looking back why didn't Shawn Colmes settle Cassandra Ventura's claims before she filed that lawsuit against him seemingly starting the ball rolling on all of his legal troubles it's a question that has come up once again and we're going to explain why we'll try to answer that question and we will break it all down with celebrity lawyer Ben Chu who famously represented Johnny Depp in his very public case and trial welcome to sidebar presented by law on crime I'm Jesse Weber when you think about the Shawn comes legal Saga that's happening right now you have to
wonder at least for Shawn Colmes could it have all been avoided I mean assuming he really did all the things that he's accused of doing if he didn't do any of that sure that would be a way to avoid potential criminal and civil liability of course don't break the law no but what I mean is is when you read all the allegations that are listed in his criminal indictment and the multiple lawsuits that he's facing these are alleged crimes and bad acts that were going on for years and if you take all those allegations as
true for a minute they were happening since the '90s the early 2000s and yet this is really the first time he is potentially going to face accountability again assuming he did all of this and so you have to ask why now why is this all coming out now why is his world falling apart now the simple answer would be because of Cassandra venturo right she sued him in November of 2023 alleging that she was sexually physically psychologically emotionally abused by Shawn Colmes for years that she was essentially forced into sexual slavery and sex traffic that
she files this massive lawsuit against comes and then they settle the next day the day after it was filed after all of this was already made public you remember what the statements were that were released Ventura said I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control I want to thank my family fans and lawyers for their unwavering support Holmes he released a statement saying we have decided to resolve this matter amicably I wish Cassie and her family all the best love Colmes lawyer Ben brafman released the statement
to the Daily Mail saying just so we're clear a decision to settle a lawsuit especially in 2023 is in no way an admission of wrongdoing Mr com's decision to settle the lawsuit does not in any way undermine the Flatout denial of the claims he is happy they got to a mutual settlement and wishes Miss Ventura the best now here's the problem he settles this after the lawsuit was filed and made public everybody saw it everybody knew about it and that led to the beginning of lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit being filed against him accuser after
accuser coming after him and it was because of Cassandra Ventura and I'll tell you what I'll give you an example in a recent lawsuit that was filed by this unidentified Jane Doe who's being represented by Texas attorney Tony Busby he's representing dozens upon dozens of alleged victims of combs at the beginning of her lawsuit actually this is language that's presented in almost all of the lawsuits that were filed by Tony Busby so far there is a preface that talks about how first Cassandra Ventura filed her lawsuit then it was filed by Joy Dickerson Neil Lisa
Gardner another Jane Doe Rodney Jones crystal McKinna April lampros adri English Dawn Richard and then there's this line plff joins many other Vic by filing this complaint in hopes their common voice makes it impossible for Combs to assault another person ever again in other words if it wasn't for Ventura would these suits have followed and it wasn't just civil the federal sex crimes charges against comes that he's currently facing sex trafficking racketeering conspiracy transportation to engage in prostitution those followed too in fact in one of the prosecution's filings they write in or around November 20
23 Federal prosecutors from the United States attorney's office for the southern district of New York working with case Agents from the human trafficking Squad of the New York field office of Homeland Security investigations began investigating combes and others for violations of federal criminal law November 2023 is when Ventura filed her lawsuit so what I'm asking is why didn't Shawn comes just settle with ventur privately before she filed the lawsuit would that have changed his whole life if this lawsuit was is never made public and let's not forget what Ventura's lawyer Douglas wigdor said at the
time of the settlement and the lawsuit as reported by NPR wigdor claimed that Colmes had offered Ventura eight figures to silence her to stop the lawsuit from being filed and she rejected his efforts and decided to give a voice to all women who suffer in silence and he also added I am very proud of Miss Ventura for having the strength to go public with her lawsuit she ought to be commended for doing so so should Shan Colmes have offered her more I mean they did settle the next day it makes you wonder what was offered
was the harm already done I mean ventur was able to expose Colmes for his alleged wrongdoing make it public and seemingly settle terms that were favorable to her now the reason I'm bringing all of this up right now is because you might have seen some recent headlines you see law on crime has just produced a podcast on wondery plus called the rise and fall of Diddy I actually host it not about self-promotion I'm not doing about that but what I'm saying is one of our contributors said attorney Dante Mills he said something and he actually
