Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sues Courtney Burgess, Who Said He Had Sex Tapes

Music|Sean Combs Files Defamation Suit Against Man Who Said He Had Sex Tapes

Sean Combs, the music mogul facing sex trafficking and racketeering charges, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against a man who said in interviews that he had been given videos that showed Mr. Combs in sexual encounters with celebrities, including assaults of people he said appeared to be minors.

The man, Courtney Burgess, surfaced last year as a character in the ballooning internet chatter about Mr. Combs, who is awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail. During appearances on true crime podcasts and in an interview on the cable network NewsNation, Mr. Burgess said he had videos of the encounters; in October, he said he testified in front of a grand jury considering additional charges against Mr. Combs.

Mr. Combs’s lawsuit asserts that such videos do not exist and accuses Mr. Burgess of “fabricating outlandish claims and stirring up baseless speculation” about him. It says the allegations have caused Mr. Combs severe reputational harm and have tainted the pool of jurors who will eventually consider federal charges against him.

“People who heard and believed Defendants’ lies have accused Combs, on social media that is consumed by hundreds of millions of viewers each and every day, of being a debauched ‘monster’ and a pedophile,” the suit says.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. Burgess said, “I’m standing by my word.”

“He had a lot of nerve to want to sue somebody when he’s going to rot in jail for all of the things he’s done,” he said.

In addition to the criminal charges, Mr. Combs faces more than 30 civil suits in which he has been accused of sexual assault. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers have said that he has “never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”