The judge overseeing the criminal sex-trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs sharply criticized a member of his family’s legal team in a closed-door meeting, calling comments he made on a TMZ podcast “outrageous.”
In a Tuesday morning meeting in US District Judge Arun Subramanian’s robing room, the judge lambasted the lawyer, Mark Geragos, for describing the all-female prosecution team as “a six-pack of white women.”
“When you say things on a podcast like ‘six women, all white, my understanding is you’ve got a six-pack of white women,'” Submaranian told Geragos, according to a court transcript of the meeting. “Like that’s not — that’s something that you shouldn’t — that no one should be saying as an officer of the Court and a member of the bar, right?”
Geragos — a criminal defense attorney who has represented Michael Jackson and Hunter Biden, among other boldfaced names — spoke about the Combs case on a Friday episode of “2 Angry Men,” a podcast he co-hosts with TMZ founder Harvey Levin.
In addition to describing them as “a six-pack of white women,” Geragos said the prosecutors mischaracterized a surveillance video where Combs beat his former partner Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway, saying Combs was upset because she took her phone.
“Have you ever had a situation where your significant other took your cellphone?” Geragos said on the podcast. “And does that take you from 0 to 60 really quick?”
Submaranian admonished Geragos for the comments about the prosecutors, saying he violated a court rule barring lawyers involved in ongoing cases from making “extrajudicial comments” about them.
It marks a rough start for the legal team in Combs’ case. Prosecutors have accused the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer of sexual abuse and racketeering, which he denies. Jury selection began this week, and the trial is expected to last up to eight weeks.
Geragos didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Until the Tuesday morning robing room meeting, Geragos’s precise involvement in the case has been unclear. He sat among members Combs’ legal team in the lower Manhattan courtroom during the jury selection process on Monday and Tuesday, but he has not formally filed an appearance in the case. Prosecutors addressed the ambiguity of his role in their letter to the judge on Tuesday morning. The letter pointed to his podcast comments and asked the judge to stop him from continuing to speak about the case.
In the robing room meeting, Geragos said he represents Combs’ mother and talks with the hip-hop mogul “with great frequency.”
Geragos told Subramanian that he believes the rule forbidding “extrajudicial comments” has “been perverted over the years” and interferes with the right of defendants to receive a fair trial. He also said he has refrained from criticizing the lawyers who represent the women who have accused Combs of sexual assault.
“I think when you’ve got a black man who’s being prosecuted and the client feels like he’s being targeted, it’s a — it’s an observation,” Geragos said.
“I think this is ridiculous,” Submaranian snapped back. “I think referring to the prosecution in this case as ‘a six-pack of white women’ is outrageous.”
One of the prosecutors, Mary Slavik, said that Geragos’s podcast had millions of subscribers and that his remarks could reach jurors in the case.
“This TMZ podcast that Mr. Geragos is a part of has several million subscribers,” she said. “The danger of Mr. Geragos’s statements infecting the jury pool, I think, is very serious.”
Submaranian said he would be monitoring “2 Angry Men” for additional comments Geragos may make about the case.
“You have one more listener for your podcast,” the judge said.
“As long as you subscribe, I’m all for it,” Geragos responded.