said it in our Prime crime episode on uh comes as well Dante said that Ventura came to him before she filed the lawsuit and said I believed I Was Wrong by you and she gave him an opportunity to settle the case before she brought the lawsuit Dante also said I know that both Shan col's attorneys and Cassie's attorneys were in conversation in talks to see if they can resolve the lawsuit but they were not able to and those settlement negotiations fell through now first of all the despite some press on this I don't believe Dante
was saying that he had intimate knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes he was just giving his take on how these negotiations probably went based on the reporting on this story and his experience but the fact is this wasn't settled privately this became public and now sha Colmes could be facing the rest of his life in prison and by the way as an aside let me also say real quick it's not just us here at long crime that have been covering these Diddy stories and updates for you websites all over the Internet are grabbing
readers with headlines like Puff Daddy stays in jail for trying to influence Witnesses woman Su Shawn Colmes for raping her and that is exactly where a platform like ground news comes in so what they are is a small independent team that we actually partner with because they can help us deliver just the facts when we report on stories like this you can go to G n. newss sidebar to follow along while I show you how it works with this Diddy story so we get a quick summary of how Diddy's lawyers claim prosecutors allegedly unlawfully obtained
his cell notes including attorney client privileged information remember that well based on every source that ground news found on reporting on this the left are clearly dominating coverage making this a potential blind spot for more conservative news consumers but it's not just about who's covering the story it's also about how they're covering it well ground news calculated the majority of these articles come from highly credible sources so you can instantly see which headlines are more objective and which might be skewing the facts the bottom line here don't let someone else's spin shape your understanding of
the truth just head to G n. news/ sidebar or scan the QR code right there and use our link to save 50% off of the top tier Vantage plan which offers unlimited access it's the same plan that we have been using so thank you to ground news for sponsoring this episode of sidebar okay let's get back to it and before I bring in my special guest to talk more about this just to Circle back to what Sean Colmes is facing now a year later he has been accused by federal prosecutors of committing serious and violent
crimes that he abused threaten and coerced women and others to fulfill his sexual desires including participating in sexual performances with sex workers known as freak offs that he relied on his power wealth businesses Associates to do all this that he created a criminal Enterprise that engaged in all sorts of crimes like sex trafficking Force labor kidnapping bribery obstruction so again could this have all been avoided with that in mind let me bring in a claimed trial Attorney Ben Shu who famously represented joh deppon is very public defamation trial against Amber herd Ben so happy to
have you so good to see you I mean you are the perfect person to discuss the idea of the importance of when do you make allegations public your thoughts on what I laid out Jesse it's great to be with you again uh yes I mean I in answering part of your question I think his life was irrevocably Changed by her filing of the lawsuit and I think he and his Council should have moved Heaven and Earth to settle it uh prior to the actual filing because once the filing was done then the Rubicon had been
crossed and it just set the table for all the subsequent lawsuits as civil and criminal as you point out was it just as simple as he should have paid her more money would this lawsuit have never been filed none of the lawsuits or criminal charges would have come to I mean do you think that's what it was it was an issue of money or is it what I said look Cassandra Ventura she was able to make this lawsuit public assuming all those allegations are true he is now potentially going to be held accountable his life
has been changed forever and she got a settlement I mean she settled on preferable terms so was it just he didn't offer enough or maybe I I'm speculating was there never really anything he could have done to stop this from happening there may be a third alternative I I like your thesis uh in my experience it's not always just about the money right in this case obviously she felt strongly uh about what had happened to her and she had a conscience about what may have happened to others but I think and again we're speculating a
bit because we don't know the precise nature of the communications but were I his council at the time and maybe maybe brontman did attempt this I would I would have gone to her on what we we call the equities and to say look you may feel strongly about this we understand that but Diddy has a family and these are people in his family particularly his children are innocent of this and your going public may have implications on them so my my only speculation is that there are other things things other than just money that might
have induced her or might have dissuaded her from actually filing the case you think it was also listen I won't agree to settle with you Shan Colmes unless you admit what you did you know you have to put out some sort of admission of what happened to me um and that might have been a Breaking Point in the negotiations which by the way I have to say is really interesting because even after uh he settles the suit he denies all the allegations he denies every allegation and then when the 2016 videotape comes out of him
