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Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs are attempting to have one of the charges against the embattled music mogul thrown out over claims that the law itself is racist.
Last September, Combs was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied any wrongdoing.
In a new filing seen by The Independent, his lawyers are seeking to have the latter charge dismissed on the basis that the law in question, the Mann Act of 1910, has historically been used to “target Black men.”
“No white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution,” claims the filing.
The Mann Act was initially called the White-Slave Traffic Act and was passed at a time when there was a growing anxiety about young girls being lured into work in brothels.
The filing argues that the Act has a “long and troubling history as a statute with racist origins, used to target Black men and supposedly protect white women from them.”
Combs’s lawyers claim that “the government has concocted a criminal case based primarily on allegations that Mr Combs and two of his longtime girlfriends sometimes brought a third party – a male escort – into their sexual relationship.”
They go on to argue that “the use of escorts, male or female, is common and indeed widely accepted in American culture today” and that Combs has been “singled out because he is a powerful black man, and he is being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished.”
They call for the charge to be dismissed on the grounds that it is “a clear case of selective prosecution.”
Over the past 16 months, at least 40 plaintiffs have sued Combs over allegations of sexual assault or other sexual misconduct.
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Most recently, a new lawsuit was filed against the embattled music mogul claiming that he allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted a teenager when she was walking home from a babysitting job.
In a statement provided to The Independent at the time, Combs’s legal team vehemently denied the claims against him.
Last week, Combs filed a $100 million lawsuit against NBC over the documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.
The documentary aired on Peacock last month, featuring interviews with Combs’s childhood friends, former bodyguard, former employees, alleged victims, and singer Al B. Sure! (who was married to Combs’s late ex, Kim Porter).
In the lawsuit, Combs’s lawyers argue that in the race to get the film to air, NBC “maliciously and recklessly broadcast an outrageous set of fresh lies and conspiracy theories.”
They further state that claims that Combs carried out murder and had sex with minors are false, and allege that NBC sought “only to capitalize on the public’s appetite for scandal without any regard for the truth and at the expense of Mr Combs’s right to a fair trial.”