Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Two Men Sue P. Diddy For Sex Assault As Jay-Z Case Implodes

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Flamboyant Texas attorney Tony Buzbee has filed two new lawsuits on behalf of men who claim Sean "Diddy" Combs groped and sexually assaulted them in 2006 and 2009. The suits were filed as Buzbee dismissed another lawsuit against Combs and rap mogul Jay-Z. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the two new suits and how big of a hit Buzbee's credibility has taken in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you or a loved one have suffered physical or mental health issues due to video games, visit https://vgclaims.com/crimefix to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Bradford Cohen https://www.instagram.com/lawronin/CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. After the indictment of Sean Combs and the announcement that we were pursuing these claims, the floodgates opened. Tony Busby, the flamboyant attorney who's made it his mission to sue Sean Combs for sexual assault, files more lawsuits as he dismissed one that became a battle royale between him and rap mogul Jay-Z. So how big of a hit has his reputation taken? Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Tony Busby hasn't been shy about his pursuit of Sean Diddy Combs in civil court. And I'm going to tell you about two of the latest suits Busby has filed on behalf of two men dating back to 2006 and 2009. Busby has

filed more than 20 lawsuits on behalf of both men and women who claim that Sean Combs has sexually assaulted them. Combs, of course, has denied these claims. I want to be very clear about that. Combs is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as he awaits trial on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges. He's pleaded not guilty to those charges, and that's a criminal matter. This is much different from these civil suits. These are different courts with different standards of proof. But back to these Busby lawsuits. The Texas attorney claimed last fall to be representing 120 men and women in claims against Sean Combs. Busby even set up a 1-800 number for accusers to call in. Now that number is being used against him by Jay-Z and Combs. More on that later. Here's part of what Busby said last year.

Most of these people are scared. They fear backlash in their communities. They fear backlash in their own families. They are afraid of retaliation from the perpetrators and their associates. They are rightly afraid for their own personal safety. I expect that through this process, many powerful people will be exposed. Many dirty secrets will be revealed. We know what we are potentially up against. And as is always the case in situations like this, when a celebrity is involved, people can be downright mean and nasty. You would be shocked at the length fans will go, no matter the evidence, to the contrary,

to defend celebrities they love. I mean, there's a reason for this word fans. They're fanatics. But one of those lawsuits imploded in spectacular fashion. Not only was Sean Combs named in the suit, but so was Sean Carter, who you likely know better as Jay-Z. The rap mogul took a scorched earth approach to defending himself against the allegations that he, along with Combs, sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in the year 2000. I don't want to completely rehash the allegations, but from the beginning, Jay-Z said he did not sexually assault this woman, and red flags about her story started coming to light. Then last Friday evening, Tony Busby filed to dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice. Dismissing a lawsuit with prejudice means it will not,

and more importantly, it means it cannot be refiled. Jay-Z said in a statement, Today is a victory. The frivolous, fictitious, and appalling allegations have been dismissed. This civil suit was without merit and never going anywhere. The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims. I would not wish this experience on anyone. The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones, and I have endured can never be dismissed. This 1-800 lawyer gets to file a suit hiding behind Jane Doe, and when they quickly realize that the money grab is going to fail, they get to walk away with no repercussions.

The system has failed. Sean Combs also had something to say about Busby dismissing the suit. Today's complete dismissal without a settlement by the 1-800-ATTORNEY is yet another confirmation that these lawsuits are built on falsehoods, not facts. For months, we have seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity, pushed forward by an attorney more focused on media headlines than legal merit. Just like this claim, the others will fall apart because there is no truth to them. This dismissal likely didn't come out of nowhere. We can only guess that Tony Busby may have seen some issues with the accuser's story as well. I reached out to him asking about this and he responded simply saying no comment. This is what