beating Cassandra ventur in a hotel hallway he comes on Instagram two two days later and essentially admits that he did that now there's a back and forth about was she trying to escape uh a freak off was it sex trafficking was a domestic dispute but he essentially admitted and apologized for what happened on that tape so it does make me wonder if during those negotiations one of the reasons they broke off and maybe one of the reasons he didn't settle this was because uh of that caveat yeah it it could be and that may have
been something that she really needed prior to settling it but if that was going to be his position then um what actually happened was the worst of all possible worlds for him because he ended up paying the money uh and the allegations came out um so I think more thought should have been given uh to you either settle this quietly and do whatever that's required even if that required a a private apology or some kind of other non-monetary uh compensation or you fight it uh because again my experience has been once there has been one
allegation like this there are going to be others especially um if there if there is substance to the allegations they're going to come out of the woodwork I mean it's multiple lawsuits and now federal charges and it seems again based on her I'll get to that more in a moment but look you also have to remember this is probably not easy for her to come public with these allegations and expose what happened and talked about and talk about the pain that she went through I mean assuming these allegations are true it probably was not easy
for her to make something like this public and now she's Spotlight has been put on her especially if she's a star witness in in the criminal case but you know look Ben you're you represented Johnny Depp and made his claims public his personal life was public his personal life was on full display text messages videos what goes into a decision like that I would say for anybody but particularly a public figure that can't be easy the risk of uh of making things like that public versus the payoff yeah in his case um these allegations the
false allegations of domestic abuse had already been aired in 2 uh 16 you know in the context of the divorce so some of these allegations were already out um in that case also we were confident and he certainly knew with a metaphysical certitude that the allegations of abuse were false um so there wasn't the concern about other people coming out of the woodwork uh as we said in our closing argument this is the me too case without any other me to because there were no other woman who had ever made this Alle allegations against him
so in that case yes it it was a decision because he knew that there would be embarrassing texts and other things coming out but um he knew that he was innocent and um even though he was assuming the burden of proof in a defamation case so we had to prove you know the negative which is always hard uh we didn't have the concern that there was anything else out there but it's not easy right it's just not easy fight fighting this publicly right no it's not and and there were certainly down moments and there was
a lot of unfair uh negative publicity you know uh journalists who uh I had hitherto respected uh never changed their tune despite the actual evidence that came out uh so that is uh we anticipated some of it but we we didn't anticipate all of it it makes you wonder again how difficult it might have been for Cassandra Ventura to do this and also for her lawyers to have that conversation with her again assuming these allegations are true well and not and not to interrupt Jesse but but you make a really good point and again I'm
speculating but perhaps uh Diddy and his Council thought it was a bluff in other words knowing how difficult it would be for Cassie or any other woman or man for that matter who'd been a a victim of abuse to come forward it's possible that he believed that she wouldn't actually do it because they had a long relationship I'm I'm assuming and again this is assumption that the power Dynamic was he was usually in charge and maybe he felt as powerful as he was that she wasn't going to do it and that's a really really good
point it goes back to the idea of why now why why is this happen happening now and and if you take the allegations from prosecutors and you take as true and you take the allegations from the multiple people of pudum as true he always found a way to cover it up he always found a way to pressure people to not come forward I am curious though do do you believe that if Cassandra venturo never filed her lawsuit do you still think that this would have happened we'd be in the place that we are today because
look she filed her lawsuit right before the expiration of the New York adult survivors act in New York it was set to expire November 24th 202 23 excuse me this gave a one-year look back window to file these kinds of lawsuits for sexual abuse that would have otherwise been too old they would have been time barred by the statute of limitations but she was not the only one after she filed that other people file those lawsuits against him under the same statute so it makes me wonder would they have come forward if it wasn't for
Cassandra Ventura it's difficult to say but again we go back to the main question Ben if she never filed her lawsuit or if he settled with her privately before all of this is exposed do you think we would be where we are today maybe not I mean once the Rubicon is crossed once Cassie had the courage to file that complaint it made it a lot easier for lawyers and alleged victims to come forward being the first is always as you know the most difficult and uh so it may well be that if he had settled
