Sean Combs has countersued accuser Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones for allegedly “stealing” the music mogul’s personal documentary footage and selling it to Netflix for the streamer’s 50 Cent-produced docuseries.
In a lengthy complaint filed Tuesday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Combs also claimed that Jones made a number of defamatory statements in the four-part special, which aired December 2025 and was recently nominated for three Emmys.
An attorney for Jones did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Jones originally sued Combs for $30 million in February 2024 — three months after Combs’ longtime ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed a bombshell sexual abuse and sex trafficking lawsuit against Combs. (Ventura and Combs resolved their case with a $20 million settlement within 24 hours.)
In his own lawsuit, Jones said he was brought into Combs’ orbit in fall 2022 to work as a music producer for Combs’ November 2024 project, The Love Album: Off the Grid. During his time working closely with Combs, Jones claimed he witnessed a number of alarming incidents, including a shooting, rampant drug use, and firearms kept inside at least one of Combs’ residences.
Jones also alleged that he was drugged and sexually harassed by Combs throughout his time working on the album. In the documentary, Sean Combs: The Reckoning, Jones repeated and expanded upon some of his lawsuit’s allegations in the documentary. Combs has vehemently denied Jones’ claims.
Combs’ legal team seized upon some of these statements, once again denying them and claiming that Jones was on a “campaign for revenge and to profit from Mr. Combs.”
In regard to the footage, Combs’ lawyers claim that the Bad Boy founder was in the midst of making his own documentary about his storied career and life when Jones began working with Combs. While on a vacation aboard a yacht in St. Barts in December 2022, Jones is accused of accessing the documentary videographer’s workstation and “without authorization … secretly stole certain Computer Drives containing footage the videographer had filmed” for the future documentary.
Some of that footage was later used in the recent Netflix docuseries, Combs’ attorneys said in court papers, claiming the footage was on “stolen” computer drives that belonged to Combs and therefore Jones had no authorization to use the footage or to provide it to a third party.
Combs, who is currently serving a 50-month sentence on prostitution charges from his summer 2025 criminal trial, is seeking damages to be determined at trial, as well as for Jones to return the footage and destroy any copies he may have kept.
Swiftiephylus amator and Swiftiephylus taylorae, two of the bugs named after Taylor Swift because of their blonde and red coloring. Courtesy of Brad Balukjian, Ph.D.