Diddy is adding members to his already-stacked legal team just days before jury selection in his federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial, and the identity of one of them has been announced.
In a court hearing on Thursday (May 1), the mogul’s lawyers announced that they would be adding two people to their ranks before jury selection begins on Monday, May 5. A document filed in federal court on Friday (May 2) and viewed by Complex reveals the first: Xavier R. Donaldson.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Donaldson, now independent, spent over two decades (until April 2024) at a firm he co-founded, Donaldson & Chilliest (originally Donaldson, Chilliest & McDaniel). While there, he repped clients “charged with complex federal and state cases involving murder, international, national and local narcotic conspiracies, bank fraud, complex financial instruments fraud, Davis-Bacon Act (and related federal regulations) violations, mail and wire fraud, immigration fraud, firearms possession, rape and domestic violence.” Prior to that, he worked for the Bronx DA’s office.
In a 2019 interview with the New York State Bar Association, Donaldson expressed a love for working on “complex federal cases.”
He went on: “People often inquire, ‘How can that lawyer represent that type of person?’ My first response is always ‘because a just society requires that the accused be accorded zealous counsel and, more importantly, can you imagine a just society without criminal defense attorneys? I cannot.'”
Complex has reached out to representatives for Diddy to get the name of the second new attorney, but did not receive an immediate response.
Donaldson joins a team that has undergone some additions (and one subtraction) since we introduced you to them last October. As of this writing, the attorneys representing Sean Combs in USA v. Combs are Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos (covered in our October 2024 story); Alexandra Shapiro (who began as Diddy’s appellate attorney but moved over to his main team) and another attorney from her firm, Jason Anthony Driscoll; Anna Maria Estevao; and Brian Steel of Young Thug RICO case fame. Anthony Ricco left Diddy’s team earlier this year.
