Jennifer Lopez faces being dragged into ex Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s high-profile sex trafficking trial as prosecutors seek to use evidence from the infamous 1999 nightclub shooting that led to both stars being arrested, DailyMail reports.
According to the report by DailyMail. Jennifer Lopez and then-boyfriend Diddy were at Club New York in Manhattan on December 27, 1999, when gunfire broke out inside the venue.
The music mogul was accused of firing a gun in the shootout that left three people injured, including Natania Reuben, who was struck in the face but miraculously survived.
Both Jennifer Lopez and Diddy were arrested in relation to the incident, but Lopez was not charged and Combs was later acquitted. Diddy’s lawyers are now fighting to exclude the incident from evidence in his upcoming trial which is due to begin in mid May, according to legal filings obtained by DailyMail.
Court documents filed earlier this month reveal the Bad Boy founder is also seeking to exclude the notorious video of him beating up his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura from the case, arguing that nobody could authenticate it. Diddy also wants the judge not to allow evidence from his third accuser, known as Victim 3, because it would ‘outrage’ the jury.
The 55-year-old has pleaded not guilty to five counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Opening statements in the trial are set to begin on May 12 but jury selection will get underway a week before then. Diddy’s lawyers made their pitch to the judge in motions that are usually filed this close to a trial and are one of the last chances for the defense to shape what will be kept back from the jury.
The fact prosecutors are aiming to use the Club New York shooting means that Lopez seems set to be mentioned during the trial. After the incident, Diddy and Jennifer Lopez left the club and were chased by police through Manhattan: when they were stopped, officers found a stolen gun in the car. Jennifer Lopez was not charged but Diddy was put on trial for gun and bribery charges and acquitted.
The 55-year-old has pleaded not guilty to five counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Opening statements in the trial are set to begin on May 12 but jury selection will get underway a week before then.
Diddy’s lawyers made their pitch to the judge in motions that are usually filed this close to a trial and are one of the last chances for the defense to shape what will be kept back from the jury. The fact prosecutors are aiming to use the Club New York shooting means that Lopez seems set to be mentioned during the trial. After the incident, Diddy and Lopez left the club and were chased by police through Manhattan: when they were stopped, officers found a stolen gun in the car.
Lopez was not charged but Diddy was put on trial for gun and bribery charges and acquitted. In the legal filings, Diddy’s lawyers argued that the testimony of a key witness in the Club New York shooting was ‘patently incredible’ because he claimed the rapper tried to bribe him.
While the witness in question was not named, it appeared to refer to Diddy’s former chauffeur, Wardel Fenderson, who claims he was asked to take the blame for the gun being found in the car. Diddy’s lawyers say that his story was ‘highly questionable’ because no $50,000 diamond ring Diddy supposedly used to try and bribe Fenderson was ever found.
‘Assuming the story is true would be a “fantastical assumption”,’ Diddy’s lawyers claimed. They also objected to prosecutors bringing up accusations that he beat up a record executive in New York in 1999: he admitted harassment and was sentenced to an anger management class.
Diddy’s attorneys said: ‘The common thread running through the government’s trial strategy is to argue that Mr. Combs has been a criminal his whole life and is a bad person. ‘The government has defined the racketeering offenses very broadly to include his entire personal and professional life, spanning two decades.
‘On top of the charges, the government now seeks to admit numerous uncharged alleged acts of sexual misconduct and supposed violence – every bad thing Combs has ever supposedly done in his entire adult life,’ the attorneys added.
‘The strategy is transparent. All the government really seeks to do is show that Mr. Combs is a violent, dangerous and deviant person who deserves to be locked up regardless of whether it can actually prove the somewhat technical elements of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.
This strategy should not be allowed.’ The video of Diddy beating Cassie at the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles in 2016 was one of the key factors in his downfall.
It was aired by CNN in May 2024 and days later he apologized publicly, posting on Instagram that he took ‘full responsibility’. Diddy was arrested four months later and his lawyers have repeatedly attacked the footage’s credibility, now demanding a hearing to ascertain whether it can be used during the trial. In the court filings, his lawyers claim that the footage is ‘wholly inaccurate, having been altered, manipulated, sped-up and edited to be out of sequence.’
The video cannot be authenticated because CNN only has a copy of the footage and not the original which was deleted. Diddy’s lawyers hired Connor McCourt, a forensic video analyst, who claimed in an affidavit that after performing an analysis of the CNN footage it had been ‘significantly sped up’.
There was also a ‘significant amount of distortion’ in the clip. McCourt said that the ‘possibility of editing cannot be ruled out’ and that may ‘greatly affect a viewer’s perception’ of the events. In other legal filings, Diddy’s lawyers claimed that allegations from Victim 3 had ‘no bearing on the charged offenses’ and would be ‘unfairly prejudicial’ if they were presented to the jury.
Prosecutors are seeking to use the evidence to show Diddy’s ‘influence and control’ over the victim but his lawyers say that was not the case, the documents state. Some of the evidence would even ‘outrage some members of the jury’, Diddy’s lawyers said, but did not give details why.
After pressing for a trial at the earliest possible date, Diddy is now seeking a two month delay and argues that he needs more time to prepare after prosecutors filed a third updated indictment earlier this month. He is claiming the new charges amounted to ‘substantially new conduct’ but prosecutors say that isn’t the case.
A judge is expected to rule on that and what evidence can be allowed in during a hearing on Friday.