug Reddit at one point. I joined it from there, and since then, it’s just been growing from different outlets, people from different music forums.
I joined it around when Young Thug was hyping up an album called Beautiful Thugger Girls. There were just snippets floating around and a lot of speculation over which songs would make it to the album and which wouldn’t. And there were a lot of leaks coming out around that time as well. The discord was just one place to find all of that.
How do you feel about leaks?
I think leaking something that's about to come out is pretty dumb. But at the same time I’m happy when something leaks that has been wanted for five years and the artist just never wanted to drop it. At that point I don't think it's affecting anyone. There's the argument that the artist gets to decide when to give his art out. But for me, I don't care about that as much. This might be where I piss off like pop fans, because I know there's a huge controversy there, but that's just my opinion.
What’s the big deal if a five year old song comes out that they were never going to drop anyway, that isn’t hurting them financially, that all the fans like and that isn't super personal to them or anything like that? The fans get some more music while waiting for official releases. Especially with Young Thug, who has thousands of unreleased songs, and some are better than anything that he's officially dropped. That’s why I’m a pro-leaks guy.
How did you get into covering the case and become so good at understanding the complex legalese that surrounds trials like this?
The biggest thing that made it easy for me to understand what’s going on is the lawyers. The lawyers in the case are actually insanely good. They make the argument so compelling it was really easy to follow along the way to just learn basic things as I went. Oftentimes, I wouldn’t need to go anywhere outside of the document to understand what the lawyers were talking about, just because they lay it out so concisely.
I also learned how to explain these types of documents through just using the Discord chat. I was explaining to people in Discord for months and months before I ever started the page. So I got a lot of practice there just finding out common misconceptions people might have or whatever. The Discord is just a bunch of fans, just like the people that follow Twitter. So it's just the same audience. I got a little bit of a test run explaining stuff to them before explaining it to the public.
What are some of the common misconceptions?
There’s a bigger picture misconception that Young Thug has something to do with this big murder that's in the center of the case, when in reality, there's nowhere near anything of a murder charge on Young Thug.
Another big misconception in this case concerns Gunna. There’s this idea that Gunna’s plea deal is going to somehow negatively impact Young Thug’s case. I don’t think that at all. But you know, there’s rappers out there calling him a snitch or a rat. So that's a huge misconception that still lingers to this day. I haven’t been able to successfully convince a lot of people that this isn’t true and I get comments about it almost every day.
What do you think about Judge Glanville and the attempt to have him recuse himself from the case?
I think he's dug himself into a hole. It's the unanimous lawyer opinion on Twitter, but also my opinion, that he is getting confused one way or another. He's going to get removed either by the judge that's apparently hearing it, or a higher court or on appeal. The hole he's dug for himself is just inescapable. I think when he backpedaled on denying his own recusal motions and ended up actually referring to it, he realized that the way he denied that motion itself was enough to recuse him. It's going to happen eventually.
(Editor's note: ThuggerDaily told Complex in the wake of Judge Glanville being ordered off the case on Monday that he’s glad Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause made the right decision. However, he said the ruling leaves more questions than answers.
“It puts the case in an even more unpredictable position. What happens next? Is it even possible to just pick up and continue with the same jury? Is it even practical to start all over? Are bonds gonna be given out?”
ThuggerDaily continued:
“[Judge Rachel Krause’s] order left a lot to be desired because she explicitly says Glanville did nothing wrong regarding the secret meeting with state witness Kenneth Copeland,” ThuggerDaily said. “She instead used the cop-out of “appearance of impropriety,” saying Glanville messed up only in how he responded to the motions to recuse. Don’t like how light she went on him there but at least we got the right result. Job’s not finished though.”
Do you think it's good for Young Thug if the judge recuses himself?
That's the big question. Brian Steel is a million dollar lawyer. Whatever he's trying to make happen in the case, is the right decision for it. That’s what I think.
The common opinion is also that the state hasn't been doing that great in this trial. So getting a new judge could give them another chance to go at it, fix up their mistakes. Because honestly, there is maybe a decent case in the middle of all of this without all the fluff. And not only that, a new judge may give Young Thug a better chance of being granted bond. Which would increase his ability to fight his case.
What has been the most exciting aspect of running this account?
I wouldn't say it's life-changing, but I would say it's definitely been a great hobby. I feel like I'm doing something a little more productive than what I would be doing otherwise. I've been learning a lot, meeting a ton of really cool and smart people, even people in the industry, some of Thug’s friends, some of Thug’s family, some of the local lawyers. It really is broadening my circle, getting to meet people I would never have met otherwise. Other than that, I wouldn't say it’s improved or changed my life, maybe not yet.