Warner Bros. has moved to block Sean "Diddy" Combs' legal team from accessing raw, unedited footage from the documentary series "The Fall of Diddy," citing reporter's privilege in a recent legal filing.
The production company's attorneys are seeking to prevent Diddy's defense team from obtaining interview outtakes and notes from the docuseries, which may play a significant role in his upcoming federal trial.
Warner Bros. claims all of these materials are protected under reporter's privilege, which shields unpublished newsgathering material from, essentially, being discoverable in court.
The lawyer for Warner Bros, Thomas Sullivan, claimed Diddy lacked the necessary legal standards to override this privilege.
"Mr. Combs seeks outtakes from interviews with two persons featured in the docuseries," Sullivan wrote in the filing, per THR. "The interview outtakes he seeks are protected by the reporter's privilege that applies to unpublished newsgathering materials."
Sullivan emphasized that courts consistently rule against broad subpoenas for journalistic outtakes based on the hope that they may somehow be relevant to a case, and added that the rapper had no legal right to force law enforcement to release such materials.
'Individual A' and 'Individual B'
The videos that Diddy's camp is seeking include interviews with two people referred to as Individual A and Individual B in court documents.
Individual A previously worked for Diddy, claimed she had worked for him at Bad Boy Records, and also discussed the rumors about his behavior while employed there. On the other hand, Individual B is a former girlfriend of the rapper/music mogul, who described her relationship with Diddy, including sexual assault allegations.
Sullivan claimed both individuals' witness accounts were shielded under the journalist-source privilege and that Diddy couldn't establish any reason for leafing through the materials as they relate to his defense case.
The Moves Diddy is Making on the Legal Front Before Trial
The case against Diddy is tied to serious federal sex trafficking and racketeering offenses, which will go to trial in May 2025. With the trial date approaching, his attorneys have sought to get the upper hand a number of times. His attorneys filed a motion to try to get witness testimony dismissed on April 9, which argues prosecutors are trying to "poison" the case by bringing up other bad acts in the trial.
Diddy's defense also targeted forensic and clinical psychologist Dawn Hughes and said Hughes only presented in generalizations when it came to abuse cases and not specific evaluations of the victims. They referred to the introduction of outside witnesses — in addition to the four alleged victims listed in the indictment — as "abuse of the character evidence rule."
The full list of witnesses prosecutors plan to call will be unveiled on April 18, and one of the witnesses who is expected to take the stand in the high-profile case is former Combs girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.
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