Sean “Diddy” Combs and his legal team are not happy with how federal prosecutors are handling his case.
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In a letter to the judge, Combs’ attorneys said that these notes include attorney-client material about defense witnesses and strategy.
According to reports from CNN, his legal team describes the search of his cell as a violation of the disgraced music mogul’s constitutional rights.
“The targeted seizure of a pre-trial detainee’s work product and privileged materials – created in preparation for trial – is outrageous government conduct amounting to a substantive due process violation,” Combs’ lawyers wrote, asking Judge Arun Subramanian to hold an evidentiary hearing.
Diddy’s lawyers first learned that prosecutors possessed his notes from a court filing late Friday night. Prosecutors disclosed in the filing that the notes were obtained during a nationwide pre-planned sweep of Bureau of Prison facilities. Because of information allegedly found in the notes, they suggested that Combs was attempting to influence witnesses ahead of his trial.
“The strong inference to be drawn from the defendant’s communications with Witness-2 and his personal notes is that the defendant paid Witness-2 after she posted her statement,” prosecutors wrote in the filing, insisting the notes were reviewed by individuals not involved in the case before they were turned over.
Combs is set to be in court on Friday as his lawyers try to get him released on bond for the third time.
This comes as attorney Tony Buzbee–who is representing clients in several cases of sexual assault against Diddy–denies that he tried to extort a “high-profile” male celebrity.
The legal team for the unnamed star, who identified anonymously as “John Doe” in a lawsuit filed Monday, accuses Buzbee of “shamelessly attempting to extort exorbitant sums from him” with the threat of litigation containing “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault,” according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY.
The Texas-based attorney allegedly sent correspondence to the anonymous celeb earlier this month, describing the man as a friend of Combs “based on the fact that the two often attended similar events frequented by celebrities,” according to the complaint. The alleged extortion demand stated Doe raped several minors, both male and female, who claimed to be drugged at parties hosted by Combs.
According to the complaint, Buzbee threatened to “find an untold number of other ‘victims’” to issue similar abuse claims against the celebrity. The suit goes on to claim that the attorney threatened if Doe didn’t agree to a “confidential mediation” to resolve the legal matter, Buzbee and his team would “take a different course.”
Doe’s attorneys said the allegations against the celeb are “nothing more than a weapon in a calculated plot to destroy (his) high-profile reputation for profit, despite the complete absence of any factual basis for such claims.”
