A judge says Sean “Diddy” Combs can keep pursuing defamation claims over a NewsNation broadcast that suggested he laced baby oil with drugs to incapacitate alleged sexual assault victims.
A Friday (Sept. 4) court ruling, first obtained and reported by Billboard, denies motions by both NewsNation and lawyer Ariel Mitchell to outright dismiss Combs’ $100 million slander lawsuit. A third defendant in the case, Courtney Burgess, has not responded to the claims and is facing the prospect of default judgment.
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Mitchell was the attorney for Burgess, who claims to know the Bad Boy Records founder and was a witness before the grand jury that charged Combs in 2024 over his sex parties known as “freak-offs.” The indictment claimed Combs kept “more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil” in his home for these events — a headline-grabbing allegation that quickly became synonymous with the case.
Burgess and Mitchell appeared on NewsNation for multiple interviews following Combs’ arrest. In one broadcast, Mitchell said she had done “research” indicating that baby oil could be mixed with drugs before being doused on a sexual assault victim, thereby “lowering her defenses.” Combs alleges in his lawsuit that this is scientifically baseless, and it was defamatory for Mitchell and NewsNation to spread such lies.
Judge John P. Cronan said in Friday’s order that there’s sufficient basis for Combs to allege defamation based on this statement. “In the view of the Court,” wrote the judge, “it is plausible that anyone who heard such a claim would at the very least entertain serious doubts as to its accuracy.”
The judge ruled that Combs can also keep suing Mitchell for saying during the NewsNation interviews that Burgess had access to video recordings of Combs engaged in sexual assault, which Combs unequivocally denies. However, the judge said NewsNation itself cannot be held liable for those statements, since the cable news channel provided all the proper context for its viewers.
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“NewsNation presented Burgess’s claims as exactly what they were: allegations,” wrote Judge Cronan. “The host reminded viewers that Combs ‘has not been convicted of any crimes’ and that ‘everything against him is an allegation until it is proven in a court of law.’”
Reps for Combs, NewsNation and Mitchell did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday’s ruling.
The decision is not a final determination on the merits of any claims, but rather a procedural step that allows Combs to move forward with obtaining evidence from Mitchell and NewsNation through the discovery process. The next phase would be a trial, unless a settlement is reached to resolve the case.
This is further than Combs got in his other major defamation lawsuit against a media network, NBCUniversal; in April, a judge threw out his claims over the 2025 Peacock documentary The Making of a Bad Boy after determining that it complied with journalistic standards. Combs is appealing that ruling.
Combs is currently serving prison time for illegal prostitution, though he was acquitted at trial of more serious charges that sought to frame his “freak-off” parties as the results of a racketeering and sex-trafficking enterprise. He’s currently scheduled to be released in early 2028.
