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Kanye West
Ex-Staffer Trying to Block Rapper from Using Insanity as Defense in Court Battle
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Kanye West’s former staffer is making moves in court to prevent the musician from claiming he wasn’t in his right mind as a defense in their legal battle … TMZ has learned.
According to court docs, obtained by TMZ, Benjamin Provo, who worked at the musician’s Donda Academy in 2021, says he wants the judge to block Ye from making the claim he was of “unsound mind” when he was discriminating against Benjamin.
Benjamin claims Kanye is pulling this insanity defense card right before the case is scheduled to go to trial … and never once produced any documents or provided any testimony about the issue to this point. He says, even if it was relevant, Kanye had not turned over any medical records or selected an expert to testify about the impact of his mental health issues on the claims in the case.
In addition, Benjamin claimed during his deposition Kanye “repeatedly indicated that he had been of sound mind during the events underlying the case.” He points to this exchange during the deposition as proof. He says Kanye was asked, “Do you feel like around the time you had the [Donda] school, you were not yourself around that time?”
According to the docs, Kanye replied, “No. I think that was close to me being myself, but people change, though, too,” adding, “sometimes I intend to do good and still end up in deposition.” He says Kanye copped to liking employees to have a uniform look but denied firing Benjamin over his dreads.
In his lawsuit, Benjamin claimed he was fired for his hairstyle and that Kanye was rough on Black employees, while being softer on White employees.
As TMZ first reported, Kanye is also asking the court to not allow any evidence of his social media posts praising Nazi and Hitler.
Kanye denied the claims in the suit, and the trial is currently scheduled for October.
