NOTE: The next article comprises disturbing content material. Please learn at your personal discretion.
Seven new lawsuits have been filed towards Sean “Diddy” Combs, together with one alleging the rape of a 13-year-old lady. They arrive as his legal professionals tried once more Monday to get him freed on bail — and complained {that a} “contemporary wave of publicity” is endangering his proper to a good prison trial.
Within the lawsuits filed Sunday in state and federal courts, 4 males and three ladies, all nameless, allege they have been sexually assaulted by Combs at events during the last 20 years.
Combs, 54, has pleaded not responsible to federal intercourse trafficking expenses contained in an indictment unsealed the day after his Sept. 16 arrest. Costs embrace allegations he coerced and abused ladies for years, aided by associates and workers, and silenced victims via blackmail and violence, together with kidnapping, arson and bodily beatings.
He has remained incarcerated pending a Could 5 trial after two judges denied bail in rulings being appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals.
Combs’ legal professionals requested a decide Sunday to order potential witnesses and their legal professionals to cease making statements that might stop a good trial.
Get breaking Nationwide information
For information impacting Canada and world wide, join breaking information alerts delivered on to you once they occur.
“Because the Courtroom is conscious, Mr. Combs has been the goal of an endless stream of allegations by potential witnesses and their counsel within the press,” they wrote. “These potential witnesses and their legal professionals have made quite a few inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed toward assassinating Mr. Combs’s character within the press.”
The newest lawsuits are drawn from what legal professionals say are greater than 100 accusers who’re planning authorized motion towards Combs. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Tony Buzbee introduced the deliberate litigation at an Oct. 1 information convention and posted a 1-800 quantity for accusers to name.
As earlier than, Combs’ representatives dismissed the most recent lawsuits as “clear makes an attempt to garner publicity.” They stated Combs and his authorized workforce “have full confidence within the info, their authorized defences, and the integrity of the judicial course of.”
Combs “has by no means sexually assaulted anybody — grownup or minor, man or lady,” they added.
One of many lawsuits filed Sunday alleges {that a} 13-year-old lady who was invited to a celebration by a limousine driver after the Video Music Awards in Manhattan in September 2000 was raped by a “male superstar” after which by Combs as people recognized solely as “Movie star A,” a male, and “Movie star B,” a feminine, watched.
One other lawsuit alleged that Combs sexually assaulted a 17-year-old male at a Manhattan resort penthouse occasion in 2022.
Within the lawsuits, it was alleged that the plaintiffs believed they’d been fed drinks laced with medicine earlier than they have been assaulted.
In the meantime, legal professionals for Combs on Monday instructed the 2nd Circuit in a submitting that he’ll renew his bail software earlier than the decrease courtroom primarily based on “important modified circumstances.” They stated the problems embrace “constitutional issues stemming from his circumstances of confinement and proof contained in not too long ago produced discovery.”
In a submitting final week, prosecutors instructed the appeals courtroom that judges denied bail after proof confirmed Combs “used methodical and complex means to silence and intimidate witnesses all through the racketeering conspiracy and through the Authorities’s investigation.”
—
© 2024 The Canadian Press