Facing a trial later this year for sex trafficking and other damning charges, the much-accused Sean “Diddy” Combs today took a big swing at prosecutors’ insistence that his so-called freak-offs were depraved and nonconsensual debaucheries.
According to Combs’ ambitious lawyers in the latest variation on their attack of the accuser tactics, their client committed no crimes in his long term relationship with “Victim-1,” and the feds are prudes who want to control what goes on in people’s bedrooms.
“Far from the government’s lurid descriptions, the videos show adults having consensual sex, plain and simple,” exclaims a letter from the incarcerated Bad Boy Records founder’s defense team sent Tuesday morning to Judge Arun Subramanian. “At bottom, this case is about whether Victim-I was or was not a willing participant in her private sex life with Mr. Combs. The videos confirm that she plainly was.”
“There is no evidence of any violence, coercion, threats, or manipulation whatsoever,” the somewhat redacted correspondence adds of the self-described “quite dark and grainy” sex tapes, as it seeks to have a protective order modified in regards to the videos. “There is no evidence that anyone is incapacitated or under the influence of drugs or excessive alcohol consumption. There is certainly no evidence of sex trafficking.”
Read the letter from Sean ‘Diddy” Combs & his defense team claiming that the freak-offs with Victim-1 were all consenting here
One of the primary witnesses and sources for the U.S. Attorney’s office, “Victim-1” has long been identified as Combs’ former girlfriend Cassie Ventura. Despite a big bucks payoff to legal action of Ventura’s own in November last year over the 2007-2018 relationship the duo had, the defense has tried repeatedly to characterize her as an active and willing participant in Combs’ escapades.
Arrested by the NYPD on September 16 in a Manhattan hotel lobby, Combs is charged with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Already behind bars at Brooklyn’s harsh Metropolitan Detention Center, where suspected United Healthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione is too, Combs has repeatedly been denied moves to be granted a $50 million bail. Having taken dozens of whacks at the U.S. Attorney’s case so far, Combs is represented by a pricey legal team led by Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos.
Fighting dozens of other sexual assault cases in federal and state court including one with Jay-Z as a co-defendant, Combs’ criminal trial is set to start May 5. If found guilty, the 55-year-old Grammy winner is looking at life in prison.
In many ways where Combs finds himself today was kicked off when chart-topping singer Ventura sued Combs in a civil case in late 2023 for sexual assault and abuse.
At the time, Combs vehemently denied all of Ventura’s claims, including those of drugging her and forcing her to engage in what later became termed the freak-offs. However, to that, the rapper also settled with Ventura within a day for an estimated $30 million.
Months later, a 2016 security video went public of a half-naked Combs violently beating an escaping Ventura in the corridor of an upscale L.A. hotel. Already fighting off a series of other lawsuits, Combs quickly took to social media to apologize for the attack. Ventura’s team almost immediately labeled Combs’ words as “disingenuous” and that the apology “is more about himself than the many people he has hurt.” Lawyers for the rapper in this criminal case have subsequently tried to reframe the video, which Combs paid handsomely for at the time, as a targeted leak and smear by the feds and not actually an attack on Ventura.
Today’s letter is another attempt by the media savvy defense to once again try to flip the script on the case, both in the court and the court of public opinion. In no small part, this latest move essentially asserts that Combs did not force “Victim-1” to have kinky sex with him and others against her will, but that the prudish government wants to “police non-conforming sexual activity” – and the nine videos at issue here prove it.
“Any fair-minded viewer of the videos will quickly conclude that the prosecution of Mr. Combs is both sexist and puritanical,” Agnifilo and Geragos bluntly claim in the seven-page letter.
“It is sexist because the government’s theory perpetuates stereotypes of female victimhood and lack of agency,” they say. “The prosecution reflects a paternalistic view that the government is here to protect women, who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about sex, and are not capable of consenting to sex that the prosecutors view as outside the ‘norm’”.
“These videos depict clearly consensual sex among willing adults in a decades-long relationship and fundamentally undermine the government’s case and Victim-1 ‘s claims.”
Contacted by Deadline, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the letter from Combs and his defense to Judge Subramanian. Ventura’s lawyer Douglas Wigdor did not respond to request for comment on the correspondence. If Wigdor or his office do respond this post will be updated.
Today’s letter comes as Combs was sued earlier this week by a Jane Doe who claims the one-time music mogul drugged and raped her after a NYC baby-sitting job in 2000 after offering her a ride home. Alleging two male employees of Combs sat by as the assault occurred at a separate location she was driven to, the plaintiff says she was 16 at the time. After being “raped by Combs,” the filing says the plaintiff “was eventually taken home and left in the lobby of her building by the same driver.”
Among the 40 or so individuals, female and male, that say Combs rape, abused and assaulted them, there are several minors – including a 10-year-old boy.
Late January 13, Combs’ team responded to the latest filing of this now middle-aged Jane Doe.
“No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone—man or woman, adult or minor,” said a spokesperson for the performer. “We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth, and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail in court.”
In another Combs case, Jay-Z received permission just under two weeks ago from a federal judge to pursue a new motion to dismiss the case accusing the ‘Dead Presidents’ rapper, Combs and a still unknown female “Celebrity B” of raping a 13-year-old girl over 24 years ago, and the defendant born Shawn Carter has wasted no time getting to it.
