A lawyer for Rodney Jones, the music producer who accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of sexual assault, claimed recording giant UMG Recordings and the Motown Records division “funded” the rapper’s alleged sex trafficking.
“If defendants are concerned about having a salacious claim filed against them, they should not engage in salacious acts,” Tyrone Blackburn wrote in a letter to the court April 9. “It was the defendant’s choice to enter a general business partnership with Sean Combs, which funded his sex trafficking operation.”
Blackburn’s letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, was filed in response to UMG Recordings and Motown Records’ bid to be removed from Jones’ legal proceedings shortly after Combs’ homes were raided by Homeland Security as part of a human trafficking investigation.
Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Diddy and the recording labels.
UMG Recordings did not follow its own contract with Combs, but wanted “to rely on it to get out of being his general business partner,” Blackburn claimed to Fox News Digital.
Blackburn claimed Motown Records never allocated a budget to Combs despite it being part of his contract with UMG Recordings.
“So, like I said in my letter, this contract is a ruse,” he added. “It is a ruse. It is a fraud. It is a fake. Just in case some s— like this happens, right? They have to point to something to get themselves out of trouble. They gave this man $1.3 million, if not more. And they had no oversight of the money. No oversight of what was being done.”
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However, a lawyer for the recording companies argued Jones’ inclusion of the labels in the lawsuit was an attempt “to fit a square peg into a round hole” in a separate letter filed with the court.
The letter, filed by Donald Zakarin, sought to have the court dismiss the allegations against the label and current and former executives, including CEO Lucian Grainge. The legal team for UMG Recordings and Motown Records claimed Blackburn filed a lawsuit including “offensively false and salacious accusations” against the record labels.
Jones accused Combs of sexually assaulting him and forcing him to perform sex acts with prostitutes in a lawsuit originally filed in February.
Jones worked as a producer with Combs on his latest album, “The Love Album: Off the Grid.” The music producer claimed he lived with the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer for extended periods of time and accused Combs of unsolicited groping and sexual touching.
Jones has since amended his complaint to add claims that he was also sexually assaulted by Cuba Gooding Jr.
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Jones did agree to drop former Motown CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam from his lawsuit. Habtemariam called the claim that the record label, or its executives, were involved in any of the alleged sex trafficking “vile and deeply upsetting accusations, and are completely untrue.”
She also accused Jones’ legal team of asking her to sign a “materially false” declaration.
A lawyer for Diddy’s music company, Bad Boy Entertainment, slammed Jones’ lawsuit as “pure fiction.”
“Lil Rod (Rodney Jones) is nothing more than a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday,” Combs’ lawyer, Shawn Holley, previously told Fox News Digital. “His reckless name-dropping about events that are pure fiction and simply did not happen is nothing more than a transparent attempt to garner headlines.”
