Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Files Motion to Dismiss Certain Claims in Sexual Assault Lawsuit

LOS ANGELES – Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs resisted a lawsuit from a woman accusing him of sexual assault, filing a motion Friday to dismiss some claims that were not under the law when the alleged incident occurred.

The motion filed in a New York court states that Combs cannot be prosecuted because certain laws did not exist when Joi Dickerson-Deal made the allegations against him in 1991.

The music mogul’s lawyers want certain statutes in Dickerson-Deal’s allegations, such as revenge porn and human trafficking, to be dismissed with prejudice.

In a lawsuit last year, she said Combs “intentionally drugged” her, then brought her home and sexually assaulted her after a date in Harlem when she was a 19-year-old college student.

Unbeknownst to him, Combs filmed the assault and later shared it with several friends in the music industry, the suit alleges. He denied the allegations, accusing her of trying to exploit a New York law that temporarily extended the statute of limitations.

Dickerson-Deal’s allegation came nearly three decades after her alleged misconduct and New York State’s Revenge Porn Law was not codified until 2019, Combs’ lawyers said.

His lawyers also pointed to a few others, including New York’s Human Trafficking Victim Services Act, which went into effect in 2007.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Dickerson did.

Last month, Combs’ properties in Los Angeles and Miami were raided by federal authorities in a sex trafficking investigation. The criminal investigation is a major escalation in scrutiny of Combs, who has been a defendant in several recent sexual abuse lawsuits.

In a lawsuit that Combs settled the day after it was filed in November, his former protégé and girlfriend, R.&Singer B, Cassie, sued him alleging years of sexual abuse, including rape. The lawsuit claims he forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while filming them.

In February, a music producer filed a lawsuit alleging that Combs coerced him into prostitutes and pressured him into having sex with them.

Another of Combs’ accusers was a woman who said he raped her two decades ago, when she was 17.

Combs and his lawyers have denied all allegations in the lawsuits.