Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy Witness Who Says He Has Sex Tapes Squares Off with Rapper’s Sons

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. We are sitting down with the attorney representing a potential key witness in the Sean Combs criminal case because he is right now in a mounting legal fight with the music mogul's sons. Christian and Quincy Combs are reportedly trying to stop the sale of a book about their late mother, Kim Porter. and the accusations are flying back and forth. We're going to get into it right now. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime.

Starting point is 00:00:35 I'm Jesse Weber. Another interesting side wrinkle in the Sean Diddy Combs case we got to talk about. You remember Courtney Burgess, we've talked about him before. He is the purported witness who testified in front of the grand jury, currently hearing new evidence in the Sean Combs criminal case. If you recall, Burgess went on Banfield on News Nation, and he revealed that he was given 11 flash drives that contain alleged sex tapes involving Combs and celebrities. And he said, of the eight celebrities on the tapes, those who are victims of Sean Combs, they're not perpetrators' victims,

Starting point is 00:01:12 said two or three were minors, which, as you know, is consistent with a number of allegations in the civil lawsuits that Sean Combs is currently facing. To be clear, though, Combs is currently not criminally charged with anything with respect to minors. That could change, but right now he's just charged with sex trafficking, racketeering, transportation to engage in prostitution, but all with respect to adult victims. If there's a superseding indictment, he gets hit with new charges, possibly about victims, we shall say. But this is what brings me to what we're talking about right now. So Mr. Burgess has claimed that he got these flash drives from the late girlfriend of Sean Combs, Kim Porter, who as we know tragically died several years back from what authorities concluded was low bar pneumonia. And that is despite the fact that there have been rumors, both online in the media, that there is something more to her death. And that, to be clear,

Starting point is 00:02:07 totally unsubstantiated. That has been debunked. We've talked about it here on sidebar multiple times. But putting that to the side, here is the other thing with Mr. Burgess. He apparently says he owns the rights to a book that was reportedly based on the alleged memoir of Kim Porter. In fact, according to TMZ, Burgess's phone was seized by the feds and on it was a copy of a flash drive with material that was used in this book. Here's the problem. Christian and Quincy Combs, these are the sons of Diddy and Kim Porter. Quincy's actually adopted by Diddy, but they are reportedly fighting back and they have sent Burgess a cease and assist letter to prevent the further sale of this book. They argue this is just an attempt to capitalize on Porter's fame and that

Starting point is 00:02:55 they own the rights to her IP, her intellectual property, like her diary entries, or potential manuscript, as her heirs, they own it. And they also want an accounting of current sales of the book. To be clear, though, they aren't acknowledging that there is, in fact, a long-loss memoir from their mother. In fact, they've actually denied that before when there was a similar book, a derivative work. We'll talk about that published by this guy named Chris Todd on Amazon. They were adamantly fighting against that. They said that their mother wouldn't write this. But what they're basically saying is if something should exist, they own it. Burgess has responded, saying he owns the copyright in the book, that Porter gave him

Starting point is 00:03:36 the rights to this manuscript, that the brothers are making, quote, a pathetic attempt, a, quote, desperate ploy to extort him. And this shows how bad their financial situation is. And he reportedly even suggests that Sean Combs is probably behind this. So a lot of back and forth between both sides. sort it out and at least get one side of the story on this so with that i want to bring in ariel mitchell thank you so much for taking the time it's great to meet you um so the first question i had when i was reading about this is this book from your client the same book as the

Starting point is 00:04:11 one that was published by chris todd a few months ago that was the one that was on amazon before it was removed by amazon what's the connection there um yes so chris did get the book from Courtney. Courtney has a more thorough copy of the book when Chris published the book that was on Amazon. It was edited. So some of the passages were removed. Some of the pictures were removed. And I think there was like a Ford or something that was added to the book. So it is a different version, but from the same what in copyright law is called derivative work. So it's derives from that work that Courtney has. And just to be clear, Courtney's work, Courtney's book, is it currently being sold anywhere? I'm not exactly sure. I believe Courtney has a, I was about to say, here, welcome to downtown Miami. But I believe he is selling it on a website. I only came into that knowledge when I received the cease and desist letter from Quincy and Christian.

