Sean “Diddy” Combs wants prosecutors in his sex-trafficking case to disclose the names of his accusers, Manhattan federal court documents show.
Combs, 54, needs to know the identities of his accusers so as to prepare for the 5 May trial, his legal team argued in a Tuesday letter to judge Arun Subramanian.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the indictment. He remains jailed pending trial.
“This case is unique, in part because of the number of individuals levying allegations against Mr Combs due to his celebrity status, wealth” and extensive media coverage of lawsuits and other legal proceedings against him, they argued.
“This has had a pervasive ripple effect, resulting in a torrent of allegations by unidentified complainants, spanning from the false to outright absurd.”
They noted that six people filed civil complaints against Combs on Monday, all of them anonymous. The attorney helming these suits claimed at a recent press conference that he represented 120 accusers and that a toll-free number for his firm received thousands of calls within a day, Combs’s team also pointed out.
“These accusations came on the heels of more than a dozen lawsuits previously filed and currently pending, several of which have already been discredited but only after irreparably damaging Mr Combs’s character and reputation,” attorneys for the Bad Boy Records founds said. “These swirling allegations have created a hysterical media circus that, if left unchecked, will irreparably deprive Mr Combs of a fair trial, if they haven’t already.”
Combs’s lawyers said that they asked prosecutors to identify all of the government’s alleged victims because of the number, and anonymity, of accusers. But the prosecution “opposes disclosure of alleged victims’ names at this stage”, Combs’s team said.
Combs faces charges of racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution. The indictment alleges that Combs’ violence lasted decades and that the mega-star “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct”.
Combs, with the help of staff and associates, allegedly used his vast business empire to form a “criminal enterprise” rife with verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse against women and that he “manipulated women to participate in highly orchestrated performance of sexual activity with male commercial sex workers.”
Combs is alleged to have controlled these women with drugs and influence over their careers, as well as financially. Federal prosecutors alleged that much of this abuse unfolded at so-called “freak-offs,” which they described as “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded”.
Sometimes, these alleged “freak-offs” lasted for days. After they ended, Combs and his accusers “typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use”, prosecutors said.
The indictment apparently referred to Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s claims against Combs in a 16 November 2023 civil suit; she appears to be “Victim-1” in the document. Ventura, who said Combs sexually assaulted and abused her, during their relationship, settled the suit a day later.
Combs’s team points to prosecutors’ language in pushing for the identities of accusers. They said that it was so broad “this could be interpreted as treating Mr Combs’s entire sexual history over the past 16 years as part of the alleged criminal conspiracy”.
“Without clarity from the government, Mr Combs has no way of knowing which allegations the government is relying on for purposes of the indictment. Other than Victim-1, there is no way for Mr Combs to determine who the other unidentified alleged victims are,” they wrote.
“The number of potential alleged victims and the length of time alleged in the indictment both weigh in favor of” disclosing accusers, they also said.
“Moreover, to the extent Mr Combs is forced to mount a defense against criminal allegations that the government does not seek to prove at trial, he is entitled to know that,” they said. Without knowing the identities, “the government is forcing him, unfairly, to play a guessing a game – one made all the more challenging by the onslaught of baseless allegations that desperate plaintiffs are lodging at him (for the most part anonymously) in civil suits designed to exact a payoff from Mr Combs and others”.
Because there is so much evidence, and its provision is expected to take lots of time, Combs would not probably be able to figure out the identities of unnamed accusers.
“Mr Combs also anticipates that the discovery will contain voluminous evidence of consensual sexual activity – making it all the more difficult for Mr Combs to ascertain which of his prior sexual partners now claim, years later, that they felt coerced,” his lawyers argued.
The Manhattan US attorney’s office declined to comment. Combs’s legal team, when asked for comment, directed questions to the filing.
Source: theguardian.com
