Sean “Diddy” Combs arrived in court docket on Friday for a listening to over his bid to be launched on $50-million US bail from the Brooklyn jail the place the music mogul has been held for 10 weeks, forward of his Might 5, 2025 trial on sex-trafficking fees.
Combs, carrying a beige jail-issued outfit, blew kisses at his household, seated within the second row of the viewers of U.S. District Decide Arun Subramanian’s federal courtroom in Manhattan.
Combs has been denied bail 3 times since his arrest, with a number of judges citing a threat he would possibly tamper with witnesses. The rapper and producer pleaded not responsible on Sept. 17 to fees that he used his enterprise empire, together with his file label Unhealthy Boy Leisure, to sexually abuse individuals.
Prosecutors mentioned the abuse included having girls participate in recorded sexual performances he known as “freak-offs” with male intercourse employees who had been generally transported throughout state strains.
Combs, 55, has denied wrongdoing, and his legal professionals have argued the sexual exercise described by prosecutors was consensual.
The proposed bail bundle was backed by Combs’s $48-million US Florida mansion. It additionally known as for Combs to be monitored across the clock by safety personnel, subjected to house detention and to don’t have any contact with alleged victims or witnesses.
Combs’ legal professionals questioned why jail was wanted when federal prosecutors in Brooklyn final month allowed the pre-trial launch on a $10-million US bond of former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, who has pleaded not responsible to intercourse trafficking.
‘No authorized foundation’ to maintain Combs in jail: defence
“There isn’t a authorized foundation for persevering with to power Mr. Combs to organize for trial from jail,” his legal professionals wrote in a Thursday court docket submitting.
The U.S. Legal professional’s workplace in Manhattan, which introduced the costs towards Combs, countered that Jeffries is 80 years outdated with no prison historical past, whereas Combs has had prior arrests.
In addition they mentioned federal brokers recovered rifles with defaced serial numbers from Combs’s residences, and that Combs contacted witnesses via third events from jail and tried to cover these communications from regulation enforcement.
“It strains credulity to imagine that Combs will cease participating in prison conduct and abide by circumstances of launch,” prosecutors wrote in a Friday court docket submitting.
Defence legal professionals, in the meantime, mentioned new proof make clear a 2016 resort surveillance video of Combs assaulting former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, the singer often known as Cassie, and undermined a part of the prosecution’s justification for detaining him.
His legal professionals mentioned the video was not proof of a coerced “freak-off” as prosecutors alleged, however moderately a glimpse into a fancy romantic relationship.
This week, Subramanian ordered prosecutors to destroy their copies of handwritten notes that Combs took in jail, pending a call on whether or not they had been topic to attorney-client privilege.
A authorities investigator photographed the notes throughout a sweep of the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn, the place Combs has been jailed.
