Analysis or speculation? My TV discussions on the Sean 'Diddy' Combs federal raids
The searches last week in Los Angeles and Miami have sparked rampant speculation amid lawsuits alleging widespread sexual misconduct.
I’ve written and reported a few important articles lately, from the plight of a mentally ill woman jailed for civil contempt with LA Fitness to the public corruption trial of a longtime City of Los Angeles employee.
But of course, all anyone wants me to do is speculate about when hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs might be charged with a crime.
I’ve appeared on National Public Radio, Toronto Today, CBS Chicago, BBC World Radio and LiveNOW from Fox to discuss the March 25 federal raids on Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami.
The raids are of course big news: Combs is a major celebrity with significant business holdings beyond the music industry, and he’s been under heightened public scrutiny amid lawsuits alleging years of sexual abuse, including rape and forced prostitution. But there is no information about the criminal investigation that led federal agents to obtain search warrants for Combs’ properties, and a lot of the coverage in the days after the raids has been irresponsible.
Federal investigators do not appear to be leaking information about a highly sensitive criminal investigation into a major celebrity to tabloiders looking for clicks, so the actual information about what’s going on is next to nothing. That means YouTubers and news organizations are revisiting the lawsuits against Combs while trying to explain the criminal investigation, and they’re conflating civil claims with criminal allegations. Along the way, pure speculation is presented as legal analysis.
Several reputable news agencies, including the Los Angeles Times, confirmed with law enforcement that the searches are related to sex trafficking allegations that have been mounting against Combs since his former longtime girlfriend Casandra Ventura, known as the R&B singer Cassie, sued him in November alleging years of abuse, including rape and forced prostitution. The raids also were confirmed by Homeland Security Investigations, which is under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and investigates sex trafficking.
Combs settled confidentially with Cassie and her lawyers at Wigdor Law LLP in New York City two days after the lawsuit was filed. Then on Dec. 6, Wigdor’s firm filed another lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on behalf of a Jane Doe plaintiff that alleges Combs raped her in 2003 when she was 17 years old. Combs is a defendant alongside Harve Pierre, who is president of Bad Boy Entertainment, as well as Bad Boy as a company and Combs’ other company Daddy’s House Recordings, Inc.
The plaintiff in the case is identified in the court filings as Jane Doe, but Combs’ lawyers wouldn’t stipulate to allowing her to proceed anonymously, and U.S. District Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke sided with them on Feb. 29 and said the woman must publicly identify herself because “without more specific support, Plaintiff fails to overcome the prejudice to Defendants and public interest factors implicated here.”
“The Court recognizes that public disclosure of Doe’s identity could have a significant impact on her, particularly given the graphic and disturbing allegations in this case,” Clarke wrote in a 12-page order. “While the Court does not take Plaintiff’s concerns lightly, the Court cannot rely on generalized, uncorroborated claims that disclosure would harm Plaintiff to justify her anonymity.”
The plaintiff won’t have to identify herself until after Clarke decides a motion for judgment on the pleadings for the corporate defendants. It’s unclear if that will now happen, though, because Diddy’s lawyers could seek to stay all civil litigation because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
On Friday, Wigdor and his co-counsel Michael J. Willemin and Meredith A. Firetog filed an amended complaint with more allegations about Bad Boy’s role, including that Combs “used the facts of his ownership of and title at Bad Boy in order to facilitate the unlawful conduct described herein.”
Diddy also is being sued in New York state court by a woman who says he raped her when she was a student at Syracuse University in 1991, and in another lawsuit by a woman who says he raped her in 1990. He also recently was sued by producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones in the SDNY, along with Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge, Motown Records and former Motown Chairman and CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam. Diddy’s son Justin Dior Combs also is a defendant.
UMG is represented by Donald Zakarim of Pryor Cashman LLP, who said in a recent filing that he told Jones’ lawyer, Tyrone Blackburn, that he’ll seek sanctions if he doesn’t dismiss his claims. Blackburn dismissed his claims against Habtemariam last week, as well as claims against Chalice Recording Studios, though he said he plans to refiled against Chalice in Los Angeles.
The March 28 letter to U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken said Blackburn had “made no effort” to serve the lawsuit on the UMG defendants after “having filed a complaint making baseless accusations of criminal behavior,” so they waived service to allow them to file for dismissal.
