Sean Combs Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking Cassie Assault Video

The hip-hop mogul’s legal team said in a filing on Wednesday that it may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.

Lawyers for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is battling federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, accused the government on Wednesday of leaking hotel surveillance footage of him brutally beating his former girlfriend to CNN, saying that they may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.

Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that the video — which shows Mr. Combs assaulting the singer Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 — is a key piece of evidence in their case. The surveillance footage was published by CNN in May, prompting Mr. Combs to apologize publicly for “inexcusable” behavior.

It has never been clear how the footage made its way to the news organization, but in the court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty and has vehemently denied the criminal charges, accused the Department of Homeland Security, which executed raids of the defendant’s homes in March, of being responsible for the leak.

“The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,” the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, wrote.

The court filing cited a federal rule of criminal procedure that prohibits prosecutors or government agents from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.

The lawyers did not cite direct evidence that Homeland Security officials had leaked the tape. But they accused the agency of a series of leaks, including in anonymous comments to The New York Post, that they said “all but ensured” that the grand jury and a potential trial jury would be tainted. The lawyers asked for a hearing to determine the government’s culpability in the leaks.

A representative for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which is overseeing the prosecution, and CNN declined to comment.

In the filing, the defense noted that after it informed the government of its intention to file court papers containing the leak allegations, prosecutors responded that the CNN video “was not obtained through grand jury process” and that the Department of Homeland Security “did not have possession of the videotape prior to CNN’s publication of it.”

The video, taken at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, shows Mr. Combs, wearing a towel around his waist, striking, kicking and dragging Cassie as she tries to leave.

Although prosecutors never mention her by name, the criminal case aligns closely with the account of Cassie — whose full name is Casandra Ventura — which was laid out in a lawsuit in November that accused Mr. Combs of years of physical and sexual abuse. Her suit, which was quickly settled, included an account of the events at the InterContinental, which it said Mr. Combs later covered up by paying $50,000 for the security footage.

Last month, prosecutors cited Mr. Combs’s lawyer’s full-throated denial of Ms. Ventura’s claims — before his apology in May, after the release of the hotel footage — as evidence of his willingness to lie about his conduct.

“It was not until the video surveillance footage of the defendant’s attack was leaked to the media months later that the defendant was forced to admit that he had, in fact, perpetrated the ‘disgusting’ attack,” the prosecution wrote in court papers.

In the filing on Wednesday, the lawyers listed several factors that they said persuaded them that the Department of Homeland Security was at fault, including anonymous comments in the news media by a person identified as a Homeland Security agent. They posited that a nongovernment leaker would be more inclined to pass the tape to someone who would pay for it.

“That it was leaked instead to CNN shows a motive other than financial profit,” the filing said. The lawyers wrote that after a hearing on the matter, they plan to ask a judge to order possible remedies, including suppression of the videotape, disqualification of witnesses or dismissal of the charges.

In their filing, Mr. Combs’s lawyers argue that Cassie — identified only as “Victim 1” — was not likely the source of the leak. They say that there was no evidence she had the footage, and that she had no apparent motive, saying she had already “received a substantial eight-figure settlement” after suing Mr. Combs.

A court denied Mr. Combs bail, ordering him to be kept in jail ahead of his trial. Mr. Combs, 54, who is incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, appealed the decision for a second time on Tuesday.

Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs, a towering figure in the music industry known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, of a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence that involved coercing women into sexual encounters with prostitutes — known as “freak-offs” — through abuse, drugs and financial pressure. They have used the federal racketeering law to charge Mr. Combs with running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out sex trafficking and other crimes. The racketeering conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of up to life in prison.

Mr. Combs’s lawyers have argued that the sexual encounters the prosecutors have outlined were consensual activities between adults, and that the relationship with Ms. Ventura was sometimes toxic and charged with jealousy but far from evidence of sex trafficking.

The government has already begun to present the hotel footage as evidence that Mr. Combs violated the main federal sex trafficking law, which requires that a defendant has used force, fraud or coercion as part of the person’s conduct. Prosecutors argued in court last month that the video was clear evidence of force in connection with a freak-off, events that they have described as highly orchestrated sexual encounters with male prostitutes, which Mr. Combs would direct, masturbate to and often film.

According to the government’s account of the hotel footage, Mr. Combs assaulted Ms. Ventura in an attempt to prevent her from leaving a freak-off; prosecutors have said they have evidence that there was at least one prostitute inside Mr. Combs’s hotel room while the assault was taking place in the hallway.

“The evidence shows that the victim tried to escape the hotel room where the defendant and an escort were without even putting on her shoes,” one of the prosecutors, Emily A. Johnson, said during a court hearing last month. “The defendant then violently beat her and tried to drag her back to the hotel room.”

Prosecutors said that after the assault, Mr. Combs offered a hotel security officer who intervened a “stack of cash” to try to ensure his silence, and that the mogul’s team later contacted security staff to try to cover up the footage of the beating. “Three days later, the surveillance video somehow disappeared from the hotel server,” Ms. Johnson said.

Mr. Combs’s lawyers have countered that the recorded assault — though upsetting to watch — was not evidence of sex trafficking. Marc Agnifilo, the lead lawyer on the defense team, said in court proceedings that the encounter occurred after Ms. Ventura looked through Mr. Combs’s phone while he was sleeping and found evidence of infidelity. The lawyer said in court that Ms. Ventura then hit Mr. Combs in the head with his phone and left with a bag of his clothing, leading him to leave the room in a towel.

Mr. Agnifilo said the episode led Mr. Combs to realize that he had problems with drug addiction and anger, prompting him to go to rehab.

Prosecutors denied that Mr. Combs had assaulted Ms. Ventura over a “lovers’ quarrel,” presenting the conduct as far more serious. They read aloud messages in court that gave a window into the aftermath of the now widely viewed assault.

“Call me. The cops are here,” Mr. Combs wrote in a message just after the hotel footage was recorded, later writing, “Yo, please call. I’m surrounded.” (Prosecutors said there was no evidence that the police had been called to the hotel, though there were indications that Mr. Combs’s staff knew that officers had responded to Ms. Ventura’s apartment.)

“I have a black eye and a fat lip,” Ms. Ventura wrote in a text message that a prosecutor read aloud in court. “You are sick for thinking it’s OK to do what you’ve done.”