NEW YORK — If kid gloves were ever on in the Sean "Puffy" Combs weapons possession case, they're off now.

The rap impressario's defense attorney exchanged barbs with a Manhattan prosecutor Thursday in a pretrial hearing that had all the grandstanding of opening statements. Before the shouting was over, the defense blamed the prosecution for media leaks in violation of a gag order, the state pointed the finger right back, and in their scuffling, both sides managed to drop hints of their case to the assembled press.

"I have a half dozen witnesses with impeccable credentials say [Combs] didn't have a gun at the time of the shooting," defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman bellowed after his opponent, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, insisted none of the 400 people interviewed by the state could exonerate the rapper.

While Brafman promised to make the prosecutor "eat his words," Combs, sporting a brown pin-stripe suit with an ivory handkerchief in the breast pocket, sat silently beside his other attorney, an uncharacteristically taciturn Johnnie Cochran.

When the trial opens Wednesday, the 31-year-old music label CEO faces 15 years in prison on bribery and weapons possession charges stemming from a December 1999 nightclub shooting. Bullets struck three people inside the Times Square hotspot Club New York. Combs' rap protege, Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, is charged with attempted murder. A third co-defendant, bodyguard Anthony "Wolf" Jones, faces weapons possession counts.

The trial is expected to last several weeks and may include testimony from Combs' girlfriend, actress and singer Jennifer Lopez.

State Supreme Court Judge Charles Solomon denied Court TV permission to televise the trial Thursday after Brafman argued that cameras in the courtroom "will only increase the almost circus-like atmosphere surrounding these proceedings."

Even without cameras, the intense media coverage was the issue of the day. Solomon imposed a gag order on attorneys January 5, but a day later, a key state witness — a woman injured in the shooting — gave an interview to the New York Daily News and just a few days after that, the paper, citing anonymous sources, reported that a mystery witness would testify that Combs fired a gun inside the club.

Brafman said he was outraged by the stories and blamed police officials for the leaks, which he termed "trial by ambush." After taking a few swipes at the state witness's credibility — he called her a "complete fraud" who had "shot herself in the foot" by giving the interview — he asked the judge to lift the gag order so he could respond.

"We got a lot of secret witnesses who blow the prosecution right out of the water," Brafman said, adding that he could easily parade "30 solid citizens" before the cameras to support Combs' innocence.

Bogdanos ridiculed the suggestion, saying Combs had "played the media like an instrument for the past decade." The gag order, the prosecutor said, was necessary because the rapper's "blow-by-blow" descriptions of the nightclub shooting in the press were tainting the jury pool.

Bogdanos went on to suggest that "someone connected with the defense released it so the gag order could be lifted ... in a some would say desperate fashion."

Solomon refused to lift the order, but the bickering rolled on as the judge moved through some housekeeping matters.

"I don't need this," Bogdanos seethed as he sunk into his chair an hour into the proceeding. "If we're going to conduct ourselves like professionals, let's do it."