another rapper is doing his best to distance himself from Shawn Diddy comes after the music mogul was arrested in charge with racketeering and sex crimes we're taking a closer look at Meek Mills reaction and public pressure with an entertainment attorney welcome to the sidebar presented by law and crime I'm Jesse Weber 37-year-old Robert Williams known by his rap name Meek Mill is the latest artist making headlines for his alleged connections to on Diddy comes the Philadelphia rapper got his started around 2006 with a group called the blood hounds before going solo signing with record labeles
headed by hip-hop icons like tii and Rick Ross Meek Mill has previously been photographed spending time with Shawn comes who is now as we know behind bars for allegedly forcing people to participate in drug fueled sex parties called freak offs reportedly using drugs and the threat of violence to keep people compliant Colmes was indicted last week on charges of r teing conspiracy sex trafficking transportation to engage in prostitution and he's currently Behind Bars because his bail has been denied twice now before a grand jury for the southern district of New York officially handed down the
indictment against him Colmes was accused of misconduct by multiple people in civil court has faced a number of different lawsuits and to be clear Meek Mill is not mentioned by name or is there any direct reference to him whatsoever in the criminal indict or in the government's letters to the court from last week regarding the bail nothing so everything that you're seeing online about him is really just gossip and chatter I just want to be clear about that but going back to the lawsuits one of those plaintiffs that is sued Colmes was Rodney little Rod
Jones a music producer who apparently worked with Colmes on his latest album called Love Jones says he lived with comes for a year and witnessed what he claimed was not only debauchery but also a legal activity in his lawsuit Jones named some very well-known celebrities like Cuba goodding Jr who he claims sexually assaulted him on a yacht that Colmes had rented for a holiday cruise in 2022 other celebrities names are redacted from the suit for example the lawsuit reads quote rapper redacted on Mr com's yacht consorting with underage girls sex workers then in a footnote
it says he is a Philadelphia rapper who dated Nicki Minaj now based on that online sloes quickly deduced that that suit was likely talking about Meek Mill he dated Nicki Minaj for a couple years between 2015 and 2017 and he was her opening act on a world tour once people decided that the lawsuit was referring to Meek Mill these rumors started to circulate about his possible involvement or participation in com's activities a fake audio file fake audio file has also also circulated online purportedly depicting Meek Mill and comes involved in a sex act now that
file has been debunked as a hoax but gossip about it has not waned there's been gossip about this alleged sexual relationship these rumors continue to swirl Meek Mill himself has been vocal about his name being brought up alongside allegations of abuse drug use sex with underage girls he has claimed online that his success in the industry as well as his work to reform the criminal justice system has made him a Target and Meek Mill is very active on X formerly Twitter he has voiced his thoughts about the lawsuit as well as the rumors in September
he tweeted quote from the streets of Philly to becoming a millionaire to helping reform the system to bridging a gap of billionaires to interacting with the rap culture that results in success it's a lot of people hating on me on the low they don't play with guns they do campaigns and he also tweeted several times about the rumors surrounding his sexuality for example one tweet reads I have the right to say I ain't gay and I'll trash anybody that play with my manhood LOL then earlier this week he put an offer on the table a
$100,000 reward for anyone who can figure out how he got named in Rodney Jones lawsuit in the first place he tweeted I want to hire an investigative Team 100K cash to find out every specific detail involving Meek Mill name to Diddy case I also want them to look at who is powering the media involving Meek anything to do with with Buddy and then in quotes something not right and then he followed that up minutes later with the streets know what's up with me that's not the case we talking about business side somebody powering these bad
campaigns with Meek Mill again I got 100K for a thorough investigation of what's powering and how exactly my name connect to this hey by the way I got to say we're able to continue to bring you the Shan com stories because of not only the amazing support that we get from you guys you're the best but also from our spons sponsors and that sponsor of today's episode is blue land now I love Bland I was using this even before they became a sponsor their goal is to eliminate single-use plastic I mean what are we finding
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off of your first order by going to blueland.com slidebar you won't want to miss this blueland.com slidebar for 15% off that's blueland.com sidebar to get 15% off with that I want to bring on Brian Sullivan he's a business and entertainment lawyer who's going to help us sort through all of this uh Brian good to see you thank you so much for coming on uh what is your reaction to Meek Mill um allegedly being a part of this Rodney Jones lawsuit let's start there um you know again it's online slle that are powering this and they're
taking a couple facts that you know splice together and then other facts relating to him and people are just making assumptions um sometimes that works sometimes that doesn't but I think if you're going to accuse someone of engaging in this conduct you better have your facts straight and not just basing it off of a couple of pieces of information so you're you're you're talking about the online and we'll get to that in a second but what about the lawsuit the fact that he is not directly named in the lawsuit from Rodney little Jones but there's
this reference I mentioned the footnote where you put two and two together it seems like he's referencing Meek Mill um so what do you make of that lawsuit I I think that's a shot across Meek Mills bow to uh for for whatever reason to either get him to help with the lawsuit or you know get him to stay quiet about uh anything that undercuts the lawsuit there's no other reason to put such a reference in um with any specific facts so I I think it's not common to do that right no no not unless there's
