PHILADELPHIA (CN) — The makers of a docu-series about Meek Mill’s experience with Philadelphia justice officials were hit with a federal complaint Wednesday from a lawyer who says his off-the-record remarks were secretly recorded.
Represented by the Beasley Firm, attorney Chuck Peruto says that California-based IPC Television producers illegally recorded him after an interview on May 30, 2018, in his office.
Some months earlier, Judge Genece Brinkley with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Court had hired Peruto to help her fight criticism in connection to Mill, a rapper whom she sentenced to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case.
Peruto had agreed to talk on-the-record for the 2019 docu-series, which is being produced for Amazon and Roc Nation, but says he asked filmmakers after the interview to turn cameras off.
“Unbeknownst to Peruto, the defendants' personnel lied, and continued to use a device to intercept record the audio (and perhaps video) of the off the record conversation,” the complaint states.
Peruto notes that Pennsylvania wiretap laws require two-party consent.
Though the complaint does not disclose what Peruto said off the record, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the audio this past July after it was leaked by an advocate for Mill.
The article quotes Peruto as saying that Brinkley should have immediately granted Mill a new trial after prosecutors requested it.
"She looks fucking awful," Peruto said, according to the leaked audio.
Mill was released from jail in April 2018 after a nearly five-month imprisonment, which Brinkley had ordered after video surfaced on Instagram of the rapper popping a wheelie on a dirtbike without wearing a helmet for a music video.
Peruto claims in his complaint that this leaked audio was edited, so that his off-the-record words could “maliciously” further the documentary makers’ project and garner attention for the upcoming series.
IPC Television did not immediately return a message requesting comment. Other defendants to the suit include Amazon Alternative and Roc Nation.
The Beasley Firm did not immediately return an email requesting comment.
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