Lawyers for Sean Combs argued at a court hearing on Friday that a leaked security video showing Mr. Combs assaulting his former girlfriend was “deceptive,” and said they would request that it not be allowed as evidence at his upcoming trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
That video, recorded at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, was broadcast by CNN last year, months before Mr. Combs’s arrest. It showed him beating, kicking and dragging Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend and an artist once signed to his record label under her stage name, Cassie.
Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said that a forensic analysis of the security footage aired by CNN showed that the video had been sped up from its original source, that events were depicted out of sequence and that time stamps on the original tape had been covered up.
“It’s a deceptive piece of evidence,” Mr. Agnifilo argued. Mr. Combs’s lawyers, however, did not define how a change in sequencing would have affected a viewer’s understanding of what occurred.
Mr. Combs’s legal team also accused CNN of destroying the original footage, and said they planned to file a motion to exclude the video from evidence at Mr. Combs’s criminal trial, which is set to begin in May.
CNN, in a statement from a spokeswoman, denied the allegations. “CNN never altered the video and did not destroy the original copy of the footage, which was retained by the source,” the statement said.
Mr. Combs’s lawyers do not dispute that CNN’s footage shows Mr. Combs attacking Ms. Ventura. After the network first aired it in May, Mr. Combs apologized and said he took “full responsibility” for his actions.
Mitzi S. Steiner, one of the prosecutors handling the case, called the footage a critical piece of evidence and denied that it was deceptive. She said the government does not have the original surveillance footage, though she said it has a copy on a device that depicts the original.
“This is a key piece of evidence they’re trying to keep out,” Ms. Steiner said.
Judge Arun Subramanian asked the two sides to reach a compromise on the footage, suggesting that if it were out of sequence, they could find a way to fix that or to slow it down in a way that reflected the original.
The footage is central to the government’s allegations that Mr. Combs sex trafficked Ms. Ventura, and was part of its argument that Mr. Combs has a violent nature and should remain incarcerated without bail. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn since his arrest.
Prosecutors have said the video shows Mr. Combs trying to drag Ms. Ventura back to a hotel room where a sexual encounter known as a “freak-off” — which the government contends was coerced — had recently occurred. Mr. Combs’s lawyers have argued that the violence was not connected to sex but to a dispute over infidelity.
In late 2023, Ms. Ventura accused Mr. Combs of years of abuse in a lawsuit that led to a criminal investigation. They quickly settled, and the music mogul has denied abusing anyone, but dozens of other suits accusing Mr. Combs of similar conduct have followed.
Since his September arrest, Mr. Combs, 55, has faced accusations that he ran a “criminal enterprise” that engaged in sex trafficking, kidnapping and arson, among other alleged crimes. Prosecutors say that Mr. Combs had a pattern of manipulating women into extended sexual encounters that sometimes involved male prostitutes. He is accused of maintaining control over the women through physical violence, drugs and financial support.
His lawyers have called the flood of accusations and lurid media coverage a “circus,” and in recent months, Mr. Combs has fought back by filing his own lawsuits against media companies and a man who said he had sex tapes involving Mr. Combs.
His lawyers had previously accused the government of leaking the video to CNN. Prosecutors denied doing so, and Judge Subramanian, without elaborating, said there was compelling evidence that the source of the video was not the government.
At the hearing, Mr. Combs pleaded not guilty to an amended indictment that was unsealed this month. The indictment contained new allegations that Mr. Combs forced certain employees to work long hours, with little sleep, and coerced one employee into sex.
Mr. Combs’s lawyers have asserted that he has never forced anyone into sex acts and that the case revolves around consensual relationships with his girlfriends — one of whom was with him for about a decade. They have argued that Mr. Combs is being unfairly targeted for socially accepted conduct: hiring escorts.
The trial is estimated to last about eight weeks, with jury selection beginning in late April.
