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NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors say legal professionals for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs are attempting to “hijack” the music mogul’s felony case from them by asking a decide to pressure early disclosure of proof, together with his accusers’ identities.
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The prosecutors urged a decide in papers filed late Wednesday to reject the requests, saying the hassle to disclose the identities of potential witnesses, particularly, was “blatantly improper.”
They mentioned it was inappropriate for protection legal professionals to hunt the disclosure of sufferer identities and particulars about different proof that may preview the federal government’s case.
Protection legal professionals even have requested for a gag order to cease accusers’ legal professionals from commenting publicly and have claimed authorities leaks to the media have threatened the rapper’s probability at a good trial.
Prosecutors mentioned the requests have been “a thinly veiled try to limit the Authorities’s proof at this early stage of the case and to hijack the felony continuing so the defendant can reply to civil lawsuits. This demand ought to be squarely rejected, particularly in gentle of the danger it poses to witness security.”
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Prosecutors added: “Because the defendant nicely is aware of, there’s zero authorized authority for his try to co-opt this felony continuing to defend towards civil litigation.”
Combs, 54, has remained in a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest, awaiting a trial scheduled to start out on Could 5.
A part of the grounds on which a decide rejected a bail package deal advised by his legal professionals was that he was a hazard to hinder justice and interact in witness tampering.
He has pleaded not responsible to costs that he coerced and abused ladies for years, aided by associates and staff.
Prosecutors mentioned that since no less than 2008, Combs engaged in a racketeering conspiracy, utilizing his energy and status within the leisure business to pressure ladies to interact in prolonged intercourse acts with male business intercourse staff in what have been referred to as “Freak Offs.”
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They mentioned he used movies of the assaults as collateral to threaten victims, and so they mentioned he additionally bodily assaulted ladies and others by placing, punching, dragging and kicking them.
Prosecutors mentioned protection claims that the federal government leaked a video of Combs assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie at a Los Angeles resort hallway on March 5, 2016, to CNN weren’t true.
They mentioned protection legal professionals have been engaged in a “bald try to suppress a damning piece of proof towards him — a video of him violently beating a sufferer.”
In Could, Combs posted a video assertion wherein he mentioned he took “full accountability” for his actions within the video towards Cassie, an R&B singer whose authorized title is Casandra Ventura. She sued him final November, alleging years of sexual, bodily and emotional abuse. The lawsuit was settled the subsequent day.
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“I used to be disgusted then once I did it. I’m disgusted now,” Combs mentioned within the video.
The Related Press doesn’t usually title individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused except they arrive ahead publicly, as Ventura has achieved.
Combs additionally faces civil lawsuits by a number of women and men alleging they have been sexually assaulted by Combs over the last quarter century after being drugged.
Legal professionals for Combs have requested that the accusers and their legal professionals be ordered to not make public statements, saying they’ve already made “quite a few inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed toward assassinating Mr. Combs’s character within the press.”
Greater than a dozen lawsuits filed in Manhattan federal courtroom have been assigned to completely different judges, resulting in various early rulings on whether or not allegations have been sufficiently made.
In a single occasion, a decide on Wednesday dominated {that a} Tennessee girl who alleges Combs raped her in 2004 when she was 19 should proceed with out anonymity or under no circumstances. The decide wrote that defendants have a proper to analyze those that sue them and the general public has a proper to know who makes use of the courts.
A lawyer for Combs didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Thursday.
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