By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-31 18:35:13 | Updated at 2024-11-06 20:46:55
6 days ago
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ claim that the feds were behind the leak of video showing the hip-hop mogul brutally beating his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura is a “desperate” ploy to remove “damning” evidence from his bombshell sex crimes case, prosecutors say.
Combs and his lawyers are “grasping at straws” by urging a Manhattan federal judge to order a hearing on whether the government leaked the harrowing footage published by CNN of Combs assaulting Ventura in 2016, the feds wrote in a court filing late Wednesday night.
The Bad Boy Records founder, who is currently being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, has asked Judge Arun Subramanian to call a hearing on the leak allegations — at which the court could in theory bar the video from being played at Combs’ May 2025 trial.
But the feds say the bid for a hearing is merely a backdoor way to suppress evidence that Combs is a violent serial abuser of women.
Combs’ lawyers have pressed the issue despite being aware that the video “was not in the Government’s possession at the time of CNN’s publication,” prosecutors wrote.
The feds separately blasted Combs’ bids for prosecutors to disclose a full list of his alleged victims abnormally early in the case — and to bar people suing him from speaking out against him — as an “improper” attempt to defend himself in the press from the slew of horrifying new lawsuits filed recently painting him as a depraved sexual predator.
Criminal defendants in federal court are entitled to get a full witness list from prosecutors, but closer to the start of trial, the feds wrote.
Protecting the identities of witnesses that may testify against Combs is particularly important in this case because of “serious and ongoing concerns of victim and witness safety, tampering, and intimidation,” prosecutors said.
Combs, 54, was hit with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges in September in an indictment portraying him as a criminal kingpin who abused, threatened and coerce women for years “to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.”
Among prosecutors’ most alarming charges is that Combs forced women and male sex workers into drugged-up, days-long sexual orgies he called “Freak-Offs” — which he sometimes taped to use as collateral.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges he faces, with his lawyers claiming that all of the sexual encounters mentioned by prosecutors are consensual.
Reps for the embattled hip-hop icon declined to comment on Thursday.
He’s expected to respond with his own legal filing in the coming days.
