Sean “Diddy” Combs is asking the court to bar potential witnesses in his criminal case from speaking to the press after a particularly damning interview from a grand jury witness.
Lawyers for the disgraced rap mogul had previously filed a motion in late October requesting a sweeping gag order against anyone who could potentially be called to testify.
On Sunday, they filed a new motion asking the court to “immediately restrain extrajudicial statements by potential witnesses and their counsel” while the earlier motion is being considered.
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The filing was in response to several interviews given by a music producer named Courtney Burgess, who claims to have tapes showing Combs allegedly sexually assaulting eight celebrities: four men, two underage boys, and two women.
The celebrities are not being named since they’re allegedly victims of sex crimes.
The “Bad Boy for Life” artist was arrested in September on suspicion of sex trafficking and racketeering for allegedly forcing women to participate in days-long sex parties he dubbed “freak-offs.” Combs and his lawyers have denied the charges.
But more than 150 alleged victims—many of them men and boys—have since come forward, and lawyers have filed more than two dozen civil suits against Combs.
The resulting media frenzy has “substantially interfered” with Combs’ right to a fair trial, his lawyers argued in a motion, asking the court to impose a gag order to avoid a “carnival atmosphere” surrounding the high-profile case.
In their response, prosecutors said enforcing such a broad gag order would require them to hand over their list of potential witnesses a full six months before the trial. They called the request “unprecedented” and a “fool’s errand”—as well as potentially dangerous for the witnesses in question.
In the meantime, Burgess appeared on a true crime podcast claiming he had been given USB drives with eight tapes showing Combs sexually assaulting the unnamed celebrities.
Prosecutors saw the podcast and called Burgess to testify before the grand jury in Combs’ case. After he testified, Burgess told reporters outside the courthouse that he didn’t personally know Combs but that thanks to his 35 years in the music business, their social and professional networks overlapped.
Soon after, he and his lawyer appeared on NewsNation, and he told host Ashleigh Banfield more about the tapes. He wouldn’t say who they were from, but he said based on the locations and camera angles, it was clear the celebrities didn’t know they were being filmed. All of them appeared drunk or under the influence of drug, he said.
“How many appear to be potentially victimized?” Banfield asked.
“I think all, to be honest, all were victims,” Burgess said, adding that the celebrities didn’t seem to know what was happening to them.
In their request for an immediate gag order, Combs’ lawyers called the claims “false and outrageous,” and said no such videos exist. They also tried to blame the interviews for a raft of leaks from law enforcement officials, who have given interviews to CNN on condition of anonymity.
Combs’ trial is set to begin May 5, 2025. Until then, he’s being held in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after the judge in the case ruled he was a flight risk and liable to threaten potential witnesses with violence.
On Monday, he celebrated his 55th birthday behind bars. On the menu: cheese pizza, pasta salad, and green beans for lunch, followed by chicken or tofu fried rice for dinner with black beans and carrots, the New York Post reported.