privately or he hadn't filed it that he would he wouldn't be in the situation he is now and it seems based on what I mentioned about the prosecutors it was because of this lawsuit and the other ones that they started investigating a absolutely and she did a lot of this the Spade work for for the for the criminal investigators and what's interesting is according to prosecutors Holmes seemed to know that the floodgates would open for him because in this filing from the government in one of their filings they write specifically following the November 2023 lawsuit
again Cassandra Venta the defendant and intermediaries acting on his behalf reached out to potential victims and witnesses to the alleged conduct including individuals he did not speak to regularly and had not spoken to in years to attempt to feed those victims and Witnesses false narratives about the defendants criminal conduct for example on or about November 19th 2023 just 3 days after the filing of the lawsuit described above the defendant made multiple calls to another victim of his sexual abuse and recorded certain of those calls using the cell phone of a co-conspirator during the calls the
defendant repeatedly asked for the victim's support and friendship and attempted to convince the victim that she had willingly engaged in Acts constituting sexual abuse the defendant also assured the victim that if she needed the defendant to she ain't got worry about nothing else a thinly veiled attempt to coerce the victim into adopting and supporting the defendant's false version of events to protect the defendant now assuming that's true Ben he knew uh that the floodgates would open and maybe like one day after the lawsuit was filed and he settled he said uh oh this could start
everything I gotta jump in there I mean again assuming these allegations are true yeah and and that might support the theory that he he thought it was a bluff and once he saw the ramifications of it he he sprang into action but that also was a mistake because he went from having civil difficulties to to criminal problems which obviously put his Liberty at stake and now he's lost his Liberty you know Ben going back to Cassandra Ventura she seems to be the star witness in the prosecution's case because we believe she is victim one in
the prosecution's filings this person hasn't been identified but based on the descriptions surrounding victim one it's consistent with Cassandra ventur claims don't know for sure but judge subber Manan who's the judge overseeing this case uh ordered that he uh he listed in his order where he just denied Shan col's bail he lists out text messages between Colmes and victim one and writes that this was just hours and days after the 2016 attack by Colmes on Ventura that was captured on surveillance footage and was published by CNN months ago and this by the way happened at
the Intercontinental Hotel I believe in Los Angeles and it says that victim one again who we think is Ventura alleged usually wrote Combs I have a black eye and a fat lip you are sick for thinking it's okay to do what you've done I still have crazy bruising so not only now are you thinking if you're Shan Colmes wow right I I could have settled this could have stopped all this from coming on but now the prosecution has a key witness where right now the text messages their video that could be some of their strongest
proof and it all centers around Cassandra Ventura I mean assuming it's her right Ben yeah no I think she's incredibly strong witness we know we've talked about previously there's nothing more powerful than videotape and audio tape and again I don't know how you explain that especially since he's already had an apology of his own that is problematic so what's the what's the you know look on one hand if you're Shan comes you say I I I imagine if he's innocent okay imagine he didn't do any of this any of this just imagine that if you're
his lawyer if you're him you're saying man I wish I would have settled that uh you know I wish I would have I knew where she was coming out of woodwork with this I wish I should have settled this immediately before it was filed but if he's really guilty and he did all this then in a public interest point of view it's a great thing he didn't settle because he should be held accountable and it doesn't seem like investigators would have looked at him it doesn't seem like other lawsuits would have come forward unless it
was C Sandra Ventura I mean that might be I'm assuming too much but I think that's maybe a fair estimation no I think you're exactly right I mean this is something where um they could have almost certainly nipped it in the bud whether it was with more money or some kind of private apology but the ramifications you know you saw it a little bit in the in the far less serious but in the Civil context in the Paula Jones case I mean that was a case that could have set for under $100,000 and it snowballed
into you know what ended up being an impeachment uh a disbarment and ultimately a multi-million dollar payment had that case settled quietly history would have been different and if you believe what's been going on with Tony Busby that he has been he says he's going to name big names in his lawsuits but uh these big high-profile people have been coming to him to settle the claims so their names aren't made public you look at something like this and you can try to understand why Ben Shu thank you so much for coming on it was great
seeing you thank you thank you thank you great to see you Jesse hope to see you again soon all right everybody that's all we have for you right 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 speak to you next time [Music]
