NEW YORK — The law firm that has carried Sean “Diddy” Combs’ $100 million defamation suit against the parent company of NewsNation, victims attorney Ariel Mitchell, and Courtney Burgess, for over 20 months, asked a federal judge Monday to let it walk away, saying the imprisoned music mogul has not paid a bill in more than six months and has stopped talking to his lawyers.
Sher Tremonte LLP filed its motion to withdraw Sept. 14 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, 10 days after Judge John P. Cronan handed Combs a partial win by refusing to throw out the case against Nexstar Media Inc. and Florida attorney Ariel Mitchell.
In a four-page sworn declaration, partner Michael Tremonte wrote that Combs “has not paid Sher Tremonte anything for over six months and his last payment related to fees and expenses that were incurred in late 2025.” A “substantial portion” of the balance is more than 90 days past due, he said. The filing does not put a dollar figure on the debt. Tremonte offered to show the invoices to the judge in private.
Combs “has not paid Sher Tremonte anything for over six months and his last payment related to fees and expenses that were incurred in late 2025.”
No Money, Mo’ Problems
Money is only half of it. Combs “has declined to make himself available for timely, substantive, and direct communications about his cases for over four months,” Tremonte wrote, describing “a total breakdown in cooperation and communication.” He also pointed to “the volume of work across this and numerous other cases,” a reference to the civil suits the firm has handled for Combs since his September 2024 arrest.
The firm told Combs by mail on Sept. 3 and again on Sept. 11 that it would quit unless he paid and made himself available, according to the declaration. Copies went by email to his power of attorney. A certificate of service filed the same day identifies that person as Robin Greenhill of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment Group in West Hollywood, California, and lists Combs’ address as the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix, New Jersey, inmate number 37552-054.
Combs was convicted in July 2025 of transporting people to engage in prostitution and acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking. He was sentenced that October to 50 months in prison.
Sher Tremonte also asked for a retaining lien, which would let the firm hold Combs’ case files until its bill is paid. Any replacement would inherit a case mid-discovery without the file.
Tremonte argued the exit will not hurt his client. No trial date is set, he wrote, and the only event on the calendar is a telephone conference Thursday at 2 p.m. that the firm “plans to attend unless relieved as counsel before that date.”
The Videos In Question
Combs sued in January 2025, four months before his criminal trial. Courtney Burgess, a self-described music industry veteran, claimed the late Kim Porter had left him videos of Combs sexually assaulting celebrities and minors. Mitchell, then Burgess’ lawyer, vouched for the tapes on NewsNation and added claims of her own, including that a police report backed a rape accusation and that Combs used drug-laced baby oil to incapacitate victims.
Burgess has previously commented that he turned the videos over to the U.S. Attorneys.
Several victims came out and supported the claims of drug-laced baby oil, and was common knowledge at the time. Critics state that Combs came out with the defamation lawsuit against Mitchell in part, to distract her from the lawsuits she had filed against him, including the Parham case.
Was Ariel Mitchell a Target? The Unraveling of the Coverup
Ariel Mitchell has said that Sean Combs threatened to have her killed and that the threats were relayed through a Miami commissioner, according to people she spoke with.
Fifteen days before the defamation suit was filed, Mitchell was arrested. A Jan. 7, 2025, booking record under the name Ariel Elise Kidd alleges that after a violent collision into her vehicle, she pulled a gun and pointed it at the other driver. She was booked on charges of burglary with assault or battery, and aggravated assault with a firearm, under Florida Statutes 810.02(2) and 784.021(1)(a). She was later accepted into a felony pretrial diversion program, and the state attorney’s office did not pursue the charges. The other driver did not respond to a request for comment, but had previously stated that she worked as “a bodyguard for a billionaire.”
To some, the timing looks like more than coincidence. They believe Combs and his associates have gone after Mitchell and other attorneys who represent his accusers.
