Sean “Diddy” Combs has filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against a man who said he testified before a New York grand jury as part of the federal criminal sex trafficking case against the hip-hop music mogul.
That man, Courtney Burgess, has said in news interviews and on podcasts that he was in possession of several videos involving Combs that show the sexual assault of celebrities and apparent minors.
Combs’ lawsuit — which names Burgess, his lawyer, and the media company that owns the network NewsNation as defendants — says that Burgess lied in a bid to raise his public profile and destroy Combs’ reputation.
The lawsuit says Burgess and his Florida-based attorney, Ariel Mitchell, have engaged in a “willful scheme to fabricate and broadcast outrageous lies concerning Mr. Combs and then to leverage those falsehoods to gain social media fame, enrich themselves, and strip Mr. Combs of his reputation, livelihood, and right to a fair trial.”
The pair has for months fueled “a media frenzy, fabricating outlandish claims and stirring up baseless speculation about Mr. Combs, vying to outdo each other in a shameless competition to draw attention to themselves, with no regard for the truth,” Combs alleges in the lawsuit which was filed Wednesday night in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges.
Burgess, Mitchell, and NewsNation owner Nexstar Media Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider.
Combs’ attorney Erica Wolff said in a statement that her high-profile client — who has been locked up pretrial at a federal Brooklyn jail since his September 2024 arrest and indictment — “is taking a stand against the malicious falsehoods that have been fabricated and amplified by individuals seeking to profit at his expense.”
The defendants’ “falsehoods have poisoned public perception and contaminated the jury pool,” Wolff said, adding, “This complaint should serve as a warning that such intentional falsehoods, which undermine Mr. Combs’s right to a fair trial, will no longer be tolerated.”
Combs’ lawsuit says that the recordings Burgess says he saw do not exist.
“Burgess repeated this false claim many times to anyone who would listen, including reporters for major news outlets (including NewsNation, which recklessly repeated and amplified his lies as if they were true),” Combs said in the lawsuit.
Combs alleges in the lawsuit that NewsNation did not conduct any investigation before broadcasting the allegations “though it easily could have done so.”
Burgess, Mitchell, and NewsNation, the lawsuit alleges, “have caused profound reputational and economic injury and severe prejudice to Mr. Combs.”
Combs’ lawsuit says that Burgess has never met Combs or had any relationship with anyone in his family, yet Burgess has said that Combs’ late ex and mother of four of his children, Kim Porter, gave him a copy of her alleged memoir and videos showing the alleged sexual assault of intoxicated celebrities and minors.
“Those close to Ms. Porter, including her children and her roommate for over twenty years, had never heard of Mr. Burgess before he made this utterly implausible and completely false claim,” says the lawsuit.
Combs says the claims made by Burgess prompted investigators to issue a subpoena for him to testify before a grand jury that convened in Manhattan in October.
“In this pitiful spectacle, all pretense of objectivity has been abandoned, as a global audience feasts at the all-you-can-eat buffet of wild lies and conspiracy theories,” the lawsuit says.
At the center of the indictment against Combs are accusations he orchestrated “freak offs,” which prosecutors describe in court papers as “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded.”
In these alleged drug-fueled sex sessions, prosecutors say Combs “used force, threats of force, and coercion” to get female victims to engage in sex acts with male commercial sex workers.
Combs’ attorneys have argued in court papers that the video evidence prosecutors have of the so-called “freak offs” will vindicate the “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper at trial.
Combs has vehemently denied the federal charges against him, as well as all accusations of sexual abuse made in a flood of civil lawsuits against him.
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