Diddy prosecutors deny sharing the Cassie attack video

Prosecutors are vigorously defending Sean Combs' claims that they leaked the bombshell video that showed him brutally beating his ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura in a hotel hallway in March 2016. In a lengthy rebuke filed late Wednesday night, prosecutors said the copy of the surveillance video was still the one they downloaded from CNN's current newscast last May. In more than 39 pages, they argued that Combs' most recent three motions seeking to exclude the video from his upcoming trial, gain early access to the prosecution's list of victims' names and seek a gag order against witnesses and their attorneys are all denied should.

Combs, 54, was arrested on federal charges on September 16 and is in a federal prison in Brooklyn awaiting trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. The former billionaire and founder of Bad Boy Entertainment has pleaded not guilty. His trial in downtown Manhattan is scheduled for May 5, 2025.

“All three of the defendant’s motions should be denied in their entirety,” prosecutors wrote, saying that Combs’ request for an evidentiary hearing and “suppression” of the Ventura video “must be denied” in court. They said the video was not proprietary material when CNN obtained it, and they readily admitted that their own attempts to obtain the video failed. They said that as of Wednesday they had still “not received the Intercontinental video broadcast by CNN from any source other than the public broadcast.”

“As the defendant is fully aware, the video was not in the government's possession at the time of its release by CNN, and at no time did the government obtain the video as part of a grand jury proceeding,” prosecutors in the Southern District said New York wrote.

“The defendant refuses to acknowledge that several people other than government officials –
including some of them [Combs’] “My own employees may have had access to the Intercontinental video,” they continued. “In fact, the government continues to investigate who had access to and may have received the video, including, for example, employees of the hotel, the security team contracted by the hotel, and members of the defendant's staff who, as the record indicates, attempted to do so following the incident March 2016 to obtain video surveillance.”

Regarding Combs' request for the victims' names to be included in a so-called “Bill of Individuals,” a written list of claims in a lawsuit, prosecutors said it was too early. “Here, all discovery will be submitted by December 31, 2024, more than four months before trial, and the government's ongoing productions have intentionally prioritized items such as search warrant affidavits – which contextualize the charges in the indictment – as well as other materials requested of the.” Defendants.” They said that if Combs later claims he did not have enough time to prepare for trial, “the appropriate relief would be” to request a postponement of the May trial date he specifically requested. “Given the defendant's criminal history, the government has serious concerns about the victim's safety and the possibility of witness tampering if a list of victim names were presented to the defendant,” they said.

They said Combs' third request for a witness silence order should also be denied as an “extremely excessive relief.” They described it as “nothing more than another attempt to force the government to prematurely disclose its witness list.”

Combs' camp did not immediately respond to a request for comment on government filings. When his lawyers filed their motion earlier this month to request the victims' names, they said prosecutors had “unjustly” forced Combs to “play a guessing game” as he prepared his defense. They said Combs' 14-page indictment lacked “specificity,” leaving them unable to determine who the other unidentified alleged victims were – at least aside from the primary victim, who was widely believed to be Ventura.

“The government is forcing [Combs]“It is unfair to play a guessing game,” wrote defense attorneys Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos. “Without clarity from the government, Mr. Combs has no way of knowing what allegations the government is relying on for prosecution purposes.” The lawyers said Combs’ position was “difficult by the barrage of baseless allegations made by desperate plaintiffs — largely anonymously – filing civil lawsuits with him to seek compensation from Mr. Combs and others has become even more difficult.”

A preliminary hearing in the criminal case is scheduled for December 18th. His indictment accuses Combs of “abusing, threatening and coercing” several unidentified victims “in order to fulfill his sexual desires.” Prosecutors alleged that Combs engaged in a “sustained and pervasive pattern of abuse” but were particularly vague about the dates and details of people other than Ventura, who was not named.

In conversation with Rolling Stone Last month, Elizabeth Geddes, a former federal prosecutor who delivered closing arguments in the government's successful prosecution of R. Kelly in Brooklyn, described Combs' racketeering prosecution as following a “Glecier format,” a simple style that resembles a famous case was named, United States v. Glecier. She said such a format had the advantage of offering witnesses more protection. “That way they don't have to list every single predicate extortion they want to prove in court. They can only list broad categories of crimes [without] “Claims of individual cases or individual victims,” Geddes said.

Outside of the criminal case, Combs also faces more than two dozen lawsuits filed by plaintiffs alleging claims ranging from sexual harassment to rape. The flood of civil lawsuits began when Ventura filed her dramatic sex trafficking complaint last November. Combs settled with Ventura for an undisclosed sum within 24 hours, but her 35-page complaint, now the centerpiece of the music mogul's prosecution, opened the floodgates. In March, Combs' homes were searched, and in May, CNN obtained and released the harrowing hotel surveillance video showing Combs throwing, kicking, stomping and dragging Ventura in the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. After initially denying Ventura's claims against him, Combs issued a video apology related to the incident, admitting that his “behavior in this video was inexcusable.”