Lawyers for music mogul, 54, charged in wide-ranging sex-trafficking case, criticize ‘onslaught of baseless allegations’
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.
