Sean “Diddy” Combs will stay locked up in an infamous New York federal jail on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges after his attorney’s request to have him put on house arrest with a $50-million bond failed.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter said Wednesday that a bail package that would have kept the hip-hop mogul under house arrest in his Star Island mansion in Miami — with security and no access to cellphones, internet or women apart from his family — was insufficient to release him pending trial.
Combs has been the subject of a sweeping federal probe since at least the beginning of the year and was arrested in New York on Monday. He arrived at the courthouse Wednesday from his cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The facility, which has housed inmates including R. Kelly, Michael Cohen and Jeffrey Epstein, has a history of violence and squalid conditions.
Prosecutors unsealed their indictment against Combs on Tuesday, charging him with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty and was denied bail during that hearing as well.
The indictment alleges that Combs and his associates lured female victims, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then allegedly used force, threats of force, coercion and controlled substances to get them to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes in what Combs referred to as “freak offs.” Combs is accused of giving the women ketamine, Ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and compliant” during the performances.
The encounters, which prosecutors said sometimes lasted for days, were elaborate productions that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often recorded, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege in a detention memo filed in court that the sex performances occurred regularly from at least 2009 through this year and that the hotel rooms where they were staged often sustained significant damage.
During searches of Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles in March, according to the indictment, authorities seized narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant that Combs’ staff would stock in hotel rooms for the sex encounters.
It was an incident during one of these productions in 2016 in Los Angeles that prosecutors point to as evidence that Combs is a danger and cannot be trusted to be released from custody.
In an incident captured on security video, Combs’ former girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura — identified only as Victim One in the indictment — is seen running down an InterContinental Hotel hallway before Combs catches up to her, repeatedly strikes her and throws a vase at her.
In court Wednesday, Judge Carter described the video of Combs assaulting Ventura as “troubling.”
Combs’ attorneys said in court documents Tuesday arguing for his release that the woman in the video had struck him in the head and stolen his clothes after finding a picture of another girlfriend on his phone.
One of Combs’ attorneys, Marc Agnifilo, told the judge Wednesday that, at the time of the video, Combs had problems with anger and drug addiction. Agnifilo said Combs and the woman seen in the video loved each other, had gone to rehab together, and had chosen to be intimate with a third person together.
But prosecutors painted a different picture, saying the video, first broadcast by CNN in May, showed a woman trying to escape coerced sex with Combs and a paid sex worker. They said Combs tried to unsuccessfully silence one of the hotel’s security staff with a bribe and, on Wednesday, said Combs had threatened two other victims with releasing videos of them if they cooperated with authorities.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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