“It appears that Mr. Blackburn believes that unjustly accused defendants should be powerless to respond to such a pleading,” according to the letter, which says the defendants were entitled to waive service “instead of allowing Mr. Blackburn to endlessly file unauthorized pleadings in his unilateral game of pleading ‘whack-a-mole.’”
“Perhaps he believes that he can make outrageously false allegations in a pleading, never serve them, let them marinate in the press for a month and then completely abandon them, file equally false and legally baseless claims based on completely different accusations and there is ‘no harm, no foul.’ There is harm and there is a foul,” Zakarim wrote.
Blackburn said in his own March 28 letter to Judge Oetken that the motion to dismiss the first amended complaint “was filed in bad faith and was nothing more than a Public Relations stunt by the Defendants.”
“This motion was only filed to distract from the fact that the defendants’ business partner, Sean Combs’ homes in Los Angeles, California, and Miami, Florida, were both raided on March 25, 2024, by the Department of Homeland Security,” Blackburn wrote. “Defendants are desperate to try and rewrite history. However, the facts will show that they gave him unfettered access to financial resources, did not have proper oversight and accounting for how the money was being used, and were his partners, despite what they are saying now.”
Also on Friday, Blackburn moved to amend his complaint again and said in a letter that it’s “clear that many of the claims raised by Plaintiff in his Second Amended Pleading are accurate, as the events of March 25, 2024, have revealed.” He referenced the March 25 arrest of Brendan Paul, whom his lawsuit calls Combs’ “drug mule,” at an airport in Miami for cocaine possession while trying to board Combs’ jet.
On Monday, UMG lawyers filed an opposition that said the proposed amendment only seeks to further delay the dismissal of the claims.
“In accordance with Rule 11, Mr. Blackburn represented to this Court that the allegations of the FAC had a proper legal and factual basis,” according to the filing. “Why then does the proposed [Second Amended Complaint] abandon every single maliciously false foundational allegation of the [First Amended Complaint]?”
UMG’s lawyers also take issue with Blackburn’s reference to the March 25 raids, saying, “No facts about such investigation have been disclosed.”
“Mr. Blackburn thus has no knowledge about such investigation, not that the absence of knowledge seems to deter Mr. Blackburn from making baseless accusations,” according to the filing.
As of late Monday, Judge Oetken had not ruled on Blackburn’s request to amend. The proposed new complaint is 98 pages.
No lawyer has yet entered a notice of appearance for Combs or his son in Blackburn’s lawsuit. Combs is represented in the federal lawsuit from Wigdor’s firm by Jonathan Davis and Anthony LoMonaco in New York.
Combs also added Los Angeles lawyer Shawn Holley to his defense in that case, whose long celebrity client list includes George Foreman, Danny Masterson, Lindsey Lohan and Justin Bieber, as well as New York City lawyer Bobbi Sternheim, whose past clients include Ghislaine Maxwell.
Additionally, Combs has enlisted Aaron Dyer of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, who co-chairs the firm’s corporate investigations and white collar defense team.
A statement released by Combs’ public relations team last week is attributed to Dyer. Dyer is a former assistant U.S. attorney who is based in Los Angeles.
Combs likely also has a lawyer in Florida who is experienced in federal investigations there, because federal search warrants must be authorized by judges within the district they are being served. That means the search warrant served at his Los Angeles home would have been authorized by a U.S. magistrate judge in the Central District of California, while the search warrant for his Miami home would be signed by a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida. I also expect he has or will hire a New York-based lawyer as lead counsel because the investigation is out of the Southern District of New York.
Federal investigators also could be serving more search warrants. We know about the raids at Combs’ homes because they were highly visible. What about possible “raids” on his online accounts such as email servers, or warrants served on his financial accounts?
TMZ reported on Friday that (citing anonymous sources, of course) that his businesses have been served subpoenas, which aren’t the same as search warrants but still carry massive legal weight. I wrote about a Los Angeles real estate developer serving six years in federal prison for bribing now-former City Councilman Jose Huizar who was convicted of falsifying business records that had been subpoenaed by the feds.
I discussed some of the possible angles for investigators on LiveNOW from Fox on Friday night.
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