The case against troubled hip-hop entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs includes Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. as a co-defendant.
Diddy’s “Love Album” producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones filed the lawsuit in February. According to Jones’ attorney Tyrone Blackburn, the lawsuit was amended on Monday to add Gooding as a defendant, include a statement from Ethiopia Habtemariam, the former CEO of Motown Records, regarding technical license agreements, and add more evidence to the RICO and sex-trafficking sections.
On Monday, the day of the bicoastal searches by Homeland Security Investigations on Combs’s houses in Miami and Holmby Hills, the second amended complaint was submitted. According to law enforcement officials, federal investigators carried out the searches as part of an investigation into claims that the hip-hop mogul and entrepreneur was involved in sex trafficking. Tuesday’s search was described as a “unprecedented ambush” by Combs’ lawyer, Aaron Dyer, who said that it “leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.” Combs, Dyer said, “is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name,” and he cooperated with the authorities.
Attorney Blackburn for Jones said that he has not had any communication from federal officials about the Homeland Security probe.
The complaint, which The Times was able to get on Tuesday, said that “Defendant Cuba Gooding, Jr. was a relevant actor who has fallen from grace due to several sexual assault lawsuits and a recent guilty plea for sexual assault.” In it, Blackburn said that Combs “was grooming him to pass him off to his friends” and that his client’s “fear became reality” when Combs introduced him to Gooding on his boat in January 2023. The client is a Chicago-born producer who created nine songs for Diddy’s 2023 album.
Jones said that Gooding made the producer feel “extremely uncomfortable” by caressing his “legs, upper inner thighs near his groin, the small of his back near his buttocks, and his shoulders.” The actor reportedly made moves on Gooding, but Gooding allegedly turned him down until Mr. Jones physically shoved him away.
“Mr. Combs had an obligation to shield Mr. Jones from the injuries he sustained at the hands of Cuba Gooding Jr. as the property owner. The lawsuit said that Mr. Combs violated his duties by failing to intervene to prevent Mr. Jones from being sexually assaulted by Cuba Gooding Jr. Mr. Combs urged Cuba Gooding Jr. to carry on his abuse of Mr. Jones by suggesting that Cuba Gooding Jr. should speak with Mr. Jones in private in order to escalate this breach. Mr. Combs’ willful violation of his responsibility to Mr. Jones has caused him great suffering.
Gooding’s representatives did not immediately reply to The Times’ request for comment on Tuesday.
A rape lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last year included mentions of Gooding, 56, who had separately pleaded guilty to forcible touching and settled. Jones claimed the “Jerry Maguire” star had sexually harassed and assaulted him.
In the $30 million lawsuit, the actor from “American Horror Story” has joined a list of co-defendants that also includes Combs, his son Justin Dior Combs, UMG, former Motown Records executive Habtemariam, Combs Global Enterprises, Love Records, ABC Corporations, Diddy’s chief of staff Kristina “KK” Khorram, and several John and Jane Does. According to Jones, there has been a network of suspected activity that violates the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Jones’ “life has been detrimentally impacted ever since” he committed to create the record in August 2022, according to Blackburn’s 105-page lawsuit. Jones said that he lived with Combs for months at a time at Combs’ houses in Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He also claimed that Jones and Combs were “under an implied work-for-hire agreement.”
Jones, who himself as a “heterosexual Christian man,” said in the complaint that he was “uncomfortable with Mr. Combs’ advances” and that he was “the victim of constant unsolicited and unauthorized groping and touching of his anus by Mr. Combs.” He complained to Khorram, who reportedly replied, “You know, Sean will be Sean,” according to the affidavit. Khorram was dubbed “the Ghislaine Maxwell to Sean Combs Jeffrey Epstein” by Blackburn.
The multi-instrumentalist Jones claimed to have “secured irrefutable evidence” of illegal activity, citing Combs’s supplying children and sex workers with alcoholic beverages laced with drugs at his homes, as well as the rapper’s purchase, use, and distribution of ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, and mushrooms, as well as his distribution and display of illegal firearms that were not registered. In addition, he said that, despite Jones’s belief to the contrary, Combs had given him “strict instructions to inform the police that [Combs] had nothing to do with” a shooting that occurred on September 12, 2022, at Chalice Recording Studio in Los Angeles.
Jones also claimed to have received video showing a rapper and an R&B singer (whose identities have been removed from the complaint) hanging out with underage girls and sex workers, and he claimed to have been sexually attacked by a cousin or assistant of rapper Yung Miami, who had dated Diddy.
The complaint included mention of Prince Harry of Britain, just as it did when it was first submitted last month. The prince was mentioned in a section concerning why Grainge “ignored the numerous red flags about Mr. Combs… to receive financial benefits from Mr. Combs and his sex trafficking venture,” despite the fact that no accusations of crime were made against him. (Over the last year, Combs has been plagued by allegations of sex abuse and sex trafficking; the first was a lawsuit filed in November by Combs’s ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, which was quickly resolved.)
Prior to Cassie Ventura’s lawsuit, Mr. Combs was a well-liked and powerful person in the music business who everyone aspired to work with. It was well known that Mr. Combs hosted the “best” parties. Credibility, enormous success, and access to prominent and up-and-coming artists, celebrities, well-known sportsmen, political people, singers, and foreign dignitaries like Prince Harry and the British Royal family were all obtained via affiliation with and/or general commercial connections with Mr. Combs.
Grainge profited from their affiliation with Mr. Combs and their general business partnership, which came with unmonitored financing that may have supported his sex-trafficking enterprise, according to the complaint. Grainge recognized first-hand the power, influence, and effect attaching themselves to Mr. Combs would have on their bottom-line and, as evidenced by their repeated general business partnership agreements.
An attorney for Universal Music Group and Grainge described Jones’ lawsuit as “offensively reckless” in a statement sent to The Times on Tuesday. The attorney also said that Grainge has been “improperly dragged into this matter despite having no knowledge of, nor any involvement in, any of Mr. Combs’ alleged conduct.”
“Moreover, subsequent to our notification to Plaintiff’s counsel regarding the offensive falsity of the ludicrous allegations, rather than dismissing the claims as they ought to have done, the plaintiff has now endeavored to modify his allegations against Sir Lucian, eliminating the initial set of ludicrous falsehoods associated with Sir Lucian and substituting them with entirely contradictory new falsehoods that are equally ludicrous,” stated Donald S. Zakarin of Pryor Cashman LLP, a law firm located in Los Angeles. “We will not only prove these claims are offensively false, but we will also pursue reimbursement for all expenses and harms incurred as a result of their assertion.”
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