a reason why you need that person's name to be named in the lawsuit and and look the reason I say this is because um Rodney Jones lawyer has taken a lot of heat quite controversial is a way to make it a little bit more salacious a way to get it maybe more high-profile you put these names in it but again this is a this is a legal filing this is a complaint yeah so you can't be sued for defamation it's covered by the litigation privilege explain that to us if you can real quick so the
the law wants you to be able to say what your case is in court without the fear of Retribution so they have a privilege that uh if you file it in a court document that you can't sued for defamation making your allegations and making your accusations why then just not mention Meek Mill why do they have to say celebrity one uh this Philadelphia rapper who dated Nicki Minaj it'd be like someone saying host of Law and crime uh host of sidebar podcast um I mean my gosh it's like just say my name at that point
why would they not mention who it is um there could be any number of reasons but most likely they're trying to create a ground well of PR so that people are talking about it trying to figure this out trying to put two and two together and sometimes you can do it because you're trying to draw people draw potential Witnesses out into to your side um or you know actually making implied threats that you're going to be sued next so when you hear Meek Mill saying I'm gonna pay $100,000 to find out how I'm getting involved
in this what is what could result from that is there any legal recourse could take if if he finds out that people are leaking information or uh you know pushing this you could because it's it's outside of the Court context in social media so you could possibly Sue those people for um engaging in uh defamation by implication um or outright harassment intentional infliction of emotional distress there's many claims that you could make if you trace it to one person that's trying to drive this against Meek Mill it's going to be very expensive I think a
lot more than $100,000 because what you'd have to do is Trace numerous posts and IP addresses and go back through Communications um you'd probably have to file your own lawsuit against uh do one through 25 type of thing to get Discovery from the people who are posting and their identities uh most times they're using Nom dumes of some sort or their you know uh online handles so you don't really know exact L who they are who may be posting in certain places couple points About That Couldn't he say listen I have collected a 100 accounts
uh that are posting this video this this fake audio file um who are posting these fake pictures whatever it might be take it to a court and get an immediate injunction um to try to stop it from being published is that an Avenue that he could he could go towards he could try that and that that it's relatively new these days because a lot of these accounts you'd be suing like a handle right um not necessarily a person um you could also try to sue uh uh X formerly known as Twitter whatever it's called now
and um see if it violates their terms of use but those have been greatly curtailed since Elon Musk took over um or on other social media channels uh you could also try to do that um it's ve I've discovered it's very difficult to take down defamatory statements from social media um you know a lot of times they require you to have access directly to the post and sometimes you can't get access to the post because it's in a private Forum so you have to find someone who has access to the post to actually take it
down so uh you know it would be a very new brand new type of case to uh Sue handles instead of people to have it removed to get injunctive relief and have it taken down and I believe that uh X and Facebook and meta would kind of fight uh hard not to be obligated to do that because that would create a huge expense on their end for every time this popped up and happens and you could also go to the social media platforms because they always have mechanisms to take down uh inflammatory content or damaging
cont I mean I used to do that I used to have to do it for trademark infringement and it was a headache right to go through everything and collect all the accounts and submit the form it worked we got the accounts taken off but it's a that's a whole other you know Monster of itself yeah trademark and copyright infringement are a lot easier to do than just inflammatory comments though because there's a specific uh the dmca Digital Millennium Copyright Act has a whole procedure that the platforms have to follow but when it's defamatory cond content
it's very difficult to do that I've had clients who were bashed on face on limited F invite only Facebook forums and some accused of heinous conduct and um they couldn't get it taken down and other people they knew told them yeah this is up there but they need you need access to the exact post you can't get access to the post if you're not a member of The Forum and the forum's not going to let you in because you're the subject of the post so you know you have to get someone to do that for
you um and also inflammatory conduct is is open to it might be inflammatory to you as the subject matter of it but it may not be inflammatory to the guy at X or Facebook or Instagram we said oh that's not so bad I'm not going to remove that and most likely in those types of situations it's just going to sit in the queue and maybe they'll get to it and maybe they won't it's you know you never know but the copyright it's they take it down unless someone objects to put it back up and that's
why it's different much easier so if you were representing Meek Mill and you've already talked a little bit about certain legal Solutions he could take to try to combat what is a flurry of information on social media he he's spoken out himself about it defended himself what else could you recommend to him legally to do um I don't know if it's say hey sit down for an interview whatever it might be what you are seeing is so many celebrities remaining quiet right now as everything is happening with Shawn Colmes what else would you recommend Meek
Mill to do if he's saying look this is all hurting my reputation right now I'm everybody's talking about me and none of this is true what would you recommend he could do I I would I would start with a crisis PR person to get to change the story and um I would track down uh use some of the technological investigators out there and track down if there is some sort of like conspiracy where one person's targeting him for whatever reason that definitely could happen um I would start trying to track that down and if that
