Sean Combs Says CNN Altered Cassie Beating Video & Destroyed Original – Deadline

By Dominic Patten Executive Editor, Legal, Labor & Politics
UPDATED with CNN statement: Heading to trial on sex trafficking charges and more in less than two months, Sean “Diddy” Combs on Thursday made a very Donald Trump move and defended himself by accusing the mainstream media of peddling fake news.
In a big swing as he faces life behind bars if found guilty, the Bad Boy Records founder now alleges that CNN altered, to his detriment, hotel security footage of him seemingly beating then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in 2016.
“The defense has confirmed, through a forensic video analysis of the CNN footage that the government provided to this Court and of the footage provided by CNN in response to the defense subpoena, that all CNN video footage was substantially altered in significant respects,” states a joint letter to Judge Arun Subramanian from Diddy’s defense and the U.S. Attorney’s office ahead of a scheduled March 14 pre-trial hearing.

“This includes covering the time stamp and then changing the video sequence,” the correspondence adds. “It also includes speeding up the video to make it falsely appear that the actions in the video are taking place faster than they are. As a result, the CNN videos do not fairly and accurately depict the events in question.”
The CNN claims are clearly not from the prosecutors in the otherwise mainly administrative-centric letter.
Ahead of a major redacted section, the letter adds: “Finally, the defense has confirmed that CNN purchased the only known copy of the Hotel’s surveillance footage, uploaded that footage into a free editing software, altered the video; and then destroyed the original footage even though it knew about and repeatedly reported about the federal investigation.”
Risking conceding the narrative to Combs and his relentless Marc Agnifilo- and Teny Geragos-led legal team, CNN was initially silent on the alteration claims. However, the Mark Thompson-run cable newser was pretty unequivocal in a statement released later. “CNN never altered the video and did not destroy the original copy of the footage, which was retained by the source,” a spokesperson for the Warner Bros Discovery-owned outlet said Thursday. “CNN aired the story about the video several months before Combs was arrested.”
Combs was arrested September 16 in a Manhattan hotel lobby, several months after a number of assault and abuse allegations from Ventura and others had been made public and federal officials raided Combs’ residences on both coasts.

In the fall, Combs, who has entered a not guilty plea, was charged with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Since then, the feds have added to the case, with a forced labor claim now in the indictment, which is in part why the parties are meeting Friday. Awaiting a May 5 trial date, Combs has been in a cell at Brooklyn’s hardcore Metropolitan Detention Center since he was picked up by the cops. Accused of multiple rapes, assaults, attacks, threats and drug-fueled “freak off” sex parties in this criminal case and dozens more civil cases, Combs has repeatedly been denied a $50 million bail.
While this is not the first time, Combs’ team has sought to kneecap the shocking footage of the half-naked rapper chasing Ventura down the hallway of L.A.’s Intercontinental Hotel nearly nine years ago and kicking the daylights out of her, it is the most brazen attack on the security video. Promising a motion in limine, the defense aims to have the internationally viewed video pulled as evidence before a jury is seated. Named as “Victim-1” in the government’s vivid September 2024 indictment of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution against the “All About the Benjamins” performer, Ventura has said what is seen on the video is her trying to escape another one of Diddy’s forced group sex sessions.
Shocking video, it might be added, that Combs himself is said to have purchased for $50,000 the day after the incident, according to Ventura in a late 2023 abuse and rape suit against her ex-boyfriend. That first of many suits accusing Combs of the most vile conduct was settled within 24 hours with an apparent $30 million payoff to the “Me & U” singer. As he has in every claim and filing, Combs has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Perhaps forgotten but pertinent, the 2016 video also showed extremely violent behavior for which the currently incarcerated and much accused Combs apologized for when it was broadcast exclusively by CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister in May 2024. “My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video,” Combs said on a hastily put together Instagram post on May 19, 2024. “I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab.”
As his trio of bail attempts all were turned down by Judge Subramanian over the latter part of 2024, Combs began to change his tune on what the 2016 video displayed and what had been going on beforehand in the swanky L.A. hotel and on other occasions with Ventura over the years the couple were together. “Far from the government’s lurid descriptions, the videos show adults having consensual sex, plain and simple,” declared Combs’ lawyers in January essentially calling out prosectors as prudes wanting to “police non-conforming sexual activity.” The January 14 letter then says” “At bottom, this case is about whether Victim-I was or was not a willing participant in her private sex life with Mr. Combs. The videos confirm that she plainly was.”
Having already tainted Homeland Security with claims of “underhanded tactics” in the March 25 raids by the feds on Combs’ Miami and L.A. homes and leaks of the 2016 hotel footage (which the feds all denied ever having before CNN), the now infamous White Party host Combs stained the feds further last month as being racist. Combs “has been singled out because he is a powerful black man, and he is being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished,” defense lawyers exclaimed of the government’s insistence he violated the Mann Act, officially known as the White-Slave Traffic Act. “What was racist in its inception has often been racist in its operation,” the February 19 filing said.

Besides this criminal matter, Combs is accused in more than 25 other cases of assault, abuse, rape and more, with even more allegations and filings coming in week after week. Losing one of his key lawyers in the criminal case earlier this year, Combs also on February 12, sued NBCUniversal for $100 million in a defamation action over what he calls out as “outrageous set of fresh lies and conspiracy theories” in the Peacock documentary Diddy: Making of a Bad Boy.Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.Signup for Breaking News Alerts & Newsletters
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Source: http://deadline.com/2025/03/diddy-cassie-ventura-beating-video-cnn-claim-1236325957/