50 Cent's new Diddy doc: allegations and unseen footage row

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1:04Hello and welcome back to Fame Under Fire from BBC Sounds with me Anushka Matandadawati. In this episode, something that was promised almost a year ago, 50 Cent's doc on Diddy has actually dropped. It's four parts, four hours long, a walkthrough of Diddy's life right up to the moment that he actually got arrested. It's called Sean Combs' The Reckoning and was released by Netflix. And if you're thinking, why should I care there have been 50 billion Diddy docs? Yes, there have been a lot, but 50 Cent and Diddy have had a longstanding beef with 50 repeatedly trolling him throughout the trial. Some of those AI memes were groundbreaking in their exploration of what is comedy and AI together.

1:46I mean, go and have a look at 50 Cent's Instagram page if you want to know what I'm talking about. This doc has something different. It also has never before seen footage of Diddy right up to the point of his arrest. And we hear from the jurors as well. Now, a reminder, in July, Sean Combs was convicted on two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution, but found not guilty of the most serious charges, racketeering with conspiracy and sex trafficking of two ex-girlfriends. He's now serving a 50-month prison sentence and says he will appeal. Now, there has been a response, quite a big response from Diddy's side of the aisle from his team.

2:19In a cease and desist letter sent on Monday, lawyers from Mr. Combs demanded that Netflix withdraw the series contending the footage had been illicitly provided to the streaming service in violation of contractual agreements. The letter asserted that running the footage would be a copyright violation and that it likely contained privileged communications between Mr. Combs and his legal counsel. Netflix say the footage was legally obtained. Before we get into everything, this episode contains strong language and content some listeners might find upsetting. If you've been a victim of sexual abuse or violence, details of help and support are available at bbc.co.uk forward slash action line.

2:57And I'm very happy to say we have back. Here she is. If you've been with us since the beginning of the Diddy on Trial podcast and our fame under fire, you will know who this is. Rolling Stone senior investigative reporter, Sheanne Rountree. Hi, Sheanne. Hi, good to see you. It's lovely to have you back. We've had the end of a trial. You got married. There's been a lot going on. But here we are. Something that 50 Cent promised. He's delivered upon. It is a long documentary, four hours, four parts. The wildest thing to me is the footage. The footage of Diddy just days before his arrest talking to his lawyer, Mark Ignifolo.

3:31Listeners will know Mark Ignifolo was lead counsel and he led the closing arguments, which finished two rounds of applause at the trial. In the footage, Diddy's making plans, calling people involved in the case, cases against him, civil cases and the federal case. It really is extremely intimate. Cheyenne, tell us some of the stuff that we see. Where to begin? I think what you kind of take away from this is just like how Diddy's mind works a little bit. You see him strategizing with his attorneys about social media reach and thinking already ahead of before he's even arrested how to reach potential jurors.

4:09And he's telling his team, like, don't just be going on CNN. You've got to meet the audience, the potential jurors where they're at. You have to go on Instagram and TikTok. And then he pivots later and he does a tour of Harlem, his old neighborhood. And he's hanging out with people. He's smiling. He's taking shots at bars. is like he's really immersing himself back where he grew up with the people that, you know, he kind of his hometown, his home turf. And then he gets in a car and he's like, I got to have some hand sanitizer. I have to take a bath. And then another one, you see a lawsuit from Don Richard drop.

4:44And that was one of his former artists at Diddy Dirty Money. and you see him react in real time to someone accusing him of misconduct, of sexual battery, of groping her, of alleging things that happened during her time in the group. And you see him react in rage in real time and the wheels start spinning of how do we counteract this? And he has his lawyers dig up old clips of her saying how much she loved this time. And so it's just this real kind of veil lift of how his mind was working six days, Literally six days before he was arrested in that very same hotel room he was strategizing with his team.

5:21Dawn Rashad accused him of grabbing and groping her, of being sexually inappropriate, of witnessing assault against Cassie, of being basically an abusive boss. And I mean, he flat out denied this from the beginning of that lawsuit being filed. But we see the response there. When it's filed, you know, when someone says this happened X, Y, Z, and you know that they had a close relationship, obviously his team will deny that this happened. But you see him deny it in that moment, saying this is lies, he curses, and he adamantly rejects her entire account. And in real time is like, this didn't happen.

5:57And it's kind of interesting to see someone react to accusations. You know, publicly, yes, you're going to have to maintain your innocence. But privately, sometimes you're like, maybe you would think, okay, yeah, I do remember that. But she has that a little bit twisted. It was a flat-out rejection. And then you see his son, Justin, one of his oldest sons, adult sons, kind of jumping in on this and is his kind of tag person. I think that he keeps saying, you know, God told me not to do anything. You guys are the ones supposed to handle it. And so you kind of see that delegation being placed on different people to do whatever they have to do, because that's kind of their marching orders at that point.

