ASAP Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina had a strong message for critics who thought Rihanna shouldn’t have brought her kids to court earlier this month.
“One day Rihanna brought the babies to court, and people were thinking it was a ploy,” Tacopina said during a Monday, February 24, interview with Charlamagne Tha God on The Breakfast Club. “Like, some sort of maneuver to get the jury to feel sympathy. The jury’s not feeling sympathy, they know he has a wife and kids.”
As the attorney noted, however, the day Rihanna brought the kids to court — February 13 — was the day that jury deliberations were supposed to begin. If Rocky, 36, had been found guilty, he could have gone directly to jail after the verdict.
“It was more because it was the last day of the trial — we were summing up, doing summations — and the judge said we’re going to go right into jury deliberations after that. At least, that was the plan, it didn’t work out that way,” Tacopina explained. “She brought them to court because that could have been the last time he’d seen his kids for a decade or more that day. That’s why she brought them. The prosecutor made a big deal of it in his summation, which I thought was a fatal mistake, quite frankly.”
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Rihanna, 37, and Rocky, who went public with their romance in 2021, share sons RZA, 2, and Riot, 18 months. When she brought the boys to court earlier this month, she was photographed carrying RZA in her arms while another person held Riot.
Rocky was on trial for two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic weapon. The charges stemmed from a 2021 incident involving his friend ASAP Relli. If found guilty, the “Peso” rapper could have faced up to 24 years in prison.
Rocky was found not guilty on February 18 after the jury deliberated for three hours. While RZA and Riot weren’t present in court that day, Rihanna was, and after the verdict was read, Rocky leaped into her arms. “Thank y’all for saving my life,” he told the jurors.
Rihanna soon shared her reaction to the verdict via Instagram, writing, “The glory belongs to God and God alone! Thankful, humbled by his mercy!”
In his interview on Monday, Tacopina said that he could have been involved in another high-profile trial, claiming that he was asked to “take a look” at the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. The mogul, 55, was arrested in September 2024 and charged with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and is currently in jail awaiting trial.
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Tacopina, however, turned down the case because of his connection to Jay-Z and his company Roc Nation.
“I represent Roc Nation; a lot of people in Roc I’m very close with,” the attorney claimed. “Jay is amazing. … That’s sort of family to me, and I don’t think they see eye-to-eye with P. Diddy.”
When Charlamagne, 46, asked Tacopina to further explain the alleged distance between Diddy and Jay-Z, 55, the lawyer claimed that they weren’t close.
“Everyone wants a picture with P. Diddy, at one time or another when they went to a party. But when things got real, years and years ago … ” he said, trailing off.
