(NewsNation) — A Houston attorney who says he is representing 120 people alleging sexual misconduct by Sean “Diddy” Combs was sued for extortion in a lawsuit filed Monday in California.
“Buzbee has established a pattern of leveling baseless, fabricated, and malicious allegations at high-profile individuals and threatening to name them publicly if they fail to pay exorbitant sums of money,” law firm Quinn Emmanual, which is representing the celebrity who sued, said in a statement.
The court document does not name the person suing Buzbee, but he is referred to in the lawsuit as a “high-profile individual” and identified as John Doe through his lawyers, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Calling Buzebee’s actions “textbook extortion,” the lawsuit accuses Buzbee of writing letters that made “wildly false horrific allegations” that Doe raped minors at one of Combs’ parties and that there would be consequences unless he agreed to a mediated settlement.
Buzbee, the lawsuit alleges, said he would “unleash entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault” as a threat, according to the Los Angeles Times.
On Instagram, Buzbee responded to the lawsuit by characterizing it as a “last-ditch attempt to stop me from revealing names in public lawsuits.”
“We won’t allow the powerful and their high-dollar lawyers to intimidate or silence sexual assault survivors,” Buzbee wrote.
In his statement Buzbee denied any extortion, saying that instead, what happened is that he sent a standard demand letter to a New York attorney seeking a confidential mediation in lieu of filing a lawsuit.
No money was included and no threats were made in these letters, Buzbee said.
“The demand letters sent are no different than the ones routinely sent by lawyers across the country in all types of cases,” Buzbee said. “It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients. That effort is a gross miscalculation.”
When he does file a lawsuit, Buzbee said, he will disclose the demand letters his firm sent.
Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges, is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. His arrest followed raids of his multimillion-dollar mansion conducted by Department of Homeland Security agents in March.
Along with the criminal case against him, Combs faces a list of civil lawsuits that allege abuse and sexual assault over the span of three decades.
Buzbee has previously said that of the 120 of his clients who plan on filing lawsuits, 25 were minors at the time of the alleged misconduct. The youngest victim, Buzbee said, was nine years old. Earlier this week, Buzbee filed five new lawsuits alleging aggravated sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual exploitation against Combs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.