6:35And like you say, the PR element of it, him saying things like we have to have somebody who has dealt in the dirtiest of dirtiest business and propaganda in terms of putting out positive messaging about Diddy to target potential jurors. What we have heard about Diddy from the prosecution is that he is somebody who was calling people up, who could be potential witnesses, calling people up that they were subpoenaing for the grand jury to do their investigation before they filed the indictment. And then we actually see that happen. I mean, that to me was mind blowing that that phone call exists. Just talk us through what happened with Kalina Harper and who she is to him.

7:13So Kalina Harper was also part of Diddy Dirty Money, that group with Don Rashard and Diddy. And in Don's lawsuit, she references Kalina a couple of times, I think 33 times in her lawsuit saying that she was there. She had witnessed this, that she was basically a corroborative witness. Diddy immediately jumps on the phone with Kalina and is kind of tapped back into, hey, I love you. I need a favor. Can you believe what she's saying? You were there. She's mentioned you. And kind of working to, yeah, get her to release a statement. He asked her, I need you to go on the record and release a statement saying this is not true.

7:51And then you cut to Kalina Harper telling the documentary crew about her own conflictions there, because she says that sometime before all this, she was going through her own dispute with a relationship involving her children. And she asked outreach to Diddy saying, I need I need help. I need five thousand dollars. And he said, no, sorry, I can't do it right now. Cut to he needs a favor on a way larger scale. she eventually does release a statement but you just see how he is pressuring and kind of laying it on thick and it's not a threatening matter it's almost this emotional plea going back to how much he loves her their relationship their friendship that he's in crisis and he needs her help versus then when you think of a threat or this kind of applying pressure you would think of something outright but it's a totally manipulative emotional appeal to her to release this statement, which she ultimately does.

8:48Let's have a listen to what was said. What's she talking about? I'm going to send it to you right now. I'm going to definitely need you to go on the record. I'm asking for a big favour. So there's a recognition that it's a big favour on her part. And like you said, she does actually go on to release a statement saying that the allegations that have been made by Don Rashad are not representative of my experience and some do not align with my own truth. But when we're thinking about going back to the beginning, Did he being denied bail and also a conversation that came up again with whether he should walk out before sentencing and be released before sentencing.

9:22This came up because the prosecution said he was calling people repeatedly and this was given as an example. Yeah, it's crazy to think that very conversation, obviously through text messages and phone calls, prosecutors can have those phone logs, but maybe they wouldn't have an audio recording of that call. However, to see him filming this in real time as he's doing what the prosecution alleged was witness tampering obstruction of justice and documenting it in real time is kind of next level. And also, you know, they're saying this isn't the only time. This is just the most recent example of this happening days before he's arrested.

10:01Yeah, it was reported by U.S. media that he called her 128 times after Dawn Rashad's lawsuit dropped. So getting a backstage pass, I mean, like I said, this is crazy, but this has been the whole trial. Everything's been weirdly in the palm of our hands from the beginning because it's been so heavily reported on social media. And then you know what it was like at the trial itself. Everybody was streaming the entire time. And now we get this kind of, here's all the stuff you heard about. Here's what was actually going on. But Diddy's team have responded to the serious allegations made in the series, because there are a few of them throughout this four hour journey through his life.

10:37Combs' attorney told us,

11:07address legitimate matters through the legal process, not through a biased Netflix production. Previously, we know he's denied the allegations made by Dawn Rashad. The footage, where do they say this has come from? So it turns out that taking this all back, apparently in 2023, Netflix either approached or there was a conversation between Netflix and Diddy's team about doing a documentary in 2023. Now, Cassie's lawsuit was filed in November of 2023. We don't know if this is before or after, but clearly a conversation about a documentary happened at some point. Cut to September 2024. Diddy is planning his own documentary or he's planning something to use with the footage for a later thing.

11:55Who knows what, but we can assume that it's for a project down the line, capturing what's happening. And he hired a videographer to capture these intense moments. He tells the videographer to get shots of policemen across the street on a rooftop, like kind of almost directing this footage, building up to this narrative of, you know, hopefully winning this case and beating this and showing this pressure he was under. But somehow that footage that was being taken landed up at Netflix. And Netflix said that they obtained it legally. They went at lengths to hide who the person is. And they say they were within their complete rights to have obtained this footage and to air it.

