UPDATED, 3:05 PM: The third time was not the attraction for Sean “Diddy” Combs on the subject of getting out of the clink.
After taking into account arguments and additional filings from each the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace and the onetime music mogul’s protection staff earlier this week, a federal choose on Wednesday rejected Combs’ most up-to-date bid to be launched from New York Metropolis’s Metropolitan Detention Middle earlier than his 2025 trial.
“Defendant Sean Combs renewed his movement for bail on November 8, 2024. The Courtroom held a listening to on November 22, 2024, and the events filed supplemental letters on November 25 and 26, 2024,” wrote Decide Arun Subramanian in a five-page pre-Thanksgiving ruling (learn the order rebuffing Sean Combs bail request right here). “For the next causes, Combs’s movement is DENIED.”
“The Courtroom finds that the federal government has proven by clear and convincing proof that no situation or mixture of situations will moderately guarantee the security of the neighborhood,” the district choose added bluntly.
Arrested in mid-September on racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution prices that might see him in jail for all times if discovered responsible, the 55-year-old Combs’ trial is about to start out on Could 5, 2025. Placing up a $50 million bond plus different ensures, Combs noticed two earlier bail efforts stymied in September.
PREVIOUSLY, NOV 25 3:24 PM: The outgoing U.S. Lawyer for the Southern District of New York warned a federal choose Monday to watch out for bail efforts for Sean “Diddy” Combs, because the Dangerous Boy Information founder has an ongoing “historical past of obstructive conduct” and has “bodily abused his private workers.”
Combs is charged with racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution. The 55-year-old Grammy winner, who entered a not-guilty plea after his arrest September 16, can be going through a flood of civil fits filed nearly every day centered on his celebrity-attended, drug-fueled and videotaped “freak offs.” He’s taking a look at life in jail if discovered responsible within the felony case in a trial set to start out Could 5.
In truth, citing the at present incarcerated Combs for “his decades-long sample of violence,” Damian Williams’ workplace painted an image immediately of the defendant for Decide Arun Subramanian that’s much more vivid than nearly something we heard from the circumspect U.S. Lawyer thus far.
Over time, the defendant’s bodily and sexual abuse has taken many varieties, typically within the context of long-term romantic relationships. All through, there was a standard theme: the defendant repeatedly and constantly compelled and coerced ladies to fulfill his sexual wishes. Typically behind closed doorways, the defendant engaged in acts of violence in opposition to ladies, together with throwing them to the bottom, dragging them by their hair, kicking, shoving, punching, and slapping them. He manipulated, coerced, and extorted ladies, together with by plying them with medicine, threatening to withhold monetary assist, and threatening to disseminate intercourse tapes that the defendant had manufactured from their sexual encounters. He intimated ladies, together with by displaying firearms, threatening them, exhibiting up at their properties unannounced, and trying to beat down the door—on one event with a hammer. Past his romantic companions, the defendant additionally bodily abused his private workers. Former workers members have described the defendant threatening to kill them, throwing objects at them, and being struck, punched, and shoved by the defendant, and seeing him do the identical to others.
This vital historical past of violence have to be taken into consideration when viewing the defendant obstructive exercise. Taken collectively, there may be little doubt that the Authorities has confirmed the defendant’s dangerousness by clear and convincing proof.
After a typically rough-going listening to at New York’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse on November 22 within the third try by Combs’ legal professionals to get him sprung with a $50 million bail bundle, the choose advised all events he wished “additional submissions” by 9 a.m. PT Monday earlier than making a choice.
With conflicting accounts of what actually went down throughout an alleged pre-planned raid a couple of week in the past on Combs’ cell on the Metropolitan Detention Middle, the ruling from Subramanian on whether or not Combs might get bail and find yourself beneath 24/7 safety surveillance in a three-bedroom Higher East Facet condo is anticipated any time earlier than Thanksgiving.
Though the protection has an inclination to hyperlink itself to a few of Donald Trump’s more moderen authorized battles, immediately they’re very a lot planting a flag of household and free speech for his or her consumer.