Busby said about the calls he was receiving from accusers last fall. We are vetting every call that we receive. We've had to turn away some. For each, we ask for corroboration. For each, we ask for the identity of witnesses. We also have collected pictures, videos, texts. We check venues. We check dates. We want to corroborate that the claims being made have legitimacy and merit. This is a law and crime legal alert. Recent allegations against the multi-billion dollar video game industry claim that video games are engineered for addiction. The claims include making sense of the magical hold that video games seem to have over people where they just can't put the controller down. Every win triggers a hit of

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and check your eligibility to file a claim. Now to those latest lawsuits that Busby has filed against Sean Combs. One of the plaintiffs is a man from New Jersey who claims Combs groped him nearly 20 years ago. The complaint states, In 2006, John Doe, a 21-year-old male model, was looking for modeling opportunities in New York City. He responded to an online advertisement seeking hip-hop models. He provided his name, contact information, and a number of photographs. Days later, an individual from Bad Boy Records contacted him via email,

inviting him to the corporate office in New York City for a tryout. This is the first time Doe was made aware that the modeling opportunity would be for Bad Boy Records. The man's lawsuit claims he traveled to New York City for the audition, and when he arrived at Bad Boy's offices, there were a number of men there, both African American and white, and this man claims he was the only Indian model. The complaint claims Combs shifted the discussion to Doe's appearance. He instructed him to stand up so he could check him out. Moments later, Combs told Doe to undress and take off all of his clothes. Doe immediately felt uncomfortable and refused. Combs persisted,

asking what he was willing to do to be in a music video and to be successful. Now, this man claims in the complaint that Sean Combs kept insisting that he take off his clothes. Then he claims, Combs then noticeably became angry and aggressive. He stood up and moved close to Doe, standing right in front of his face. Without warning, Combs aggressively grabbed and firmly groped Doe's buttocks and whispered in his ear, saying, Get me when you change your mind. Doe pulled away and left the room immediately.

Security walked Doe out of the building. He left deeply disturbed by the experience. To talk about all of this, I want to bring in Bradford Cohen. He is a celebrity criminal defense attorney. He has represented a lot of people in a lot of things. So Bradford, first of all, your thoughts on this 2006 case. We have a guy who says he was a model going to a modeling gig and that Sean Combs grabbed his buttocks and he's filing a lawsuit. He wants to sue over this almost 20 years later. So this is kind of one of the more benign claims we've heard. Your thoughts? My thoughts are that everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. So if you've ever had an interaction with Sean Combs whatsoever, I think everyone is trying to

file a lawsuit. I don't see it going very far that after 20 years, this guy came forward that allegedly, you know, Sean Combs grabbed his buttocks. I don't think that's going to be one of the cases that's going to make or break Sean Combs, even if the allegations were true. But, you know, all of these cases that are now coming forward for that are 20 years old, 25 years old, it really begs the question. And I understand, you know, listen, I understand victim mentality. I understand how these things work when there's sexual assaults that some people don't want to come forward because of the notoriety of the individual. But then, you know, it really starts to beg the question that, you know, if it was a big deal

at the time, who else did you tell? What else did you do? What kind of actions did you take? Things of that nature that really when you pull kind of the cover back on that it's very very little in terms of any kind of damages especially with a guy like this and that's assuming that everything he says is true how it affected him things of that nature or his career uh i just you know like i said real cases like this discount real sex assault cases and discount real victims cases and it really it's it undermines the credibility of the lawyers that file the cases you know one thing that i find um you know and i'm sure having your butt grabbed would be you know traumatic when you're at basically a job interview.

