Sean Combs, the music mogul facing federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, sued NBCUniversal and its streaming service Peacock on Wednesday, accusing them of airing a documentary that “shamelessly advances conspiracy theories” about him.
The documentary, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” is one of several about Mr. Combs’s life and career that have been developed amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse and violence that led to the criminal charges and more than three dozen civil lawsuits.
Mr. Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting his criminal trial, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, has denied sexually assaulting anyone and has depicted the allegations as fabrications or distorted accounts of consensual sex. In recent weeks, he has begun to go on the offensive, filing lawsuits against people and companies he says have defamed him.
The newest defamation suit focuses in part on a segment of the Peacock documentary in which one interview subject asserts that Kim Porter, Mr. Combs’s longtime girlfriend with whom the mogul had three children, had been murdered.
The documentary includes an image of Ms. Porter’s autopsy report, which says she died of lobar pneumonia, and notes that the local police did not suspect foul play. She died in 2018 at 47 years old.
But it also includes an interview with Albert Joseph Brown, a former singer who goes by the name Al B. Sure!, that the suit characterizes as defamatory. In the interview, Mr. Brown, who had a child with Ms. Porter, describes seeing her and says, “It was two, three weeks prior to her murder — am I supposed to say ‘allegedly’?”
Representatives for NBCUniversal did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The 90-minute documentary, which was released last month, includes other interviews in which people question the details surrounding the deaths of other Combs associates, including the Notorious B.I.G., a rapper on Mr. Combs’s label who was fatally shot in 1997.
“The documentary advances the false narrative that it cannot be a ‘coincidence’ that Ms. Porter and others in Mr. Combs’s orbit have died, in a malicious attempt to insinuate that Mr. Combs murdered them,” the suit says.
Mr. Brown was not listed as a defendant in the suit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan and lists the production company that created the documentary as an additional defendant.
To prove defamation against a public figure, the plaintiffs need to convince a judge or jury that the defendants knew that the defamatory statements were false or published them in reckless disregard for the truth.
The suit also objects to the documentary’s inclusion of claims by a man named Courtney Burgess, who said he had been given videos that showed Mr. Combs in sexual encounters with celebrities, including assaults of people he said appeared to be minors.
Mr. Combs has already sued Mr. Burgess and his lawyer, Ariel Mitchell-Kidd. She appears several times in the Peacock documentary, expressing skepticism that Ms. Porter had died of pneumonia and at another point calling Mr. Combs the “embodiment of Lucifer.”
In response to the lawsuit, Ms. Mitchell-Kidd called it a “pathetic ploy to silence victims and people who stand up for victims.”
In addition to a criminal trial scheduled for May, Mr. Combs is facing the many lawsuits — now more than 40 — that have been filed against him, including allegations of sexual abuse. He has vehemently denied all the allegations.
At least two other documentaries also focus on the allegations against Mr. Combs. A series on Mr. Combs, called “The Fall of Diddy,” was released by Investigation Discovery last month. In response to that series, lawyers for Mr. Combs said in a statement to media outlets that the documentaries were “rushing to cash in on the media circus surrounding Mr. Combs.”
Netflix is reportedly producing another series, with involvement from 50 Cent, a rapper and vocal adversary of Mr. Combs.
Ben Sisario contributed reporting.
