Sean “Diddy” Combs has issued his latest legal salvo in the government’s ongoing legal cases—centered on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking—against him, and, wouldn’t you know it, he’s decided to go the “powerful people have orchestrated a vast conspiracy against me” route. Basically, Combs’ latest filing—put forward in a request for a court order to get some of the more viscerally damning evidence against him kept away from a jury at an inevitable trial—says the U.S. government has been leaking stuff to the media for months now, at least partly in order to get the grand jury that ultimately indicted Combs on his current charges to bite.
Per THR, most of these claims revolve around the now-infamous video that seems to show Combs physically assaulting his former lover Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura in an incident in 2016. Combs’ legal team is now suggesting that the video was leaked to CNN directly by the government “For one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations.” The filing goes on to assert that Cassie herself wouldn’t have leaked the video, since the video was leaked to CNN in May of 2024, fully six months after the singer secured a reportedly massive settlement in her sexual assault suit against Combs. (Also, Cassie’s lawsuit didn’t go into extensive detail about the video, which it presumably would have if her camp had had access to it at the time she filed.) They also claim that a third-party would have tried to sell the tape, rather than leak it to CNN. (Oh, and the tape came out the day it did because federal prosecutors knew the Trump trial was going to be stopped down for the day, thus creating a slow news day.)
(Meanwhile, it feels worth noting that nothing in this filing disputes the tape, the violent events of which Combs has previously said he takes “full responsibility for.” They’re just mad that people saw it and formed a bad opinion of him based on it, and are accusing the government of being the ones to pass it around.)
The tape itself doesn’t reflect directly on the charges against Combs, which are centered on allegations that he ran an operation designed to coerce women to participate in sex parties that he reportedly held for literal decades. But it is likely to be shown by prosecutors, on the grounds that sex trafficking requires evidence of coercion—including something like demonstrating a pattern of violence on the part of the accused. Combs’ lawyers are aiming high with this particular claim: The court order asks for the tape not to be shown at trial, but also calls for the charges to be dismissed outright in response to the “government’s scheme” to deny him a fair trial.