“For months and months, authorities brokers, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and others with questionable motives have been polluting the airwaves with false and outrageous claims about Mr. Combs,” the eight-page correspondence signed by attorneys Alexandria Shapiro, Mark Agnifilo and Teny Geragos exclaims.
“This nonstop drumbeat of detrimental publicity has destroyed [Combs’] fame and can make it nearly unimaginable for him to obtain a good trial. Mr. Combs just isn’t required to take a seat idly by and acquiesce to all of this. He has a proper to a good trial and a constitutional proper to talk out on his personal behalf,” they add in phrases utilized in earlier filings. “The federal government’s arguments that asking his youngsters to publish birthday needs on Instagram and that he’s not entitled to publicly specific his opinion that this prosecution is racially motivated are, fairly merely, an unconstitutional effort to silence him.”
The protection says: “The federal government is basically arguing for the standard by which all the Press neighborhood — and civil plaintiffs and the federal government itself — can wage struggle in opposition to Mr. Combs’ fame however Mr. Combs can’t even attempt to affect public opinion himself in response. That’s merely not the legislation.”
Submitting after the protection this morning, the marginally redacted doc from Williams — who’s quickly to get replaced by Trump appointee Jay Clayton — for essentially the most half sidesteps constitutional points and rips the protection staff led by Agnifilo and Geragos for the dearth of “significant guardrails” in place on this newest swing at bail for Combs.
The SDNY USAO additionally hit onerous at “protection counsel’s blasé perspective towards breaking these guidelines whereas concurrently asking this Courtroom to launch their consumer.” They added this “doesn’t give the Authorities any confidence that counsel will be capable to police the defendant’s conduct with any rigor.” And, with what can be referred to as a tough kick in any bar struggle, it went on to say: “Certainly, opposite to representations by counsel simply days in the past, the defendant has continued to interact in unauthorized communications with relations from the MDC by utilizing one other inmate’s ContactMeASAP account as not too long ago as yesterday.”
Whereas a bit extra inside baseball than different feedback the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace made in its 13-page letter Monday, the prosecution’s assertion of the shell recreation being performed by the protection could show essentially the most damning in any bail willpower.
“After protection counsel represented unequivocally on the prior bail listening to earlier than Decide Carter that the defendant wouldn’t attain out to grand jury witnesses, it turned clear that the defendant had executed simply that: telephone information and digital proof exhibits that the defendant contacted Witness-1 repeatedly main as much as and after his look within the grand jury, after which the defendant apparently deleted the messages from his telephone,” they said, on the subject of Combs’ ex-longtime girlfriend Cassie Enterprise (aka Witness-1), who sued him for abuse and rape in a brief reside go well with final yr that was settled in 24 hours for round $30 million.
“Lastly, it can’t be ignored that the defendant’s proclivity for obstruction seems to have continued as not too long ago as final week in court docket, when it appeared that the defendant offered falsified paperwork to the Courtroom throughout a listening to convened to handle his accusations of Authorities misconduct,” the feds added of Combs’ accusation that paperwork and notes labeled “authorized” had been improperly taken and photographed by MSC workers in the course of the raid on his cell and locker.
Splaying egg everywhere in the face of the protection, it turned out numerous these pages didn’t even have the time period “authorized” on them on the unique paperwork — a undeniable fact that out and out pissed off Subramanian final week.
Acknowledging the error, because it had been, of papers not labelled “authorized” after which immediately labeled “authorized” within the November 22 listening to, the protection was noticeably silent on the problem immediately in addition to over the extra particular issues of obstruction raised by the federal government.
Nevertheless, in a second submitting after court docket hours Monday, the protection did say: “Mr. Combs objects to the federal government’s submission to the extent it goes past responding to the Courtroom’s particular query, and requests that the Courtroom not take into account any new or repetitive info within the authorities’s letter.”
All of which is saying, we plan to attempt to once more in case you deny us bail this time.