I'm sure that I'm sure it would be. But but this pales into in comparison to some of the other things we've read about some of the other allegations and some of these lawsuits. I mean, we're talking about drugging people and violent, violent sexual assaults, these allegations that have been made against Sean Combs. And I want to reiterate, he has denied all of these claims of sexual assault. You know, one of the things, though, that kind of shocked me about this lawsuit and then another one that we're going to talk about here in a bit that was filed by another man is the fact that it came, it was filed a couple of days before the big bombshell where Tony Busby files to dismiss the case, the lawsuit against Sean Combs and Jay-Z with prejudice, meaning it can never be refiled with this woman who had claimed she was violently sexually assaulted by these two men when she

was 13 years old at a VMAs after party. Tony Busby, I mean, he came out guns blazing last October saying he was going to represent victims and he believes victims and that they were vetting all of these claims. And this just seems like he doesn't have egg on his face. This seems like he's got omelet on his face. I mean, like a whole chicken farm's worth of egg on his face this seems like he's got omelet on his face I mean like a whole chicken farms worth of egg on his face over this whole thing I mean like I mean how how badly damaged is his credibility when it comes to filing these lawsuits because you took on I mean you took on the big the big dog Jay Z and you lost big yeah it's a real problem for him. You know, the bravado, and I guess I always say ego is not your amigo, because the bravado of Tony Busby,

and just that he thought in his mind that, you know, people roll over on these cases, that the accusations are so horrible that most people wouldn't want those even getting out, that some people would settle before they even hit a complaint. And I think he underestimated Jay-Z. I think he underestimated the wherewithal and the determination of Jay-Z to investigate the case, investigate the claims, get individuals to investigate Tony Busby himself, which a lot of lawyers are not used to being investigated themselves and having cases filed against them personally. I think all of those things he underestimated. And, you know, when you're suing individuals, it's not just the facts of the case that you have to be concerned with.

Obviously, that's a large part of it. It's also the individual you're suing and you're playing. You're not playing the cards. You're playing the person when Tony Busby suing. Right. So essentially, a lot of his cases that i've read i think they have holes in them all over the place i'm not saying all of them do but a lot of them do and i think that there's weaknesses in a lot of his cases and he's just um i think he overlooks some

of those weaknesses because of the accusations and the type of accusations that are being made against the type of individuals that they being made against the type of individuals that he's making them against. When he came up against Jay-Z, he just came up against a different animal. I mean, he's, you know, I don't want to pump Jay-Z up, but for in terms of a lawsuit, I always refer to clients like a Jay-Z as king of the jungle. Like that literally is someone who is willing to go to the mat. He's willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that that case is getting dismissed. And he's willing to spend whatever it takes. I have a lot of clients that come to me that say, hey, money is no object. But when it reaches about a million, a million and a half in attorney's fees,

that it becomes an object. Jay-Zz i'm sure i will guarantee he spent anywhere between five and ten million dollars on the defense of this case and it's not that old of the case but he poured a lot of money into the case and it shows because um you know all the things that happened all the investigations that happened it shows that i think jay-z's story of that he didn't know who this was, this is a totally made up thing, a totally fabricated thing, I think was vindicated. And I think it really hurts Tony Busby. I think it makes him look like a complete joke that, you know, he would file a case without doing your due diligence. The one thing that a lawyer should

do always when, and I'm not even I'm not even talking about where the accusations are so horrible. I'm talking about in any lawsuit, you, you vet your client, you make sure that the claims are valid. You look at contracts. If it's a contract case, you read over things, you look at, you know, finance records, you look at the evidence that they have. I have never, and I mean never, taken a case where I'm prepared to file a lawsuit where I have not 1,000% vetted that individual. And when you're making claims like this against an individual like that to, and my only suspicion is that it was not vetted properly. To not vet a case properly like that, I think, is a huge, huge, massive error. And then for him not to address why he dismissed it with prejudice at all, not making anyford, I reached out to him and I asked him point blank, why did you dismiss this with prejudice? I mean, I think you and I can both, you know, read the tea leaves.

We know what happened here. And he simply responded, no comment. That was it. Right. And that's unusual for Tony Busby. There were some. Yes. I mean, this is very not Tony Busby like.