involves filing lawsuits um to uh to get Discovery I would do that um because he may he clearly said he wants to take action this is not somebody who wants to you know go hide in a hole for six months and hope everything blows over he wants to fight back and um the big problem is that it's it's you know the allegations made in the complaint one it's not he has never really been named just they're picking up facts and linking it to him maybe there's some other people that fit that model too um who
can fall into that uh there could also be um situations where uh he can uh Target specific individuals in a lawsuit and go after them I wanted to ask you this aside from Meek Mill In general as I mentioned after people it was known that Shan Colmes was under investigation after his homes were raided and now after he was arrested and indicted you are seeing a lot of celebrities or one-time friends of comes are choosing to keep quiet they're remaining quite silent how many of them do you think have called up their lawyer in the
past month or so or the past few or the past week and said what do I do do I you know because there has to be a reason we're not hearing more I mentioned this before I'll say it again when Harvey Weinstein uh was all those allegations came out U and then ultimately he was criminally charged you saw people who came out pretty strongly against him and said I didn't know anything about this you know I heard rumors about Harvey Weinstein I think it's disgusting now I'm sure there's a lot of people who believe the
same about uh the allegations regarding comes but they're not being as vocal why do you think that is do you think they've communicated with their lawyers and what are those Communications what do you think the lawyers are saying to them I I will premise this with saying I nobody's called me for any information I think it probably starts more with the pr people and since the Harvey Weinstein time which was what seven eight years ago that that story broke I think a lot of people are choosing to remain silent and letting things uh play out
in court before they take a stance one way or the other and I do think the backlash against Ashton Kutcher and um munis over their letters supporting Danny Masterson have made people reluctant to make take any stance whatsoever in in these and they'd rather just ignore it and not get involved in controversial uh stories and because then what invariably happens is the story is no longer about Diddy it's about so and so who said this about Diddy um and I think they would just rather not be involved in it at all do you think somebody
like Meek Mill who has spoken out that makes it more or less likely that he has been speaking with the government has been working with prosecutors because one of the questions we also had is maybe people are being silent because they are right now going to be cooperating Witnesses or have provided the government information or have been contacted and they don't want to say anything at this point but if you have somebody like Meek Miller or another celebrity who is saying something about comms that may indicate maybe they are not a part of this case
at all maybe they're not being approached at all what do you think um I I think if they are a government witness they're probably less likely to say anything because they don't want to have their public comments then be used against them if they have to testify at a trial and I think it's probably a sign that he's not uh a cooperating witness I'm not a criminal lawyer though but I would think that that's probably what's going on and I think um he because and this is less about Diddy and more about him being targeted
by online sleuths or you know and they there could be online sleuth and they could be trolls and they could be people who are being put up to it just because somebody wants to get at Meek Mill so that's why I think he should conduct an investigation and use it'll cost more than a h 100,000 that he's offering I believe because this is not cheap and easy technology to use one final question before I let you go with respect to Meek Mill and Rod Jones you had mentioned this kind of almost immunity uh with respect
to filing a lawsuit if I'm going to ask you two scenarios here if uh Rodney Jones were to do an interview where he calls out Meek Mill but he's you know it's what he's saying in the lawsuit but he mentions Meek Mill directly and says uh you know it's mentioned in the lawsuit but Meek Mill did X Y and Z if he says it in a he says it in an interview as opposed to just legal filings could he then get sued by Meek Mill and if he were to to lose this lawsuit or it
gets dismissed can Meek Mill then turn around and file a lawsuit against him if he does a news story and says Meek Mill did this to me yes he can be sued for that um if he just cites what was in the complaint he could still during the interview he could still possibly be sued but he does have more of a litigation privilege argument because it's referenced in a complaint he's just quoting the complaint but remember the complaint only alludes to States certain facts relating to the identity he doesn't actually identify Meek Mill right so
if he identifies Meek Mill he could definitely be sued for defamation and if he loses the suit if he loses the suit it's still filed in the lawsuit the litigation privilege would still yeah Hey listen you know talking about it being directly identified we remember Johnny Depp Amber herd she didn't directly reference his name in that Washington Post St Ed she he won so it was pretty clear that you know who was being who she was mentioning you don't have to be directly named but yeah that's the concept of defamation by implication you don't have
to identify the person or you don't have to identify a specific deed but you put enough fact or statements out there of fact that you claim are facts that lead you to believe this person was the person who did this or this person did this right you can be sued for that yep absolutely Brian Sullivan thank you so much for coming on appreciate you breaking it down with us thank you all right everybody that's all we have for you right now now here on sidebar thank you so much for joining us and as always please
subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube wherever you get your podcasts I'm Jesse Weber I'll speak to you next time [Music]
