Sean Combs, the upcoming music mogul allegations of sex trafficking and racketeeringfiled a defamation swimsuit on Wednesday in opposition to a person who stated in interviews that he had been given movies exhibiting Mr. Combs having intercourse with celebrities, together with assaults on individuals he stated gave the impression to be minors.
The man, Courtney Burgess, appeared last year as a personality within the burgeoning Web dialog about Mr. Combs, who’s awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail. Throughout appearances on true-crime podcasts and in an interview with the NewsNation cable community, Mr. Burgess stated he had movies of the conferences; in October he stated he testified earlier than a grand jury contemplating further costs in opposition to Mr. Combs.
Mr Combs’s lawsuit claims no such movies exist and accuses Mr Burgess of “making up outlandish claims and fueling baseless hypothesis” about him. It stated the accusations had induced critical harm to Mr. Combs’ popularity and tainted the grand jury that might ultimately hear the federal costs in opposition to him.
“Individuals who heard and believed Defendants’ lies accused Combs on social media, which is utilized by a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of viewers day by day, of being a lecherous ‘monster’ and a pedophile,” the swimsuit says.
Reached by cellphone Wednesday, Mr. Burgess stated, “I am a person of my phrase.”
“He had lots of guts to wish to put somebody on trial when he was going to rot in jail for all of the issues he is performed,” he stated.
Along with the felony costs, Mr. Combs faces greater than 30 civil cases wherein he’s accused of sexual assault. He pleaded not responsible to the costs and his legal professionals stated he had “by no means sexually assaulted anybody – grownup or minor, male or feminine”.
Mr. Combs’ lawsuit, filed in Federal District Courtroom in Manhattan, is the primary the musician has introduced alone for the reason that flood of lawsuits in opposition to him started greater than a 12 months in the past.
His swimsuit additionally incorporates defamation claims in opposition to a lawyer who represented Mr Burgess, Ariel Mitchell-Kidd, who discussed the alleged movies on NewsNation and names the tv community’s proprietor, Nexstar Media, as a defendant.
In an announcement, Ms Mitchell-Kidd known as the case “a pathetic ploy to silence victims and advocates”. She continued by saying, “I look ahead to submitting a counterclaim and guaranteeing that the court docket punishes not solely Didi, but additionally his legal professionals who filed this unlucky lawsuit for this frivolous and baseless submitting.”
On the day Mr. Burgess stated he testified earlier than a Manhattan grand jury, he appeared on NewsNation together with Ms Mitchell-Kidd and stated “two to 3” of the celebrities within the movies gave the impression to be presumably minors.
Representatives for Nexstar and NewsNation didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the lawsuit.
Mr. Burgess, who admitted he didn’t know Mr. Combs personally, stated he believed the supply of the video was Kim Porter, the girl with whom Mr. Combs had been in a critical relationship for a few years and with whom the mogul had three youngsters. He stated he obtained the movies via an middleman, together with a manuscript of what he described as a tough draft of Ms Porter’s memoir, which was later offered as a 59-page e-book on Amazon. Family and mates of Ms Porter, who died in 2018, dismissed it as fiction and Amazon pulled the e-book from its web site.
The lawsuit accuses Mr. Burgess of benefiting from what he known as a “faux memoir” and utilizing false claims to Web fame.
Mr. Burgess stated he testified to the grand jury that he threw away the unique flash drives containing the movies, however that his cellphone and e mail can also comprise copies. Ms Mitchell-Kidd stated the federal government had discovered Mr Burgess’ cellphone.
The swimsuit stated Ms Mitchell-Kidd repeated Mr Burgess’ claims in a latest documentary about Mr Combs known as The Making of a Unhealthy Boy, which started airing on the Peacock this month. Within the documentary, Ms Mitchell-Kidd stated Mr Burgess had turned the video over to the federal government – a declare Mr Combs’ legal professionals stated she knew was false as a result of “no such video exists”.
Mr Combs is because of stand trial in Could on costs he ran a felony “enterprise” accountable for coordinating drug-fueled and compelled intercourse, ie. “freaks”. He claims that each one sexual contacts had been consensual.
