Prosecutors are pushing back against Sean Combs’ claims that they leaked the explosive video. brutal beating of ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura in a hotel hallway In a lengthy rebuke filed late Wednesday night, prosecutors said the copy of the surveillance video was still the copy they downloaded from the Internet. CNN broadcast Breaking news from last May. In more than 39 pages of arguments, they said Combs’ final trio of requests to exclude the video from his upcoming trial, grant the prosecution early access to a list of victims’ names and obtain a gag order on witnesses and their attorneys should be denied. .

Combs, 54, was arrested on federal indictment on September 16 and Sitting in a federal prison in Brooklyn He is awaiting trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. The onetime billionaire Bad Boy Entertainment founder has pleaded not guilty. His trial in midtown Manhattan is scheduled for May 5, 2025.

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Prosecutors stated that Combs’ request for an evidentiary hearing and the “suppression” of the Ventura video “should be rejected” and wrote, “All three requests of the defendant should be rejected in their entirety.” When CNN obtained it, they said the video was not protected material and willingly acknowledged that their attempts to obtain it were unsuccessful. They said that as of Wednesday they were still “unable to receive CNN’s Intercontinental video feed from any source other than public broadcast.”

“As the defendant fully knew, the video was not in the government’s possession at the time of CNN’s publication, and the government never obtained the video through the grand jury process,” prosecutors for the Southern District of New York said. York wrote.

“The defendant refuses to acknowledge that there was more than one person other than government officials.
“They may have had access to the Intercontinental video, including some of (Combs’s) own employees,” they continued. “In fact, the government is not aware of who had access to and possession of the video, including hotel employees, the hotel’s contracted security team, and members of the defendant’s staff.” continues to investigate and attempted to obtain video surveillance after the incident in March 2016.”

Prosecutors said it was too early for Combs to request the names of victims through a method called a “detail list,” which is a written statement of the allegations in a case. “All discovery here will be conducted by December 31, 2024, more than four months before trial, and the government’s ongoing productions have deliberately prioritized items such as search warrant affidavits that contextualize the charges in the indictment, as well as other materials requested by the defendant.” If Combs later claimed he didn’t have enough time to prepare for the hearing, they said, “appropriate action” would be to ask for a postponement of the May hearing date he specifically requested. “Due to the defendant’s history, the government has serious concerns about victim safety and the possibility of witness tampering if the defendant is provided with a list of victim names,” they said.

They said Combs’ third request, seeking an order for witness testimony, should also be denied on the grounds that it was “extraordinarily broad relief.” They described it as “nothing more than another attempt to force the government to prematurely release the witness list.”

Combs’ side did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the government’s application. When their lawyers They submitted their petition requesting the names of the victims They said earlier this month that prosecutors “unfairly” forced Combs to “play a guessing game” while preparing his defense. They said Combs’ 14-page indictment was so “unspecific” that it failed to identify other unidentified victims — at least beyond the primary victim. commonly understood to be Ventura.

“The government is unfairly forcing (Combs) to play a guessing game,” defense attorneys Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos wrote. “Without clarity from the government, Mr. Combs has no way of knowing what allegations the government relied on for purposes of the indictment.” Combs’ position “has become even more compelling due to an onslaught of baseless allegations that desperate plaintiffs have approached him — often anonymously — in civil lawsuits designed to exact revenge on Mr. Combs and others,” the attorneys said.

A preliminary hearing in the criminal case will be held on December 18. his indictmentCombs is accused of “harassing, threatening, and coercing” multiple unidentified victims “to satisfy his sexual desires.” Prosecutors alleged that Combs engaged in a “persistent and pervasive pattern of harassment,” but were fairly vague on dates and details regarding individuals other than Ventura who were not specifically named.

talk with Rolling stone Last month, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth Geddes, who delivered the closing argument of the government’s successful investigation of R. Kelly in Brooklyn, explained that Combs’ racketeering indictment follows the “Glecier format,” meaning a simple style named after a famous case. , United States / Glecier. He said such a format had the advantage of providing greater protection to witnesses. “By proceeding this way, they do not have to list every different act of racketeering that they plan to prove at trial. “They can list broad categories of crimes without alleging specific cases or specific victims,” Geddes said.

In addition to the criminal case, Combs also faces more than two dozen lawsuits filed by plaintiffs alleging everything from sexual harassment to rape. With Ventura’s arrival, a flood of civil rights demands began. Sensational sex trafficking complaint filed last November. Combs settled with Ventura for an undisclosed sum within 24 hours, but his 35-page complaint, which is now the centerpiece of the music mogul’s criminal prosecution, opened the floodgates. Combs’ homes were raided in March and May. CNN obtained and released heartbreaking hotel security video showing Combs throwing, kicking, knocking and dragging Ventura down the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. After first denying Ventura’s allegations against him, Combs issues video apology He acknowledged that “his behavior in this video was inexcusable” regarding the incident.

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