Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs are formally asking a judge to exclude the hotel footage that shows the rap mogul abusing his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, ahead of his upcoming trial.
Source: John Shearer
In the surveillance video from March 2016, which was released by CNN on May 17, 2024, Ventura is seen leaving a room at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles and walking toward a bank of elevators as her then-boyfriend chases after her. When Combs catches up to her, he grabs Cassie by the neck and throws her to the floor. The disgraced music mogul goes on to violently kick her before grabbing her purse and suitcase.
While Ventura lies on the floor, Combs kicks her again and drags her back toward the room before letting go and walking away. Just a few moments later, he grabs an object from a table and forcefully throws it toward her. The altercation captured in the video matched the allegations Cassie made in a now-settled lawsuit she filed against Diddy in November 2023.
Following the video’s release, Combs posted an apology video addressing the incident, saying, “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video,” he said while speaking to the camera on May 19, 2024.
“Disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it, I’m disgusted now,” he said at the time. “I went and I sought out professional help, going to therapy, going to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I’m so sorry, but I’m committed to be a better man. Each and every day.”
Despite seemingly owning up to what happened in the video, Diddy’s legal team is now backtracking, insisting that the footage is “wholly inaccurate.”
“There is no longer any dispute that the CNN footage from March 5, 2016, at the InterContinental Hotel, offered by the government at three separate bail hearings, is wholly inaccurate, having been altered, manipulated, sped-up, and edited to be out of sequence,” his lawyers claim in New York City filing on Friday, April 17, according to PEOPLE.
The motion also alleges that CNN paid for the footage and presented it out of order, destroying the original tape.
“Accordingly, all the footage from CNN is inaccurate and inadmissible,” the motion alleges. “As for the two items of footage filmed by an iPhone 6, those pieces of footage are inaccurate and inadmissible as well.”
Combs’ lawyers argue in the filing that the CNN video and iPhone videos must be excluded from trial because the government cannot provide sufficient evidence of their authenticity.
This comes as legal docs obtained by TMZ reveal Cassie’s claims that Diddy is demanding she turn over her bank statements and a book she wrote about him. The singer is trying to get the court to kill a subpoena she claims Combs’ legal team served her.
Ventura claims Diddy sent her a subpoena on March 19 demanding she turn over “all draft memoirs, autobiographies, narratives, diaries, journals or notes … and any communications about plans to publish or threaten to publish such a document.” She goes on to allege that he demanded she hand over her bank statements.
Earlier in Diddy’s case, attorneys Marc Agnifilo claimed Cassie told her ex she had written a book about him that he could “catch and kill” for $30 million. Back in September, Agnifilo claimed that Cassie had her lawyer call Diddy’s lawyer on a recorded line, telling him she had written a book about their relationship that she planned to publish. He also claimed Cassie offered Diddy the option to buy the rights to the book for $30 million to prevent it from being published.
Agnifilo claims Cassie switched lawyers, and her new attorney told Diddy in November 2023 that the book was no longer important because a civil sex case was going to be filed.
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