This week, Houston rapper Travis Scott participated in his first deposition in Houston in relation to the 2021 Astroworld Festival case. Facing over 1,5000 civil suits from attendees at the event, where 10 people lost their lives, Scott spent eight hours answering questions from authorities. And, while Scott’s legal team insists he’s been fully cooperative with law enforcement in regards to the case, Rolling Stone learned this week that there has been a bizarre hiccup with his defense.
Publishing findings from court transcripts on Thursday (September 21), Rolling Stone revealed that Scott did not produce any text conversations from the night of Astroworld Fest because his iPhone “fell off a boat in January of 2022 and landed somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and is not able to be retrieved,” according to his attorney Steve Brody of O’Melveny & Myers law firm.
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The topic of Scott’s messages first became a point of contention on September 11, when the plaintiff’s attorneys in the case first deposed David Stromberg on September 6, as he currently serves as the general manager for Scott’s brand Cactus Jack. In his deposition, Stromberg revealed that he, Scott, and more members of their team never turned in any “documents and electronic devices such as phones and text messages” for the civil trial.
“Mr. Stromberg’s testimony and colloquy of counsel on the record suggests that not a single message, WeChat conversation, photo, video, or other message from Mr. Stromberg, Mr. Scott, or anyone on his team’s phone has been searched for and reviewed for production,” the lawyers wrote.
In fact, the plaintiffs’ lawyers actually noted that Scott’s team refused to do so, accusing their request to be “seeking confidential and/or sensitive information” that was “seeking the disclosure of documents that are unreasonably cumulative or duplicative of other of the requests.”
“As frustrating as the conduct of many of the defendants have been, they have at least produced some documents comprising text messages, photos, and videos retrieved from images of their clients’, employees”, and agents’ phones,” the plaintiff’s attorneys said. “Travis Scott and his team stand apart as having not produced a single text, WeChat communication, video, or photo from their phones — not because they don’t exist — but because his attorneys chose not to image or search their phones the order to do so by the court.”
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Regardless, Stromberg was still able to finally produce his messages with Scott from the night of the festival, according to Brody. Additionally, they plan to produce all relevant communication information available to them before next Wednesday (September 27).
This didn’t stop the deposing judge from being upset though, as she felt that Scott’s team did not show enough initiative or concern in the immediate aftermath of Astroworld.
“There does not seem to have been any action, from what I am hearing right now, taken on the part of
Mr. Scott’s legal team to either, A, secure and download anything from his phone immediately following an event in which 10 people died, or, B, trying to recover text messages from alternate sources when Mr. Scott would have the ability to go and get that information, possibly from the carrier, or from other sources,” Judge Kristen Hawkins said.
Through this all, Scott’s team continues to maintain his innocence, which they have since he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing earlier this summer.
“Travis Scott’s deposition is typical legal procedure. What is not typical is how the media continues to focus on him despite being cleared of any wrongdoing by extensive government investigations, including by the Houston Police Department,” Scott’s spokesperson Ted Anastasiou said in a recent statement obtained by Billboard. “Travis is fully cooperating with the legal process while still remaining committed to his tour in support of his record-breaking album, Utopia, and his charitable efforts to support at-risk communities.”