Italian
As three men filed a trio of civil cases in New York today claiming that in separate, recent incidents, each was drugged and raped by Sean “Diddy” Combs, the incarcerated rap mogul was granted a laptop, strictly for legal purposes, in the federal detention center where he is being held ahead of his trial.
State Supreme Court Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that Combs would be allowed access to a laptop that will be pre-loaded with the discovery materials for his upcoming sex trafficking and racketeering trial. He will have access to the files only, “seven days per week from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m,” the court order states. Access to the laptop had been requested by the jailed mogul’s attorneys after he was denied bail for a third time in late November.
The three cases filed on Thursday are notable not only because they all allege the sexual assaults occurred from 2019 to 2022, or for the similarities in the accounts of what allegedly occurred between each man and Combs, but also because they were filed by a lawyer not associated with Houston attorney Tony Buzbee. His firm is representing the majority of the civil lawsuits already filed against the accused mogul.
“These complaints are full of lies. We will prove them false and seek sanctions against every unethical lawyer who filed fictional claims against him,” attorneys for Combs told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.
One of the men, who is kept anonymous in the legal filing, claimed to have joined Combs and 10 others at the Marquee nightclub in New York in 2019. At an afterparty, he claims he was personally handed a cocktail by the rapper. As he started to feel woozy from the drink, the plaintiff allegedly heard chilling words he said were uttered by Combs to others in the room.
“He is ready to party,” the plaintiff claims Combs said.
The plaintiff said that he drifted in and out of consciousness and saw a man and woman recording him as he was being forcibly sodomized by Combs. When he regained consciousness, the plaintiff claimed he was handed $2,500 by the same man and woman who reportedly filmed him being assaulted. The alleged victim said he was told that the cash came from Combs.
A second plaintiff said that he met Combs in the summer of 2020 at his East Hampton home where, after having what was meant to be an alcohol-based cocktail that was provided by Combs, he drifted out of consciousness. As he came in and out of consciousness, he said he saw Combs and other individuals he knew from Bad Boys Entertainment as they “took turns raping him,” according to the filing, which calls Combs’ actions “shocking and outrageous” and passing “the reasonable bounds of decency.”
The third plaintiff claimed in the filing that he met Combs in 2006 when he began to work for the mogul, running errands for him. It was in February 2020 that he said he met Combs at the InterContinental Hotel in New York to discuss unpaid wages. The man explained that he accepted a drink from Combs, who told him to lie down and rest when he wasn’t feeling well. He noted that he woke up on his stomach with his pants pulled down as the mogul assaulted him. The plaintiff claimed he was told he’d “look like an idiot” if he were to tell the authorities.
An email sent to attorney Thomas Giuffra, who is representing the three John Does, was not immediately returned. Speaking with ABC News, Giuffra said he found the similarities in the cases notable.
“It was a usual thing. Come for a meeting, have a drink, you get woozy, you wake up to Sean Combs raping you, you get ushered out the door. I was struck by the similarity,” he told ABC News reporter Aaron Katersky. “I was contacted by in excess of 60 people. I only chose to file these three so far because I vetted them out. They’re very consistent with the pattern that Sean Combs followed.”
The details of these cases are strikingly similar to multiple accounts in civil cases previously filed against Combs and notably to accounts from Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, whose explosive allegations in a legal filing earlier this year launched massive amounts of speculation around the mogul’s lifestyle and infamous parties that has yet to simmer down.
The cases are also similar to the account of another plaintiff who spoke with CNN in an interview this week. However, that interview revealed several inconsistencies in his account of what happened between him and Combs and led Buzbee’s firm to file an amended legal complaint correcting key facts, including the year of the alleged assault and whether or not the plaintiff was married.
The mogul was arrested on Sept. 16 and charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he will remain until his trial in May.
Combs pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges on Tuesday, Sept. 17, in federal court in Manhattan.
