An attorney facing financial sanction for fabricated citations in his legal filings related to Pastor T.D. Jakes’ defamation lawsuit now claims to represent the convicted ex-husband of Jakes’ eldest daughter, Cora Jakes, and other unnamed males who he says have credible allegations against the Potter’s House founder of grooming, sexual assault, sexting, and transporting them across state lines.
Richard Brandon Coleman, 36, also known by his stage name SkiiVentura, is serving time in a Texas prison for aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child. Cora Jakes, announced her divorce from him in January 2022, shortly before his crimes became public after a decade of marriage and two adopted children, Amauri and Jason.
Blackburn, who says he is now representing Coleman, made his latest claim in a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania last Friday. It is part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit Jakes launched against former pastor Duane Youngblood and 10 John Does in November 2024.
While Blackburn is no longer serving as attorney for Youngblood, who claims he was sexually assaulted by Jakes decades ago as a teenager, his previous work on the case could face possible sanctions because he submitted fabricated quotations and misleading analysis of case law in his defense of Youngblood.
Jakes’ high powered attorneys — Dustin A. Pusch of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch LLP, in Washington, D.C.; Devin J. Chwastyk of McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC in Pennsylvania; and Derrelle M. Janey of The Janey Law Firm P.C. in New York City — have asked U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman to award them some $71,400.63 in reasonable attorneys’ fees for the work they had to do in responding to Blackburn’s filings.
In a sur-reply arguing against the awarding of the proposed attorneys’ fees, Blackburn contends that Pusch and his colleagues are engaging in “retaliatory abuse of the disciplinary system,” because of their awareness of a pending civil lawsuit he plans to file on behalf of Coleman and other unnamed alleged male victims, naming Jakes and his daughter, Cora.
“Plaintiff’s counsel now appends to his sur-reply motion an email in which I asked whether he would waive service in a forthcoming civil suit involving Plaintiff and his daughter, Cora Jakes. That email — entirely appropriate in substance and tone — is now being mischaracterized and taken out of context to falsely imply impropriety on my part,” Blackburn said.
“Cora Jakes, like her father, has been publicly accused of abusing children. Their Church was a haven for immigrant children, yet the parents of several of these kids were deported. The children have been left behind, and upon information and belief, many of them are now missing,” he further alleged.
“Cora Jakes, in particular, has been accused of manipulating a vulnerable friend who trusted her into giving Cora Jakes custody of their child and engaging in other forms of physical abuse of her adopted daughter. My inquiry regarding the waiver of service was fully within the bounds of professional correspondence.”
Blackburn did not respond to a request for comment on the filing from The Christian Post on Monday.
Shortly after her ex-husband’s arrest was made public in 2022, Michelle Loud, a Texas hairstylist, identified herself in a tearful video as the biological mother of Cora Jakes’ adopted son, Jason. In the video that is no longer available online, Loud expressed concern for the safety of her son and accused Cora Jakes and her ex-husband of manipulating her into giving up her son while she was in a vulnerable state.
“She (Cora) played on my vulnerability,” Loud alleged. “She had me in front of a f— MacBook recording and asking me questions, talking about it was ‘counseling’ but it wasn’t counseling because later on down the line, a few years later, she would then use that evidence against me in court when I went to fight for my son.”
Blackburn argued that Bishop Jakes was ill-advised by Pusch to file his defamation lawsuit in an effort to stop the pending class-action lawsuit.
“From the inception of this lawsuit, I informed Mr. Pusch that I am planning to file a class action lawsuit for several male sexual assault survivors against Plaintiff TD Jakes. Dustin Pusch created Mr. Jake’s [sic] present reality by foolishly filing this suit against Mr. Youngblood in hopes of bullying him into signing away his right to speak publicly of the childhood trauma visited upon him by TD Jakes,” Blackburn wrote.
“Unfortunately, Plaintiff Jakes failed to anticipate the avalanche of survivors who would come forward with evidence of Plaintiff grooming, sexually assaulting, sexting, and transporting them across state lines in violation of the MANN Act. One of the accusers is now Mr. Jake’s [sic] former son-in-law, Richard Brandon Coleman.”
The Mann Act makes it a crime for anyone to knowingly transport any individual, “male or female, in interstate or foreign commerce or in any territory or possession of the United States for the purpose of prostitution or sexual activity.”
When asked about Blackburn’s claim of a pending class-action lawsuit against Jakes by multiple men, including Coleman, Pusch told CP on Monday that Blackburn has yet to inform them formally of a class-action.
“The only time Mr. Blackburn threatened anything that could be construed as a possible class action lawsuit was back in December, when he baldly claimed he was preparing some sort of lawsuit against Bishop Jakes (which of course never materialized),” Pusch noted to CP in an emailed statement.
“In his most recent threat, he simply said he represents Richard Brandon Coleman … and no one else and has only threatened a lawsuit on Mr. Coleman’s behalf. If he is currently planning some sort of class action suit, he has not informed us,” he added.
“As it stands, Bishop Jakes and his legal team are focusing on the only existing lawsuit, the one Bishop Jakes brought against Duane Youngblood, which followed a letter Mr. Blackburn sent to Bishop Jakes demanding $6 million and threatened litigation — a letter which Mr. Youngblood now claims he did not know about or authorize.”
In his filing on Friday, Blackburn stated that neither Jakes nor Pusch will deter him or his clients.
“Dustin Pusch and TD Jakes know that they could never intimidate me from representing Mr. Coleman and the other men who have valid claims against Mr. Jakes. Even if Mr. Pusch were able to hinder my law license (which he cannot), I will continue to pursue Plaintiff Jakes, even if all I have is a bullhorn in front of the US Department of Justice,” he wrote.
“Even if there is no financial recovery in my forthcoming litigations against Mr. Jakes, I do not care, so long as my clients have their day in Court, can file their criminal complaints, and their claims are investigated by law enforcement. I will get justice for my clients.”
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