An unnamed “celebrity” has filed a civil extortion lawsuit against Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who reps more than 100 of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ alleged abuse victims — claiming the lawyer is threatening to file a lawsuit containing “wildly false horrific allegations” if the anonymous bigwig doesn’t pay up.
In a lawsuit filed Monday (Nov. 18) in Los Angeles, lawyers for a “high-profile” public figure identified only as “John Doe” claim that Buzbee is “shamelessly attempting to extort exorbitant sums from him” by threatening to “unleash entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault.”
“This is textbook extortion,” writes the celebrity’s attorneys, who hail from the prominent law firm Quinn Emanuel. “Buzbee pretends to be speaking truth to power, but that is far from the truth.”
Buzbee allegedly contacted the man earlier this month with “vile” false claims: That he had “raped multiple minors, both male and female, who had been drugged at parties hosted by Combs.” If the celebrity did not agree to a “confidential mediation,” Buzbee allegedly warned he would “take a different course.”
“Plaintiff presently faces a gun to his head,” the lawsuit reads. “Either repeatedly pay an exorbitant sum of money … or else face the threat of an untold number of civil suits and financial and personal ruin.”
In a statement to Billboard on Monday, Buzbee said he and his firm “won’t allow the powerful and their high-dollar lawyers intimidate or silence sexual survivors” and warned that a lawsuit against the unnamed plaintiff was looming.
“It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients,” Buzbee wrote. “That effort is a gross miscalculation. I am a US Marine. I won’t be silenced or intimidated. Neither will my clients. Since our professional efforts at resolution obviously have failed, we will instead disclose the demand letters we sent at the time we filed suit.”
Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations over the past year, starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a bombshell federal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after the indictment, Buzbee joined the fray by holding a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than a dozen such lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Doe plaintiffs.
At the time, Buzbee explicitly warned that he would name others: “We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors.” And later, in an interview with TMZ, he said several such celebrities had settled on private terms to remain anonymous.
In Monday’s complaint, the unnamed celebrity said those efforts represented a “shakedown” and a “cynical extortion scheme” — one in which Buzbee “capitalizes on the bravery of those victims who came forward” against Combs to win unearned settlements from “innocent celebrities, politicians, and business people.”
“Defendants devised a scheme to obtain payments through the use of coercive threats from anyone with any ties to Combs — no matter how remote,” lawyers for the unnamed plaintiff write. “Defendants claim to be investigating the facts, but the reality is they are finding deep pockets and trying to smear all of them with the same brush.”
The unusual episode — a mysterious celebrity plaintiff claiming they’re being extorted with baseless abuse allegations — echoes a similar incident last month involving Garth Brooks. In that case, Brooks filed an anonymous lawsuit as “John Doe” seeking a federal court order to block the publication of the allegations. But the accuser eventually filed their abuse lawsuit against Brooks in a separate court weeks later.