Starting point is 00:05:22 Got it. And in terms of the content of the book, what is this book about the one from your client? So I haven't taken the time to read the book either. But to my understanding, it's Kim Porter's memoir. So it's basically Kim Porter's stories. I haven't read, I shouldn't say that. I haven't read the entire book. I have read several excerpts from the book, several pages from the book.

Starting point is 00:05:49 I haven't had time to sit down and read it. its entirety but to my understanding it purports to be from Kim Porter about experiences Kim Porter had and why do you think Christian and Quincy are so opposed to this coming out because they were opposed to the Chris Todd as you said derivative work coming out they opposed to this what is it about this piece of work that they're so opposed to well first it's talking about their father and you know for even Quincy that's his stepfather but that's really the only father he knows

Starting point is 00:06:21 So, and then Christian, that's his doppelganger. Like Christian and Diddy look exactly alike. So, and then you think about the other piece of it, their father is the one who gave them money, wealth, fame. So you want to protect that at all costs, even if you know your father did something bad or wrong. I also feel like they don't have any identities without their father. So for their father to go down for this and what child wants to think this about? their parent. Think that their parent was this kind of heinous monster. So I think we have to maybe put ourselves in position how we would feel if this was one of our parents and what

Starting point is 00:07:03 what would we do in this situation. Hey, so I just want to jump away from this update in the Combs case for a quick minute because I got a question for all of you out there. I know this is super random. But are any of you business owners out there, maybe those of you thinking of starting a business? The reason I ask is because we have this sponsor. It's known as Odu. And it's a free all in one business management software. What it does, it provides you with a range of applications that helps with the day-to-day of owning a business. So they have this Projects app, and what's cool about it is there are multiple views in it, like the Canban View that organizes tasks by stage or the Gant view that gives you a timeline of your tasks. Seriously, so simple, easy to organize things.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Also, in the Projects app, you can directly bill customers according to time spent on certain tasks, which is such a time saver. So right now, you can click our link, odoo.com, slash Elsie Sidebar 6 and you can try Odu and their projects app for free right now today. Does this memoir, alleged memoir, does it suggest that Sean Combs was abusive towards Kim Porter? Does it suggest that does it amplify this message that we've seen online, that there's more to Kim Porter's death than meets the eye? I just want to be clear about what this book from your client really says. So again, I'm going to reiterate.

Starting point is 00:08:17 I have not read the entirety of the book. But from what I have read, it does support the allegations that have been made by Cassie, the allegations that have been made by the federal government, and the allegations that have been made by my clients, Tyrone Blackburn's clients, Tony Busby's clients. Everybody is saying the same thing. And Kim Porter, I feel like we were only willing to hear these things once Cassie came out. And now we are starting to see from Kim Porter's experience that these were the exact same experiences.

Starting point is 00:08:51 So the main question that people would have here is why would Kim Porter give your client this manuscript? What was that relationship? They were close enough where she would give him her memoir, her diary entries. Why would she do that? So my understanding, Courtney was really good friends with Tupac. I'm always trying to explain this. So in New York, we all know the East Coast, West Coast beef, right? We all have some knowledge of it.

Starting point is 00:09:20 It's only cursory. So you have to imagine on the East Coast, there was two factions. There was the Bad Boy faction, and then there was Death Row East. So Death Road was starting to encroach upon Ditties territory in New York. And there are a lot of people in New York who didn't like Dillard. who didn't want to rock with the bad boy, East Coast, you know, side of the East Coast, West Coast beef. So there were a bunch of people in New York, a faction who were West Coast, East Coasters, if you will. And Courtney was one of those people.

Starting point is 00:09:58 So to my understanding, Courtney knew Kim through Tupac and some, you know, Courtney's a industry insider, ANR, a record exec, who brought different people to labels to help them. get into the music industry so he knew producers you know uh managers all these people in the music industry and one day he was talking to a friend who was with kim and kim was like who are you talking to and he said i'm talking to courtney b and she said oh let me talk to him because they knew each other through tupac and said to uh Courtney i got something because for you i know you'll know what to do with it and that's the next day is when Courtney got the flash drives and one of the flash drive had the book on it so I believe that if if we're going to believe let's say

Starting point is 00:10:48 that Kim really wanted this book to get out and she knew there were only certain people she can trust because there were more people in Diddy's pocket than we're not in Diddy's pocket why wouldn't you go to your his enemy diddy's enemy which is people with the Tupac faction and if you really want this information to get out because anybody else is not going to get that information because their loyalty are always a lot of pity. So I think, you know, just me using my brain and the information I have been given and my understanding just culturally about what is gone on because it's my culture. It makes sense to me how Courtney ended up with this.