“We know what these monsters do to attorneys and their victims who go after them,” said one person who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They know which crimes they’ve committed, and which videos exist. Defendant Diddy and others are having witnesses threatened, beat up, drugged, and blackmailed. This is all an attempt to keep trafficking victims from pursuing legitimate claims.”
Several accusers allege that Combs and his associates threatened them, and in some instances assaulted them, to pressure them into dropping their civil cases. The source described the group as a criminal enterprise that specializes in turning its victims into the accused. “In other words, they set up the victims. It’s all about ruining the credibility of the victims,” the source said.
Another accuser says Mitchell had a gun held to her head at a Culver City, California, hotel in November 2024, during an incident that involved several other victims. According to a police report, one of them had been lured to the hotel by the promise of filming for “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” the documentary that prompted Combs to sue NBCUniversal, Peacock and Ample Entertainment. A state judge dismissed Combs’ suit in April 2026.
The accuser filed a report with the Culver City Police Department and also reported the incident to the FBI, as did several others who say they were attacked at the hotel. The alleged aim, according to those reports, was to coerce false confessions on camera and capture footage that could be used to blackmail the accusers and their attorneys into abandoning their claims.
A police internal affairs lieutenant said the FBI took over several investigations into the hotel attack and related assaults last year. During the same time period of the alleged incident, Combs was caught using other inmates cell phones to threaten witnesses.
The allegations appear markedly similar to what Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) is being accused of, in several lawsuits involving victims attorneys, Tony Buzbee and David Fortney. Carter has been accused of sending private investigators to intimidate and coerce false confessions from their client, referred to as the ’13 year-old girl’ victim. Carter recently lost his appeal against Buzbee, with a panel of judges finding the recordings in-admissible. Both Sean Combs and Shawn Carter are accused of raping a 13 year old girl in 2000.
Another similarity to the disturbing Culver City allegations, is Carter’s attorneys accusing Fortney of telling the victim that Carter would have her killed if she didn’t drop the lawsuit against him. The assertion is shocking enough on its face, but even more potentially disturbing when considering that Carter may have had his associates actually communicate that threat.
The $100 Million Lawsuit: Dismissals and What Survived
In his Sept. 4 opinion, Cronan dismissed three of the four statements pleaded against Nexstar, finding Combs had not shown the network acted with actual malice in airing what its hosts framed as allegations. The baby oil claim survived. It was plausible, the judge wrote, “that anyone who heard such a claim would at the very least entertain serious doubts as to its accuracy.”
Ariel Mitchell fared worse. Cronan denied her motion in full, noting she had said she could tell a video was “pornographic in nature” while Combs alleges she never possessed one. “A person cannot engage in this sort of ‘rootless speculation’ and then try to hide behind the shield of actual malice,” he wrote. Burgess never answered the suit, and the clerk entered his default April 30.
The first public sign of trouble came in a Sept. 10 joint letter, in which Combs’ lawyers said they had been unable to reach him about mediation “due to the constraints imposed by his incarceration” and asked for two more weeks. The declaration filed four days later says the silence goes back four months, well before the ruling.
The same firm represented Combs in his suit over NBC’s documentary “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” which a New York state judge dismissed in April.
Coming Up
Cronan has not ruled on the withdrawal. Under the current schedule, fact discovery closes Dec. 8, expert discovery ends Feb. 8, 2027, and the parties estimate a jury trial of five to 10 days. Nexstar’s June motion to compel Combs to turn over criminal trial records and information on other misconduct claims against him is still pending.
Whether those lawyers will still be Combs’ lawyers by then is now the first question for Thursday’s call. Sher Tremonte attorney Anna Estavao was terminated May 2, 2025. It remains to be seen, pending approval from the judge, whether Sean Combs will seek other counsel.
Sources: Combs v. Burgess, No. 1:25-cv-00650 (S.D.N.Y.), docket entries 122, 123, 124, 125 and 126, via CourtListener.
This is an opinion article.