Diddy Judge Rejects Claim That Prosecutors Leaked Surveillance Tape of Cassie Assault
The star's lawyers say the government leaked the tape and other evidence to "savage" his reputation, but the judge now says there's no proof to support that charge.
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A federal judge says Sean “Diddy” Combs can’t prove that prosecutors leaked the infamous 2016 surveillance video of him assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie – and is refusing to launch an investigation into his claims that the government is waging a “campaign” of such leaks.
In an order issued Monday, Judge Arun Subramanian denied Combs’ request for discovery and an evidentiary hearing into those allegations. Combs had argued that prosecutors were using media coverage to “taint the jury pool” and deprive him of a fair trial.
Most notably, the judge said that Combs had failed to show that government agents leaked the Cassie video, saying the accused mogul “doesn’t point to any sound basis for this conclusion.”
“Combs never considers the possibility that many people beyond Victim-1 and government agents likely had access to the video, including Combs’s team (who paid security officers at the Intercontinental Hotel “$100,000 in cash to destroy” the video) and hotel employees and contractors,” the judge wrote.
Though he denied the request from Combs’ legal team, the judge also reiterated previous warnings to prosecutors to closely safeguard grand jury materials and avoid sharing other improper information with the press.
“The court is sensitive to Combs’s concern about the publication of stories claiming to disclose inside information about this case from unnamed ‘federal law enforcement sources who are involved in the investigation,’” the judge wrote.
“The court has already taken steps in this regard, and it is open to tailored applications for relief as this case continues,” the judge added. “The court once again reminds the government and its agents that if specific information comes to light showing that they leaked prohibited information, action will be taken.”
Combs was indicted in September, charged with running a sprawling criminal operation aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” The case centers on elaborate “freak off” parties in which Combs and others would allegedly ply victims with drugs and then coerce them into having sex, as well as on alleged acts of violence to keep victims silent.
A trial is currently set to start on May 5. If convicted on all of the charges, Combs faces a potential life prison sentence.
The star’s legal team has spent months seeking to have him released on bail until the start of the trial. But after multiple failed attempts, his attorneys on Friday dropped their appeal of the bail issue, meaning the hip-hop mogul will remain behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until the trial kicks off.
In October, Combs’ attorneys warned the judge that there had been “a series of unlawful government leaks” in the case, leading to “damaging, highly prejudicial pre-trial publicity that can only taint the jury pool and deprive Mr. Combs of his right to a fair trial.”
The filing called the Cassie video – a clip that made headlines when CNN first aired in May — the “most egregious example” of such leaks, arguing it had been done in order to “mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself.”
“Rather than using the videotape as trial evidence, alongside other evidence that gives it context and meaning, the agents misused it in the most prejudicial and damaging way possible,” Diddy’s lawyers wrote at the time. “The government knew what it had: a frankly deplorable video recording of Sean Combs in a towel hitting, kicking and dragging a woman in full view of a camera in the hallway of the hotel.”
In a response weeks later, the government sharply denied those claims – and accused Combs’ lawyers of using such allegations as a ploy to “suppress a damning piece of evidence.”
“Without any factual basis, the leak motion seeks to suppress highly probative evidence … by claiming that it was grand jury material leaked by government agents,” prosecutors write. “But, as the defendant is fully aware, the video was not in the Government’s possession at the time of CNN’s publication and the Government has never, at any point, obtained the video through grand jury process.”