I mean, this is like not Tony Busby-like. I mean, this is like totally not how he rolls. So I was like, okay, well, you know, you're leaving me to connect the dots here. And my dots connecting are, you said you got this referred from another firm. This thing was filed. This is the more detail more detail oriented claim. One of the more detail oriented claims that they filed, um, out of the suits that I've read that he has filed. All of the others are kind of like, not that detail oriented. I mean, some of them are, some of them aren't, um, but this had a lot of detail. And then you went up against Jay-Z, who's a billionaire, according to Forbes, you know, multi-billionaire.

He's a mogul. He had Alex Spiro, you know, as his lawyer, who is no shrinking violet. And so they just came out guns blazing. Like they were like, we are not taking this laying down. We are, as you would say, going to war. And, you know, they won the war, it looks like. Yeah. There is no question, in my opinion, there is no question that they won the war, number one. Number two is the fact that Tony Busby gave no statement, even if your statement was, hey, I can't give a statement because it's attorney-client privilege. Something, you know, something more than I just can't make a statement,

I think lends itself to a lot. And to be quite honest with you, when you file cases like this and you don't do your due diligence, I believe that it opens yourself up to some negligence claims. Again, I don't know if Jay-Z is gonna go that far, but certainly I think it does open himself up to some negligence claims um again I don't know if Jay-Z is going to go that far uh but certainly I think it does open it opens himself up to some negligence claims maybe that

was part of the reason why he dismissed with prejudice uh I don't know but I can tell you that it does not look good when you dismiss something with prejudice and then you say I have no no statement to make it makes it look very very dirty and the fact is is like i said before and i've said this many many times these type of cases and i i some cases never come to light i've represented individuals that you know some cases never come to light because um i attack the case right off the bat when i get a letter that i think is untrue against one of my clients and i'll attack the case right off the bat when I get a letter that I think is untrue against one of my clients, and I'll attack the case right off the bat, and I'll give them evidence. I don't mind giving evidence early to show that you're not telling you the truth, and I've done that before.

In this case and in every case, I say there's only two roads. There are only two roads in these type of accusations right one road is hey let's pay whatever they want and make it go away and keep it quiet because just the accusation itself i'm gonna lose you know 100 million dollars 150 million dollars in um in in monies coming in endorsements and deals that people will walk away from i have a deal with netflix or i have a deal with this guy that they'll just walk away from the deal until we get this resolved and it might take 12 months to get it resolved i want to make that deal now that's one way to do it right the second way is once you decide hey i'm not paying anything these are

completely untrue allegations and i don't care if I lose $100 million in endorsements. I'm going to war. Once you make that decision that you're going to war, then you make the decision and stick by it. You don't then settle a couple days later like Diddy did. Like, you know, Diddy essentially made the decision, I'm not going to pay anything. I'm going to war. And then she files a lawsuit and he settles the next day. That's the worst scenario right so once you decide you're going to war then you know you go to war

like you like you know i i shut down my law firm for people and i'll just go you know that will that will be the one case that i will handle for the next six months and every day i'm working on that case every day we're figuring something And every day I'm working on that case. Every day we're figuring something out. Every day we're talking to investigators. And that's essentially what Alex did on this case. All right, let's move on now to the next case. The next suit is filed by a man from California who claims Sean Combs raped him in 2009. The suit begins at a small industry party at a Los Angeles hotel, defendant Combs met Doe and enticed him with promises of a recording contract and entry into the music industry.

Ultimately, Combs drugged Doe, an 18-year-old man, and sexually assaulted him throughout the remainder of the night while Doe lapsed in and out of consciousness. The man believes he was drugged with GHB and in his suit features an exemplar of a container that he and others have claimed Combs' staff used to store the drug. The man claims shortly after finishing his drink and being handed a new one, it became clear to Doe that something was wrong. He felt lightheaded and then began slipping in and out of consciousness. Doe realized he had been drugged, but did not fully lose consciousness at that time. It continues, Doe remembers being escorted out of the first room by Combs' security,

then taken down the hall into a separate hotel room. Combs arrived in the room soon thereafter. Once alone with Doe, Combs again emphasized his power in the music industry and the opportunities he could offer, including a potential record deal and studio time. Still physically weak and slipping in and out of consciousness, Doe remembers feeling hopeful about the prospect of advancing his career, but scared for his physical well-being. Okay, so Bradford, we have this case now, this guy from 2009. He says he met Sean Combs at a party in L.A. You know, Sean Combs, somebody gave him a drink. He thinks it was spiked with GHB and that he was taken into a bedroom and that Sean Combs was like, I can help your career.

