wow….I’m still trying to digest this whole thing. So until I get the time to dissect it fully….

Basically, now I know why The Smoking Gun has been just posting tired-ass mug shots recently. They’ve been busy in the backroom, doing some hard-core investigative reporting on the hip hop’s most contentious investigative reporter.

According to TSG, Chuck Phillips’ LA Times piece last week, alleging that Biggie and Puff knew that Tupac was being set up for robbery at Quad Studio in 1994 and did nothing to stop it…as well as the allegation that Jimmy Rosemond was key in setting up that attack….are all based on forged FBI documents by a career con man.

“James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”"

This glorified rap groupie created these fake FBI documents to back up a ridiculous civil lawsuit against Diddy last year…(I remember thinking this sounded insane)…

“In that civil case, Sabatino is suing Combs for $16 million over an alleged soured business deal from nearly a decade ago. According to Sabatino’s complaint, which he prepared and filed himself from the Allenwood federal penitentiary in White Deer, Pennsylvania, Combs stiffed him on a $175,000 payment for audio and video recordings Sabatino made in 1994 of The Notorious B.I.G. (real name: Christopher Wallace).”

To their credit, The Smoking Gun has meticulously dismantled Sabatino’s civil case against Puff, and detailed all the signs of forgery on these FBI documents. You can read it all in their post, and I’ll pick my highlights later. But this was definitely one:

“A comparison of the [FBI documents] and Sabatino’s own court filings shows that the authors of each set of documents share remarkably similar spelling deficiencies. For instance, the word “making” appears as “makeing” in both the “302s” and Sabatino’s pro se court pleadings. Similarly, the authors also have difficulty with the word “during.” It appears as “durring” in both sets of documents.

While a federal judge once referred to Sabatino as “articulate” and “an extraordinarily intelligent man,” spelling and grammar are not strong suits for the ninth-grade dropout. And typewriters, of course, do not offer spell check.”

At the end of the day, Sabatino is Sabatino, a career loser with delusions of mid-90’s rap/hustler grandeur……but its the LA Times and Chuck Phillips that get the ultimate ducksick.

“[Sabatino's] scenario, though preposterous on its face, was unblinkingly reported by the Times, which cited the FBI “302s” and sources who supported the account provided by the bureau’s unnamed confidential source. And while the Times story noted that Sabatino “declined to comment,” there can be little doubt that he was one of the unnamed sources confirming details found in the “302″ reports (a nifty parlor trick by the maypole around which the Quad Studios story rotates).

But the most curious part of the Times story, however, involves the paper’s reporting that it had learned the identity of the confidential source quoted in the “302s” and “verified that he was at the Quad on the night of the assault.” The report continued, “When contacted, the man said the FBI records accurately convey what happened, and what he told investigators.” The source, the Times added, spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

Basically, that makes them this….