Part 1
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SOURCE:
'The Telegram'
Begin Article.
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The ‘fire-breathing’ Texan lawyer suing rap’s royalty for millions
He made his name taking on BP, but now Tony Buzbee has his sights set on P Diddy – and says ‘many powerful people’ will be exposed
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Mick Brown
20 December 2024 2:00pm GMT
Tony Buzbee: ‘They can put up any witness they want, and whether I’ve read his testimony or not I can still twist him up and make him look foolish. And I’ll do that pretty easy’ Credit: Shane Lavalette
Twenty years ago, when Tony Buzbee started making his fortune as a personal injury lawyer, reaping the spoils from his lawsuits against oil and gas companies around America’s Gulf Coast, he had a particular liking for rap music.
At the time, Buzbee was driving a Mercedes SLR McLaren Convertible (cost $500,000). “I’d drive around in my fancy car,” he remembers with a laugh, “playing the music real loud, make sure everybody could see me – then come back around again in case you missed me the first time.”
One of the songs Buzbee particularly liked was
Mo Money Mo Problems, a million-selling hit for the rap artist The Notorious B.I.G., co-written, produced by and featuring the boss of Bad Boy Records, Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs – better known now as P. Diddy.
The song, about the perils that can come from success, had a particular prescience – Mo Problems for Combs, who is presently languishing in jail on remand in New York
facing charges of kidnapping, drugging and coercing women into sexual activities, and, if Tony Buzbee has his way, Mo Money for him and for the more than 100 people he is representing who claim to have suffered sexual assault and/or abuse by
Combs and his associates, in incidents going back more than 30 years.
Combs, who has been denied bail three times, has refuted all the criminal charges against him. If convicted he could face a life sentence.
‘The biggest, baddest, meanest dog in the yard’
Buzbee claims to have won billions in lawsuits fighting oil companies, maritime operators, banks and insurance companies, and has cultivated an image of braggadocio and flaunted wealth.
In describing his tactics and courtroom manner, profiles in American papers and magazines invariably reach for the adjectives hard-nosed and ruthless, dwelling on the shark tattoo he has on his forearm, which matches the shark motif on the tail fin of his private jet (actually
both his jets: he has a big one for long flights, to California, New York, and a smaller one for flights around Texas) and the shark-shaped door handles on his offices on the top floor of the JP Morgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston, the tallest building in Texas.
He was once described by The Texas Tribune as a “big, mean, ambitious, tenacious, fire-breathing Texas trial lawyer”, and a fellow attorney has called him “the biggest, baddest, meanest dog in the yard” – a description you seldom hear applied to those called to the bar in this country.
“Oh that’s just somebody blowing smoke,” Buzbee says with a laugh, tugging at the sleeve of his tailor-made Brioni suit, and revealing a glimpse of a diamond-studded gold watch. “Trying to make me happy.”
Combs, who is 55, is a phenomenon beyond the world of rap music. Born in Harlem, and an altar boy as a child, he worked as a music talent scout, founding Bad Boy Records when he was just 24, going on to develop the careers of artists including the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J Blige and Usher, and having a string of million-selling records under the name Puff Daddy.
The allegations against Sean Combs aka P Diddy go back as far as the 1990s Credit: Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives
He branched out into the worlds of fashion and acting, but in the 2000s he became as well known for his so called White Parties – with a strict all-white dress code – extravagant affairs at his homes in Los Angeles and the Hamptons and
on yachts in the South of France, which had musicians, Hollywood celebrities and socialites clamouring for an invitation.
It is these parties, and more particularly what have been described as
the “freak offs”, drug-fuelled orgies at which Combs allegedly coerced women into sexual acts and filming them for his own pleasure, that have been the principal focus of the criminal investigation and the civil actions being brought by Buzbee.
Buzbee says his cases could extend to anyone who took part in, facilitated, or observed the alleged offences. But his main focus is Combs. At a press conference in October he announced that he was representing 120 people making allegations against Combs, dating back to the 1990s.
In fact, he says now, he has received allegations from more than 400 individuals, all of which are being screened by a 100-strong team made up of special investigators, many of them former police officers. “Ultimately we’ll be filing about 100 cases, maybe more,” he says. “There’s a lot of cases I could file, but I’m going to make sure we only file the ones that are solid.”
‘People thought they could do whatever they want with impunity’
All of these cases, Buzbee says, follow a similar pattern where an individual, singled out at a party or picked up at a concert, is drugged with GHB or some other date-rape drug and then abused.
“They’re given a drink, either a bottle of water, or these bottles of vodka that have been laced with something, and the next thing you know they’re in la-la land and they’re taken advantage of, either by him or just by people who are attending the party.
“We’re dealing with a situation – and this is my opinion – where people, including Mr Combs, thought they could do whatever they want with impunity. He’s a powerful rich person and he’s surrounded by celebrities and well-connected politically, but that wasn’t good enough. Now I can put a drop in your drink and do whatever I want, and just have a good old time doing it. And that became a course of conduct.”
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