Prosecutors have filed a ‘superseding indictment’ against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, which updates the criminal case that accuses the musician of racketeering and sex trafficking.
There are no new charges in the updated indictment, but new allegations are made, including that Combs was involved in a kidnapping “during which he carried and displayed a firearm”, and that he paid $100,000 to security staff at a hotel to remove security footage of him assaulting former girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
The new filing in the Combs criminal case comes as sparring continues between attorney Tony Buzbee and Jay-Z, who was last year named as a co-defendant on one of the sexual assault lawsuits filed against Combs. Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, wants Buzbee sanctioned over his role in that lawsuit, on the basis the claims against him are flawed and full of inconsistencies.
Failure to sanction Buzbee, Carter said this week, would set a dangerous precedent allowing unscrupulous lawyers to “level reputation-destroying allegations indiscriminately in court” and then leverage them in a “sensationalist fashion outside of court, without ever properly inquiring into their truth”.
Combs has been in jail ever since he was charged with racketeering and sex trafficking last September, judges having repeatedly rejected his bids for bail.
He is accused of using his entertainment businesses to operate a ‘racketeering conspiracy’ that allowed him to sexually assault men and women, and then cover up those crimes. With the new allegations in the revised indictment, prosecutors say that conspiracy has been in operation since 2004, four years earlier than previously alleged.
The list of alleged victims has also grown with the filing of the new indictment, as has the list of drugs he is accused of using in order to keep his victims “obedient and compliant” while he sexually assaulted them at the parties he called “freak offs”. Psilocin, aka magic mushrooms, and methamphetamine have both been added to the list. It’s also alleged that he trafficked sex workers across state lines for these parties and filmed participants without their knowledge.
Combs continues to deny all the allegations against him, and earlier this month his legal team argued that videos that contain footage of the “freak offs” show only consensual sex. His lawyers also want full access to the videos, arguing that they have a right to that footage to properly prepare their client’s defence.
In addition to the criminal case, Combs is battling dozens of civil lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault. Carter was pulled into one of those lawsuits last December by an unnamed woman who claims both Combs and Carter raped her at an after-show party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.
Carter has strongly denied those allegations and insists that his accuser’s claims “strain the outer bounds of credulity”. So much so, those claims were clearly not subject to “even the most rudimentary diligence by the filing attorney”, that being Buzbee, who is involved in multiple lawsuits targeting Combs.
Under court rules, Buzbee is obliged to undertake due diligence to assess the credibility of his client’s claims and, by failing to do so, he should be sanctioned, Carter has argued.
Buzbee hit back at those allegations earlier this month, calling Carter’s bid to have him sanctioned and his client’s lawsuit dismissed “an outrageous and unprecedented attempt to silence” a victim of sexual assault.
He added that, even if there are some inconsistencies in his client’s claims, that isn’t surprising given the nature of her assault and the fact it happened more than two decades ago. And those inconsistencies are not grounds for dismissing the lawsuit or sanctioning Buzbee.
Carter hit back against the hit back on Wednesday. In a new court filing, he said that rather than undertaking the necessary due diligence in court, Buzbee has employed “press conferences, social media and media interviews” to “systematically weaponise the allegations” that have been made by his anonymous client “to damage Mr Carter’s reputation”.
The rapper, his filing adds, “seeks only to hold Mr Buzbee to the ethical standards that constrain any responsible attorney who would solemnly sign his name to allegations in court”.
If those ethical standards are not upheld, Carter goes on, “there is obvious, worrisome risk: someone in Mr Buzbee’s position could level reputation-destroying allegations indiscriminately in court, with an eye towards leveraging them in sensationalist fashion outside of court, without ever properly inquiring into their truth or facing accountability”.
“Even assuming Mr Buzbee had a reasonable basis initially to file the claim”, Carter concludes, “post-filing exposure of substantial inaccuracies should have led him to withdraw it”.
He should not be able to “continue, post-complaint, to whistle past demonstrated inaccuracies” in his client’s allegations “that are staring him in the face”. To that end, “sanctions are well warranted”.