Starting point is 00:11:29 You don't anticipate that this is going to escalate into some sort of lawsuit and this going to court and it sounds like if it is, you're ready to fight back against it. Not only side back, we're ready to counter sue for defamation and other things, other torts. But I wish they, I would invite them. If you're watching this, please, I beg of you, please sue us. That'll be the best day of my life and the worst mistake you'll ever make. Why is the issue of Kim Porter and this book and Courtney maybe trying to publish it? Why is that coming out now?

Starting point is 00:12:03 Well, I think what initially happened was when the book was first published on Amazon by Chris Todd. So that kind of created, it was number one for weeks on Amazon, actually, number one bestseller. To my understanding that the last count sold almost like 20, 30,000 copies in that range. So it was really selling. So then there was a time where Chris was doing all these interviews. and then there was something going on behind the scenes because I had known Chris since August that's when I initially met Chris and I didn't meet Courtney until two days on the 31st I didn't meet him to October 29th so I didn't know who he was Chris did represent the entire time even with the book because we did start talking about first he came to me like oh I have some information and may be relevant to the cases you have against Diddy and that kind of morphed until what we have this stuff we don't know what to do or how to use it can we get some legal advice or direction you know and I'm like you know we don't want to tread on extortion you know just kind of trying to get an understanding for what they had and what they understood but Chris never told me about Courtney he told me he had a partner but never told me who Courtney was and then all of a sudden one day I see Chris is doing interviews about the book and I'm like okay and then shortly there I after I get a call from Courtney saying that he just was served with a summons by the federal government and then I went back and saw an interview that Courtney had done on October 20th where he is now stepping out of the shadows saying that he had he's the one who had the tapes he was the one who had the book and that that's how all of this came out and I feel that that interview Courtney did October 20th is what led to the summons.

Starting point is 00:14:02 from and a subpoena from the federal government because now if he's saying he has all of these things he's now and I think something no one is keeping in mind we've seen all of these victims filed civil lawsuits right but why hasn't the government called them as witnesses before the grand jury right you would think those would be people that would be called do you know for sure do you know for sure they haven't well I don't to my understanding at least none of my clients have been called And I know other lawyers and I've talked to them and none of them, at least I'll say this, none of their clients who already have active lawsuits have been called. Now, there might be some other people who have been called, but those people are not plaintiffs in a civil litigation. However, with Courtney, Courtney doesn't have a lawsuit against Dittie.

Starting point is 00:14:49 He's not a victim of Dittie. So I think the other part of this is being an unbiased third party. So the government is really the credibility that they felt that he had and the information that they believed him to have based on what he said in an interview on October 20th, they issued a summons for him four days later. They issued a summons for him in a subpoena, October 24th, and they didn't serve it to him to October 28th. And then I talked to him October 29th, and then we went to the grand jury testimony on the 31st. So that was like the progression of those things. But I think it's just a culmination of the government is trying to look for all relevant information, people who purport to have relevant information, especially people who can't come across as untainted because they don't have a biased.

Starting point is 00:15:42 And, you know, every civil litigant does have a bias in seeing him go to jail. We all want to see him go to jail, not only for the benefits of our cases, but because our clients were really injured. And the ultimate penalty is having your freedom taken away. But Mr. Burgess isn't somebody who's unbiased. So I really feel like between his unbiased perspective and what he purported to say he had. I know, and it also relates to what I said as well because we had a separate hearing and the prosecutors brought up what I said in my interview as well. By the way, what is, if you can tell us, has any plans for him to come back to the grand jury?

Starting point is 00:16:21 to testify um no we were able to wave and close um our testimony so in other words what they wanted from him they have at this point well i am curious to see where this goes uh ariel mitchell thank you so much for coming on really appreciate you breaking it down for us and so nice to meet you thank you very much nice to meet you too and by the way i should tell you that combs legal team have called courtney's claims false and outrageous and clearly just denying all of them thank you so much much for joining us here on this episode of Sidebar, everybody. We really appreciate it. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.

Starting point is 00:17:21 Spotify.

Your Ad Here

Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy Witness Who Says He Has Sex Tapes Squares Off with Rapper’s Sons

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.