Gave you some studio times. And then he claims that Sean Combs raped him. You know, it sounds really horrible. Just a really horrible thing that happened. This is, again, a Tony Busby lawsuit. So this is something that happened in 2009, according to the plaintiff. Again, is this going to be difficult to prove? It's a different standard of proof in civil court than it is in criminal court. But it doesn't sound like, you know, as far as these civil cases go, none of these people are involved in the federal

criminal case. So how are you feeling about this 2009 lawsuit? I'm not feeling very positive about anyone that the feds have not listed as a witness to come forward and testify in the other case if it was some sort of accusation or something of that nature now they could say hey you know statute of limitations in this type of case that's why we're not bringing it but you still would talk to that individual because they could come down to MO. Like this is his motive operandi. Like this is the way he operates is that he quote unquote drugs people and then has sex with them. So those individuals could still be listed as witnesses because those individuals may

be allowed into evidence. And that would be for a court to decide whether or not other alleged quote unquote victims that would prove MO.O. would come into play. And for your listeners, M.O. means that that is the type of thing he does. And I always compare it to Home Alone, the wet bandits, right? So the wet bandits went around and they were breaking into people's houses. And on the way out, they would turn on all their faucets to flood out the house. Well, if you catch them in that last house and there's 10 other homes that are all flooded out in the same way, that's MO, right?

Modus operandi. That's their calling card. So, you know, a court would have to decide whether or not to use these individuals. The fact that they're not even listed as witnesses, the fact that none of these individuals have come forward and said, oh, I've given the statement to the feds or anything like that, it's very unusual. And then the evidence, the evidence itself, like where are, and I always call them receipts,

but I'm not saying receipts like you would get at a store, but where are the pictures? Where are the documents? Where are the other witnesses that say, oh, I was with Bob Smith that night at that thing. He told me right afterwards this is what happened. All these type of things that Busby thing you can prove is that he was at the party I think they're going to be very difficult to prove those cases and there's so many of them that you start to kind of get numb to these allegations right one or two people come forward and they're really strong cases the Cassie case the the other ex-girlfriends of his that are really close to him um individuals that that he might have had a lot of interaction with maybe not an ex-girlfriend but maybe someone that he

had a lot of interaction with that has texts or or phone calls with things of that nature um it like i said it lessens those cases by bringing these weak cases. And it's like, as you look at Tony Busby's cases and you start peeling back the layers of onion, it is, these cases just are blanket allegations. They don't have a lot of detail in them. I think the defense attorneys are going to have a field day with some of these. And, you know, it's just going to come down to how much money does Sean Combs have to keep defending the cases. And that's what hopefully that's what Busby is probably hoping for, is that at some point he doesn't have enough money to defend all these cases. He starts getting judgments and maybe he can seize some assets that he has. But at this point,

I don't know what Sean Combs is going to have at the end of this rainbow. And we also don't know if, you know, if he gets convicted or if he walks free. And if he walks free, maybe there's an opportunity to make more money for him. And he can start funding a lot of these cases even more and start really going after Tony Busby. But Jay-Z did him a big favor. Well, Busby actually did him a big favor by going after Jay-Z because that was the crack in the dam. Interesting. Well, we're going to keep an eye on all of it. This has just been, it's really been something to watch unfold. Thank you so much, Bradford Cohen, as always. Thank you.

Sean Combs' lawyers said in a statement about these two new lawsuits, no matter how many lawsuits are filed, especially by individuals who refuse to put their own names behind their claims, it won't change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone, man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth, and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail in court. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix.

I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.