12:38Diddy's team, like you said, is saying, no, he never authorized this to be used in this manner. And the idea that there was a conversation between Diddy and Netflix comes from the cease and desist letter by his legal representation saying, you doing this is vindictive because he didn't go into business with you. Now you've gone to 50 Cent, who is denying that there's a feud now, which is quite funny. You've gone to 50 Cent, who has been a long time, shall we say, hater or critic of Diddy to exec produce this. That's clearly corporate retribution. But they've also called it a shameful hit piece.

13:15They say, as Netflix and CEO Ted Sarandas know, Mr. Combs has been amassing footage since he was 19 to tell his own story in his own way. I mean, Diddy has always been fond and I'm not making a joke here about the freak offs he has always been fond of recording himself yeah I think I mean when you look at the archives of what he's done there's archival footage there is like newspaper clippings and he did his own documentary about bad boy reunion tour that happened in 2016 that released in 2017 he's always had someone around filming him whether it's for social media or for maybe just footage for eventually whenever he does a huge telling of his life again.

13:55So it's not strange that he was filming himself during this time. I mean, why wouldn't you? But it's also just kind of startling to see something that was clearly not meant to be released just yet by kind of who he calls an adversary. I mean, they say if Netflix cared about the truth or his legal rights, they wouldn't rip private footage out of context and conversations with his lawyers, which we're going to touch on in a minute about what that means. But we approach Netflix to respond to the allegation that the footage was stolen. They said the claims being made about Sean Combs' The Reckoning are false.

14:26The project has no ties to any past conversations between Sean Combs and Netflix. The footage of Combs leading up to his indictment and arrest were legally obtained. Speaking about the footage, the documentary's director, Alexandra Stapleton, said it came to us. We obtained the footage legally and we have the necessary rights. There is a question here about privileged information. For listeners not au fait with that terminology, what does that mean? Essentially, anytime you speak with an attorney in a legal capacity about ongoing issues, that's considered privilege and kind of off the table for public consumption.

15:00I mean, when during the trial, I think Diddy got in trouble because there was notebooks that he had scribbled like legal on it. And that means that prosecutors have no access to that no matter what. There was some dispute about if it was actually legal stuff or not, but it's just kind of this means it's off the table. And so it is remarkable to hear and to see Mark Ignifolo, you know, getting some stern words on the phone as well from Diddy saying you need to figure this out and I'll call you back and you need to make this work for me. That is just it's mind boggling. Someone who sat through that whole trial, it is mind boggling to see that now.

15:36Privileged information, having those conversations with an attorney, but having five people present or doing it in a hallway or doing it on the street. I mean, typically you then, you know, those other people aren't bound by privilege. If you include four other people in that conversation, the attorney has to claim attorney-client privilege, but the other people there don't. So there's a lot of like unknown parts of this that I'm sure we will hear more in this story as it goes. He's widely recognized as one of the greatest footballers in history. He's won the prestigious Ballon d 'Or Award five times.

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17:03Let's talk about the jurors. This is the eyes and ears. This is people who saw all the evidence that there was. Nobody else saw everything because we did not watch the freak off tapes in court. We hear from Jura 160 and Jura 75. Let's just hear what they had to say in the documentary. If you don't like something, you completely get out. You cannot have worth it. Have the luxury and then complain about it? I don't think so. I had the same facial expressions that he did at times when it was something that someone said and it's like, that didn't make much sense. So they speak quite candidly there.

17:37You can hear the first juror there is talking about discussions about the relationship with Cassie and that she seemed to go back after there was abuse and go to the nice dinners and go on the trips. And the conversation that was going on between the jurors saying, well, why would she go back? And they'd be texting the next day like nothing ever happened. And then the next juror saying, I had the same facial expression as Diddy at times. Oh, I mean, what do you make of that, Shan? Two things. I think, you know, the juror that says that kind of talks about Diddy's reaction to the trial. It shows that at least this one juror was watching his reaction and paying attention to how he was interpreting this testimony against him.

18:20And I think at one point she mentions that I recognize this nod that he did. I saw it on making the ban. And so it's already kind of interesting to see how much they were paying attention to his reaction versus and are supposed to be trained on the witness and the evidence that's up at the pulpit, the dock at the witness stand. And Combs is several rows back. It kind of shows exactly what they were paying attention to. And that is almost, you know, it's a celebrity trial. How is a celebrity reacting? And then to the male juror, I found it interesting that he was referring to Cassie and Diddy's relationship in the same ways that Diddy's attorney Mark kind of closed out his closing arguments and saying that this is a great love story.

19:10And yes, it's really unfortunate. It was marred by violence, but these people were in love. And that juror references that. He's like, it's really interesting. They couldn't keep themselves from going back to each other. And so that message really resonated with people because, you know, a lot of people don't understand a dynamic of an abusive relationship until you or a loved one has unfortunately gone through that. And it's hard to make sense of why something is so awful. Why does someone stay in it for so long? And that message of it was just love and you can't fault people for helping who they love.

