Diddy’s legal team makes new claims as trial draws close

Sean Diddy Combs, who has been under arrest since September last year, is nearing towards his trial and the lawyers have made new claims.

The 55-year-old rapper’s legal team filed a new document in court this week, which claimed that Diddy is being “singled out.”

The newly filed legal document appealed for the dismissal of criminal charges against the Last Night rapper because, he "has been singled out because he is a powerful black man."

The Bad Boy Records founder, who has previously denied all the charges, has been subjected to a “racist” prosecution, the document obtained by Sky News, alleged.

The filing further claimed that the disgraced music mogul, who is charged for sexual abuse, trafficking, racketeering, and engagement in prostitution, is being prosecuted "for conduct that regularly goes unpunished".

"This case is unprecedented in many ways, but perhaps most notably, and most disturbingly, no white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution," it stated, listing Diddy’s various achievements as, "extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, philanthropist and one of the most accomplished black people in this country".

However, "like many other celebrities", Combs has had "complicated relationships with significant others as well as with alcohol and drugs throughout his time in the spotlight", the lawyers argued. "But that doesn't make him a racketeer, or a sex trafficker."

Diddy has been living behind the bars in Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn since his arrest, as he awaits his trial, which is set to begin in May.