Sean “Diddy” Combs has intensified his legal fight, filing a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Courtney Burgess, her attorney Ariel Mitchell, and NewsNation’s parent company, Nexstar Media, Inc. The amended complaint—lodged on August 6, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York—doubles the $50 million claim Combs initiated in January.
The hip-hop mogul, currently held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, accuses the defendants of orchestrating a “deliberate scheme” to fabricate and spread claims that Burgess possessed videos showing him committing sexual assaults, including against minors and celebrities. His legal team says the allegations have caused “severe reputational harm” and risk undermining his upcoming May 2025 trial on sex trafficking charges. Combs has flatly denied the existence of any such videos.
The dispute traces back to an October 2024 NewsNation interview in which Burgess and Mitchell claimed Burgess had 11 flash drives—allegedly inherited from Combs’ late ex-girlfriend Kim Porter—containing footage from so-called “freak off” parties. Combs’ attorneys call these claims entirely fabricated, pointing out that Porter’s family previously discredited a related memoir as fake, prompting its removal from Amazon.
The lawsuit also challenges Mitchell’s separate statement that a police report corroborated a 2018 rape allegation against Combs. According to the filing, the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office found the claim “unsubstantiated” and involving two white men, not Combs.
While awaiting trial—after being acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges but convicted on lesser prostitution-related offenses—Combs’ legal team is demanding a jury trial, arguing that the “torrent of lies” spread by the defendants is jeopardizing his right to a fair proceeding.
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