Diddy is including members to his already-stacked authorized workforce simply days earlier than jury choice in his federal racketeering and intercourse trafficking trial, and the id of one among them has been introduced.
In a court docket listening to on Thursday (Might 1), the mogul’s attorneys introduced that they’d be including two folks to their ranks earlier than jury choice begins on Monday, Might 5. A doc filed in federal court docket on Friday (Might 2) and seen by Complicated reveals the primary: Xavier R. Donaldson.
In response to his LinkedIn profile, Donaldson, now impartial, spent over twenty years (till April 2024) at a agency he co-founded, Donaldson & Chilliest (initially Donaldson, Chilliest & McDaniel). Whereas there, he repped purchasers “charged with complicated federal and state instances involving homicide, worldwide, nationwide and native narcotic conspiracies, financial institution fraud, complicated monetary devices fraud, Davis-Bacon Act (and associated federal laws) violations, mail and wire fraud, immigration fraud, firearms possession, rape and home violence.” Previous to that, he labored for the Bronx DA’s workplace.
In a 2019 interview with the New York State Bar Affiliation, Donaldson expressed a love for engaged on “complicated federal instances.”
He went on: “Individuals usually inquire, ‘How can that lawyer signify that kind of particular person?’ My first response is all the time ‘as a result of a simply society requires that the accused be accorded zealous counsel and, extra importantly, are you able to think about a simply society with out legal protection attorneys? I can’t.'”
Complicated has reached out to representatives for Diddy to get the identify of the second new legal professional, however didn’t obtain an instantaneous response.
Donaldson joins a workforce that has undergone some additions (and one subtraction) since we launched you to them final October. As of this writing, the attorneys representing Sean Combs in USA v. Combs are Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos (lined in our October 2024 story); Alexandra Shapiro (who started as Diddy’s appellate legal professional however moved over to his foremost workforce) and one other legal professional from her agency, Jason Anthony Driscoll; Anna Maria Estevao; and Brian Metal of Younger Thug RICO case fame. Anthony Ricco left Diddy’s workforce earlier this yr.