Sean 'Diddy' Combs can move forward with $100M defamation case, judge rules
Sean 'Diddy' Combs can move forward with $100M defamation case, judge rules
Liza Esquibias, USA TODAYThu, September 10, 2026 at 10:16 PM UTC
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Sean "Diddy" Combs landed a major win in his defamation case against attorney Ariel Mitchell and her client Courtney Burgess, who claimed to have videos showing the music mogul sexually assaulting minors and celebrities at his "freak off" sex parties.
New York federal judge John P. Cronan denied Mitchell's motion to dismiss the lawsuit in a Sept. 4 ruling obtained by USA TODAY, giving Combs the green light to move forward with his $100 million legal action.
Combs first sued Burgess, Mitchell and Nexstar Media for $50 million in January 2025 but amended his complaint seven months later seeking an additional $50 million in damages. In the filing, he accused the lawyer of damaging his reputation by vouching for Burgess' allegations and making allegedly false statements of her own, "including that a police report corroborated an accusation of rape against Combs and that Combs had used drug-laced baby oil to incapacitate his victims."
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While Mitchell argued in her motion to dismiss that her statements "are not 'capable of being proven true or false,' all her comments 'only follow[ed] statements by others,' and any statements that can be attributed solely to her were 'pure opinion' or 'rhetorical hyperbole,'" Cronan disagreed.
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"Mitchell’s accusations that Combs sexually assaulted celebrities and minors, secretly recorded his sexual partners, used those recordings to extort people, drugged a woman with drug-laced baby oil, and victimized 'hundreds, maybe thousands of people' are not inactionable opinion or hyperbole because they carry precise meanings that arereadily understood," Cronan wrote.
He added that it is not only possible for the claims to be verified, but any statements "delivered by an attorney professing firsthand familiarity with the evidence" would reasonably be interpreted by the public as fact.
USA TODAY has reached out to Mitchell's attorney for comment.
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The Grammy-winning rapper stated in his amended complaint that Burgess' "outlandish claims" caused "severe reputational harm" and culminated in a "media frenzy" against him.
"In this pitiful spectacle, all pretense of objectivity has been abandoned, as a global audience feasts at the all-you-can-eat buffet of wild lies and conspiracy theories," it said. "Mitchell and Burgess are among the worst perpetrators in this offensive scenario.
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"They eagerly court every opportunity to broadcast blatant falsehoods, pretending they have proof that Mr. Combs engaged in heinous acts, knowing that no such proof exists," Combs' legal team alleged, further accusing Nexstar's broadcaster NewsNation of "lend(ing) its credibility to and amplify(ing) defendant Burgess and Mitchell's lies, giving them a mainstream media platform to malign (Combs) for defendants' collective profit."
Combs, who denies all allegations of sexual misconduct, is currently serving a 50-month federal prison sentence for his July 2025 conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
His projected release date is Feb. 5, 2028.
Contributing: Edward Segarra, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sean 'Diddy' Combs can move forward with $100M defamation case, judge rules
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
