NEW YORK – Sean “Diddy” Combs is staying locked up after a judge Wednesday rejected the hip-hop mogul’s proposal that he await his sex trafficking trial in the luxury of his Florida mansion instead of a grim Brooklyn federal jail.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter ruled that Combs' plan — which included a $50 million bail offer, GPS monitoring and strict limitations on visitors — was “insufficient” to ensure the safety of the community and the integrity of his case.
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Carter, agreeing with prosecutors who fought to keep Combs in jail, found that "no condition or set of conditions” governing his release could guard against the risk of him threatening or harming witnesses — a central charge in his case.
Combs' lawyers were making their second attempt in as many days to spring him from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since pleading not guilty Tuesday to charges he physically and sexually abused women for years.
Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday night at a Manhattan hotel. A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected Combs' initial bail request. On Wednesday, he and his lawyers struck out with Carter, the judge who will preside over his trial.
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo says he will now ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Carter's ruling and release Combs. In the meantime, he wants Combs moved from the Brooklyn lockup, which has been plagued by rampant violence and horrific conditions, to a jail in New Jersey. Carter said decisions on placement are entirely up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“I’m not going to let him sit in that jail a day longer than he has to," Agnifilo said to reporters outside the courtroom.
Combs looked at family members and tapped his heart several times as Wednesday’s hearing began, then sat stoically as he listened to arguments. Afterward, as federal agents led him away, his relatives somberly embraced and exchanged hand slaps.
Combs, 54, is accused in an indictment of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded on video. The events would sometimes last days and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover, the indictment said.
The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.
Arguing to keep Combs in jail, prosecutor Emily Johnson told Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “Freak Offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.
Johnson said Combs' defense team was “minimizing and horrifically understating" Combs' propensity for violence, taking issue with his lawyer's portrayal of a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles hotel as a lovers’ quarrel. Security video of the event, which only came to light in May, showed Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway.
“What’s love got to do with that?” an incredulous Carter asked.
Johnson also seized on a text message from a woman who said Combs dragged her down a hallway by her hair. According to Johnson, the woman told the rapper: “I’m not a rag doll, I’m someone’s child.”
“There is a longstanding pattern of abuse here,” Johnson said.
Combs’ Florida house is on Star Island, a man-made dollop of land in Biscayne Bay near Miami Beach, reachable only by a causeway or boat. It is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. Combs’ request echoed that of a long line of wealthy defendants who have offered to post multimillion-dollar bails in exchange for home detention in luxurious surroundings.
If he had been granted bail, Combs would have been confined to his home, with visits restricted to family, property caretakers and friends who are not considered co-conspirators, his lawyers said. After prosecutors said they served a search warrant Tuesday on Combs' private security chief, his lawyers offered to hire a new firm to monitor him and ensure he abided by the proposed agreement.
Carter was unmoved, questioning the plan as an “allegedly fool-proof system."
Many allegations in Combs’ indictment parallel accusations in a November lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura. Combs settled the suit the next day, but its allegations have followed him since.
The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura did.
Without naming Ventura but clearly referring to her, Agnifilo argued that the entire criminal case is an outgrowth of one long-term, troubled-but-consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. The “Freak Offs,” he contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“The sex and the violence were totally separate and motivated by totally different things," Agnifilo said, contending that Combs and Cassie brought sex workers into their relationship because "that was the way these two adults chose to be intimate.”
Prosecutors portrayed the scope as larger. They said they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses.
Like many aging hip-hop figures, Bad Boy Records founder Combs had established a gentler public image. The father of seven was a respected businessman whose annual Hamptons “White Party” was once a must-have invitation for the jet-setting elite.
But prosecutors said he facilitated his crimes using the same companies, people and methods that vaulted him to power. They said they would prove the charges with financial and travel records, electronic communications and videos of the “Freak Offs."
In March, authorities raided Combs' Los Angeles and Florida homes, seizing drugs, videos and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, prosecutors said. They said agents also seized guns and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers.
A conviction on every charge would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence.
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This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Cassie’s legal first name: Casandra, not Cassandra.
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Dalton reported from Los Angeles.