The prosecution in the Diddy case issued a scathing response to various of the defense’s motions on Wednesday (October 30), according to court documents reportedly obtained by AllHipHop. They sought to convince a judge that Sean Combs’ requests for a gag order, an investigation into alleged leaks, and revealing alleged victim and witness names are misguided efforts that seek to conflate his responses to his various civil lawsuits with evidence suppression and a “hijacking” of his criminal case. As such, the feds urged the judge in this case to deny these motions. One of the feds’ first clap-backs concerned allegations that they leaked the Cassie video as grand jury information to the press.
However, federal prosecutors claim that Diddy’s team failed to show evidence of the leak of any grand jury material in the criminal case for alleged sex trafficking and racketeering. They claim that the leak motion aims to “suppress highly probative evidence” such as the Cassie video. Furthermore, the feds alleged that the Bad Boy mogul’s team is well-aware that the government never had access to that video at the time of its release and that they never got it through a grand jury process. As for other alleged grand jury information leaks alleged by the defense, the prosecution alleges they “grasped at straws” in other accusations about supposed “law enforcement sources” leaking to the press.
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“The defendant cannot credibly claim that he will suffer unfair surprise at trial,” Diddy’s prosecutors claimed. “Rather, it is plain that the defendant’s request for a bill of particulars containing victim names is merely a vehicle to attempt to prematurely restrict the Government’s proof at trial and use these criminal proceedings to defend himself in the press against complainants in separate civil litigation. This improper request should be denied in its entirety, particularly here, where there are serious and ongoing concerns of victim and witness safety, tampering and intimidation.” The feds believe Combs tried to “hijack the criminal proceeding” to deal with his civil lawsuits, and that he doesn’t need a witness list six months before his trial begins.
In addition, they characterized Diddy’s motion as either a “blanket [gag] order” for all accusers or a “limited order” that would reveal witnesses months before trial. In both cases, they alleged this is an unprecedented and hostile use of local criminal law to “gag civil claimants whether or not their statements [connect] to this criminal proceeding.” While prosecutors denied any grand jury press leak, they identified only one alleged source – a supposed Homeland Security officer – in the news articles cited by Puff as a “plausible connection” to the investigation. They made it clear that the information in the alleged source’s discussion was mostly already public record. Even though they agreed with the defense that “extrajudicial commentary by [involved] law enforcement officers” is unacceptable, this source from a search is in no way a part of the prosecution.
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