19:44That message really kind of was the bow on everything. And that was an explanation that I guess he and others accepted. Not the first juror we've heard from. We heard from an alternate juror who is there in case one of the main guys goes down. We heard from him on Laura Coates Live on CNN. Let's hear what he had to say. It was actually like pretty tame. Really? Yeah. Did she? It was just a lot of rubbing oil and stuff on there. It wasn't anything too, you know, graphic. And the reason I wanted to play that is because the number one question, I'm pretty sure it's probably for you as well, is we were told that these freak off tapes were these days long drug fueled grueling orgies where these women were being abused and they hated it and they didn't want it.

20:33And we saw him beating up Cassie and we knew it was a violent relationship. How did the jurors arrive at a conviction that feels so far from what the prosecution alleged was going on? But we didn't see kind of the pinnacle of the evidence, which we'd been building up to this whole time. The freak off tapes. Is that something that you've kind of dealt with people asking you and kind of explained that the jurors saw stuff that we we didn't at all? Yeah, I think, I mean, the heart of the sex trafficking and really the racketeering conspiracy all came down to what was happening in those rooms. And yes, the jurors saw evidence of the freak off tapes.

21:12But Cassie also alleges that she was sometimes beaten during the middle of these freak offs and that she was taken away into a private room where that would happen and then she would go back out. And I mean, we haven't seen it, but I don't think that there was a videotape of those alleged instances of violence during freak offs. But yeah, it is interesting that something that's at the central point of the trial and the charges that the media and journalists couldn't see for themselves of what that environment looked like because prosecutors are alleging there's drug use, there's coercion. And not being able to see that created kind of that separation to being able to have kind of this independent kind of stake on saying it was or it wasn't or what it was interpreted to look like.

22:00And I will say that that is that alternate juror's opinion of what he saw. But it's just an interesting thing to think about. We saw so much of this and yet so little at the same time when it came to that particular evidence. There is a difference as well in this documentary between, which has come up a lot, the allegations of sexual abuse, of grooming and abuse more generally that we've seen in civil lawsuits that they touch on here that we didn't see within the federal trial. The federal trial, there was a pattern of abuse that they were alleging between romantic partners happening inside hotel rooms with commercial male sex workers.

22:34But when you get into this four hour long walkthrough, you see, you know, Lil Rod's accusations. We've covered this civil claim before, but what else do you have to say? Yeah, Little Rod says essentially it was almost a professional grooming that took place with him and Diddy when he was working on the Love album in the early 2020s, I guess you could say, up until it was released in 2023. But essentially, Little Rod claims that he was kind of conditioned and praised that he was going to be his next hitman. He was going to, you know, be nominated for a Grammy and just kind of put on this pedestal as his collaborator.

23:11collaborator. And then eventually after spending about two years working on this project, Lil Rod says he was owed a lot of money, but all that he was offered was$29 ,000 across two years worth of work. And on that other end, that there was constant partying and drug use and that it seemed really fun at the time, but Lil Rod says he would wake up quite often and not have any memory of the night before. And like you said, waking up in beds with women and sometimes Diddy himself and not having any recollection of what was happening, leading him to assume that he was drugged or whatever he was drinking had something in it that made him forget what happened the night before.

23:53And Little Ra didn't go into it too much on the doc, but he did allege in his lawsuit that there was a sexual kind of harassment or groping happening at the same time. And that's why he was using the word grooming. Yeah, he talks about Diddy showing him videos of anal penetration and that being part of the grooming process. Diddy has vehemently denied the accusations made by Lil Rod numerous times. He denies what Lil Rod has to say. He denies the allegations in the civil lawsuit and will litigate those in court. But picking up on the idea that this is a different form of alleged abuse to what the prosecutors were saying, it also goes into kind of historic abuse.

24:34There's conversations about Kirk Burroughs. Can you just, who is Kirk Burroughs to Diddy and what does he have to say in the documentary? Kirk Burroughs is the co-founder of Bad Boy Entertainment. You know, when we think of Bad Boy, we think of Diddy. But in the very beginning, when it was founded, there was Kirk, apparently, who was such good friends with Diddy that he was Justin's godfather. And you see him in these old photos and it's kind of been erased in, you know, recent history. but Kirk alleges something similar to what Little Rod said of being best friends with him being his protector and slowly their situation started to change that he alleges that Diddy kind of barged into his office one day and made him hand over or sign away his 25 percent stake in bad boy and Kirk again doesn't get into specifics in the doc but he alleges I think he uses the word sexually deviant abuse was happening between him and Diddy at that time while there's an abusive kind of work relationship or a toxic work environment that he was working through.