Prosecutors have denied they leaked footage of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs beating his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
The rapper’s legal team had requested the surveillance footage of him physically assaulting his then-girlfriend at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 be suppressed.
However, the prosecution has this week fought back against the request, filing a statement arguing there is no evidence they were the source of the leak. The video was first published by news outlet CNN in May.
“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,” the court document read.
The statement went on to argue that Diddy’s legal team was “grasping at straws”, pointing out that the judge presiding over the case had already determined Diddy, 54, to be “a danger regarding obstruction of justice and witness tampering” and “a danger to the safety of others in the community more generally”.
The video in question, time-stamped from 2016, showed Diddy grabbing his then-girlfriend Cassie, now 38, by her neck as well as dragging her across the floor and repeatedly kicking her as she lay in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel.
He is currently imprisoned at a Brooklyn, New York, detention centre as he awaits trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
