Another lawsuit was filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs yesterday - separate to the flood of lawsuits promised by Texas-based lawyer Tony Buzbee - in which a woman claims she was assaulted and raped by the musician and his associates in retaliation for comments she made on a FaceTime call.
The latest lawsuit was filed with the courts in California on the same day lawyers working for Combs submitted a letter to the court in New York in relation to the criminal case that has been launched against their client. Combs was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering last month.
His attorneys want to know the names of the people who have made claims against Combs as part of the criminal investigation, insisting that information is required to mount an effective defence.
They also add that this case is unique because a combination of Combs’ fame, and the conduct of lawyers and law enforcement personnel, have prompted “a torrent of allegations by unidentified complainants, spanning from the false to outright absurd”.
For Combs’s lawyers, rather than suggesting that their client’s misconduct occurred on a massive scale, that “torrent of allegations” is the result of a “hysterical media circus” in part instigated by lawyers and law enforcement.
The letter to the court references Combs “celebrity status and wealth” and the publicity around his settlement of the lawsuit filed last year by his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, and repeats allegations that those working on his criminal investigation have leaked documents and made “false inflammatory statements”. These things together have had “a pervasive ripple effect”, the letter claims, which resulted “in a torrent of allegations” from anonymous accusers.
The lawsuits being prepped by Buzbee, the first six of which were filed earlier this week, are then mentioned. Buzbee announced that work at a press conference where, the letter says, “he claimed to represent 120 accusers making outrageous and deeply prejudicial allegations, including violent sexual assault and sexual abuse of minors. This publicity stunt, broadcast on Instagram, included a ‘1-800’ number that reportedly received 12,000 calls in the first 24 hours”.
“These accusations”, it goes on, “came on the heels of more than a dozen lawsuits previously filed and currently pending, several of which have already been discredited but only after irreparably damaging Mr Combs’ character and reputation. These swirling allegations have created a hysterical media circus that, if left unchecked, will irreparably deprive Mr Combs of a fair trial, if they haven’t already”.
The latest civil lawsuit targeting Combs has been filed by Ashley Parham. She claims she was first introduced to Combs in 2018 on a FaceTime call after meeting a friend of the musician in a bar in California. She alleges that Combs became angry on the call after she failed to acknowledge his fame and also accused him of involvement in the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
She says Combs stated on the call that she would “pay” for her comments. She subsequently agreed to meet Combs’ friend at his home in California, not knowing that Combs himself would be at the property. Once there, she alleges, Combs threatened to assault her with a knife. She was subsequently drugged and violently raped by Combs and three other men.
After the assault, she claims Combs first offered her money to say she had consented to the ordeal and then, when she refused, made threats against her family. Having escaped the property of Combs’s friend, she says she went to a hospital for treatment before reporting the assault to two police departments.
According to USA Today, she says she did not name Combs in her police reports, partly “because she believed she would be ignored” and partly because she feared she “would be further harmed by defendant Diddy if he discovered she named him to police”.
Combs remains in jail following his arrest on the criminal charges, though his lawyers are still seeking to secure him bail.