//Mixed Bits: T.I.’s Plea Deal, Diddy’s Assault Case Settled & the LA Times Apologizes//

March 27, 2008 by TJ
Filed under Uncategorized

Two anonymous sources close to the weapons case against Clifford Harris aka T.I. tell the Associated Press the Atlanta rapper is expected to enter into a plea deal this morning. The deal involves Harris pleading guilty to the federal weapons charges, 1,500 hours of community service and 12 months in prison.

The deal must be approved by Judge Charles Pannell Jr.

If found guilty during a trial, the rapper could spend up to 10 years in prison and pay a fine of $250,000 for each count.

T.I. was arrested in October 2007 before he was to perform at the BET Hip Hop Awards for allegedly trying to purchase machine guns and silencers in the parking lot of a Walgreens drugstore.

photo webjacked from http://sandrarose.com/

It’s been a crazy week for Diddy but it looks like he’s coming out on top. The mogul recently settled a lawsuit against him brought on by a man who claims he was punched in the face by the rapper during an afterparty for the Oscars in 2007. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Diddy has maintained his innocence saying the man went towards him and “any contact … was caused by his forward motion against my open hand.”

Last week the L.A. Times published a story claiming Diddy and the Notorious B.I.G knew about the 1994 attack on 2Pac in a New York studio. Diddy responded saying the story was “ridiculous” and “completely false.”

The website thesmokinggun.com launched their own investigation and found that the validity of the FBI documents used for the story were questionable.

Yesterday afternoon the writer of the story Chuck Phillips and Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin issued an apology to Diddy and those cited in the article:

“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”

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In his statement, Duvoisin added: “We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck’s. I deeply regret that we let our readers down.”

The Times’ editor Russ Stanton added:

“We published this story with the sincere belief that the documents were genuine, but our good intentions are beside the point,” Stanton said in a statement.

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“The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used. We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents and, as a result, in the story. We are continuing to investigate this matter and will fulfill our journalistic responsibility for critical self-examination.”

Before the apology, Mr. Phillips was running off at the mouth to the LA Times’ music blog. Check the interview here.

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