As well trying again to get the high-profile matter tossed out, Jay-Z wants the Jane Doe plaintiff’s lawyer to pay, literally and figuratively.
Jay-Z and Sean Combs attend the latter’sJuly 4th Party on July 2, 2000 in East Hampton, NY. (Photo by Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
“While the allegations stated in the complaint in this case are gravely serious (and injurious to Mr. Carter’s hard-won reputation), many of them, on their face, strain the outer bounds of credulity, and none of them appears to have been subjected to even the most rudimentary diligence by the filing attorney who initially signed his name to them and has since declined to withdraw them,” declares the memorandum of law accompanying the motion filed on January 8 in New York City by Jay-Z’s longtime attorney Alex Spiro of Tony Buzbee.
And then the kicker comes: “Because the Federal Rules and professional ethics require more of a filing attorney, Mr. Carter now respectfully seeks appropriate sanctions.”
Unless you were missing how hard a hit on the Houston-based Buzbee’s wallet, billionaire hip hop artist and the very pricey Quinn Emanuel partner were thinking …well, let Jay-Z and Spiro educate you.
“A monetary sanction would ensure some measure of deterrence of this sort of conduct in the future,” they offer to Judge Analisa Torres. “That sanction could take the form of reimbursing Mr. Carter for his attorneys’ fees and costs incurred in defending against this action.”
A.K.A. hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million or more.
Buzbee had his accounting of sorts in response.
“Mr. Spiro and his firm are paid by the hour,” the Lone Star state lawyer told Deadline in a statement last week. “So, they file a lot of junk with the Court,” he continued with a clear nod to Judge Torres’ December 26 rebuke of Spirio’s “relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks …a tactic unlikely to benefit his client,”
Buzbee added: “With each frantic filing, his team reeks of desperation. He and his team think the laws and rules don’t apply to them. They are flat wrong. They also think they can bully or intimidate counsel for victims by filing meritless and frivolous pleadings full of lies and half-truths. Again, they are dead wrong. We won’t be bullied or intimidated, ever. We will address the utter lack of merit with his filing with the Court, rather than with the press.”
In fact, like Combs’ sex trafficking case defense team, both sides have tried to play this case out in the court of media opinion, trying to pull strings to frame their own versions of events.
Still, having come up the losers late last month in getting the initially October 20 filed suit and the first amended complaint of December 20 cast off, the innocence insisting Jay-Z and attorney Spiro have tripled down on inconsistencies. Specifically, inconsistencies out of what the now middled aged plaintiff said in her paperwork and what she told NBC News of “some mistakes” in a filmed mid-December sit-down.
Like the ravenous guest at a buffet, the defense has gobbled up the fact that Buzbee appeared to backtrack a step or two on his client after that NBC News interview. Buzbee said the case was “referred to our firm by another, who vetted it prior to sending it to us.” He backed up his client at the same time, exclaiming that Jane Doe “remains fiercely adamant that what she has stated is true, to the best of her memory.”
The recollection is that the then teen Jane Doer was repeatedly rape at one of Diddy’s allegedly fueled freak offs just after the 2000 MTV VMAs on September 7 of that year. At first Buzbee’s filing, one of dozens he has in made in numerous cases against Combs, named only the All About the Benjamins singer for the rape, with a male “Celebrity A” and a female “Celebrity B” as the other assaulting participants. Jay-Z was named as the “Celebrity A” in the DAC last month on the heels of a separate suit from a Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan-represented anonymous “celebrity and public figure who resides in Los Angeles” went after the Texas attorney for extortion.
These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!” Jay-Z said in a handwritten statement after December 20 filing. As both sides accused the other of trying to bribe clients, and arm twist witnesses, Buzbee sued spate our on social media that Jay-Z was a posturing “bully” and Jay-Z mocked the lawyer and the lawsuit as a “sham.”
On January 8, Alex Baldwin and Elon Musk attorney Spiro took wordsmith Jay-Z’s characterization of Jane Doe’s suit and threw some legalese on it – with a sugary spoonful or two of leaps of faith:
“By any objective measure, the fact that nearly every step in Plaintiff’s narrative—from her
arrival at the VMAs to her interactions with the limousine driver and celebrities to the ride with
her father—turns out to be false or highly unlikely casts considerable doubt on Plaintiff’s
allegation that Mr. Carter raped her, which he did not.,” Spiro’s memo states. “Confronted with those glaring red flags, a competent and ethical attorney would have not only omitted the many erroneous allegations from the complaint but also completed a thorough and careful vetting of the core assault allegation before affixing his or her signature to the complaint,” he continues about Buzbee.
“Abiding by that ethical duty was especially important here given the defamatory character of the assault allegation and the near certainty that the complaint would generate massive publicity in light of the identity of the defendant, inflicting irreparable reputational harm and forcing him to explain to his own children that he had been falsely accused of assaulting a child.”
In that vein, Jay-Z and Spiro are requesting a hearing ASAP before Judge Analisa Torres to argue their motion. No date has been set by the court so far.
