Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail Tuesday to await trial, however what precisely was he arrested for and the place do issues stand?
The most important transfer comes 10 months after sustained public allegations towards the music mogul. His lawyer says he’s harmless and he has pleaded not responsible.
Here is a take a look at what we all know thus far:
Why was ‘Diddy’ arrested?
Combs was jailed and ordered held with out bail in a federal intercourse trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and stunning acts of violence.
The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking. The indictment towards him lists allegations that return to 2008.
He is accused of inducing feminine victims and male intercourse employees into drugged-up, typically dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment additionally refers obliquely to an assault on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.
The Dangerous Boy Information founder is accused of sexually abusing and utilizing bodily pressure towards girls and getting his private assistants, safety and family workers to assist him cover all of it. Prosecutors say he additionally tried to bribe and intimidate witnesses and victims to maintain them quiet.
“Merely put, he’s a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Emily Johnson informed a courtroom.
Prosecutors mentioned in courtroom papers that they’d interviewed greater than 50 victims and witnesses and anticipate the quantity to develop. They mentioned they might use monetary, journey and billing data, digital information and communications and movies of the “Freak Offs” to show their case.
Combs was arrested Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities raided his luxurious houses in Los Angeles and Miami.
A conviction on each cost would require not less than 15 years in jail, with the potential of a life sentence.
The indictment describes Combs as the top of a felony enterprise that engaged or tried to have interaction in intercourse trafficking, compelled labor, interstate transportation for functions of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Combs and his associates wielded his “energy and status” to intimidate and lure girls into his orbit, “usually below the pretense of a romantic relationship,” in response to the indictment.
It says he then would use pressure, threats and coercion to get the ladies to have interaction with male intercourse employees within the “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced intercourse performances” that Combs organized and recorded, creating dozens of movies.
He ensured their participation by procuring and offering medicine, controlling their careers, leveraging his monetary help and utilizing intimidation and violence, in response to the indictment. It mentioned his workers facilitated “Freak Offs” by taking good care of duties like journey and lodge preparations and stocking them with such provides as medicine and child oil.
The occasions might final for days, and Combs and victims would usually obtain IV fluids to get well from the exertion and drug use, the indictment mentioned.
Through the searches of Combs’ houses earlier this 12 months, legislation enforcement seized narcotics, movies of the performances and greater than 1,000 bottles of child oil and lubricant, in response to prosecutors. They mentioned brokers additionally seized firearms and ammunition, together with three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers in his bed room closet in Miami.
The indictment says Combs choked, shoved, hit and kicked folks, inflicting accidents that always took days or even weeks to heal. His workers and associates typically stored victims from leaving or tracked down those that tried, the indictment mentioned.
It alleges that Combs used express recordings as “collateral” to make sure the ladies’s continued obedience and silence. He additionally exerted management over victims by promising profession alternatives, offering and threatening to withhold monetary help, dictating how they appeared, monitoring their well being data and controlling the place they lived, in response to the indictment.
As the specter of felony costs loomed, Combs and his associates pressured witnesses and victims to remain silent, providing bribes and supplying false narratives of what occurred, the indictment says.
In a courtroom submitting, prosecutors accused Combs and an unidentified co-conspirator of kidnapping somebody at gunpoint in December 2011 as a way to facilitate a break-in at one other particular person’s dwelling. Two weeks later, prosecutors wrote, Combs set fireplace to somebody’s car by slicing open its convertible prime and dropping in a Molotov cocktail.
All of this, prosecutors say, was occurring behind the facade of Combs’ world music, way of life and clothes enterprise.
In November, Ventura filed a lawsuit saying he had overwhelmed and raped her for years. She accused Combs of coercing her, and others, into undesirable intercourse in drug-fueled settings.
The swimsuit was settled in at some point, however months later, CNN aired lodge safety footage exhibiting Combs punching and kicking Ventura and throwing her on a ground. After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I used to be disgusted once I did it.”
The indictment refers back to the assault, with out naming Ventura, and says Combs tried to bribe a lodge safety staffer to remain mum about it.
Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ventura, declined to remark Tuesday.
What did Combs and his lawyer say?
“Not responsible,” Combs informed a courtroom this week.
After U.S. Justice of the Peace Decide Robyn Tarnofsky declined to grant him bail, Combs took an extended swig from a water bottle, then was led out of courtroom, turning towards members of the family within the viewers as he went.
“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to battle this to the top. He’s harmless,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, mentioned after courtroom. He plans to attraction the bail resolution.
“Merely put, he’s a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Emily Johnson informed a courtroom.
Agnifilo acknowledged Combs was “not an ideal particular person,” saying he’d used medicine and had been in “poisonous relationships” however was getting therapy and remedy.
“The proof on this case is extraordinarily problematic,” the lawyer informed the courtroom.
He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He did not title the lady, however the particulars matched these of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose authorized title is Casandra Ventura.
The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, had been an growth of that relationship, and never coercive.
“Is it intercourse trafficking? Not if all people desires to be there,” Agnifilo mentioned, arguing that authorities had been intruding on his shopper’s non-public life.
Combs’ lawyer mentioned his shopper didn’t personal the weapons present in his bed room closet, noting that he employs a safety firm.
Combs and his attorneys additionally denied comparable allegations made by others in a string of lawsuits.
Who’s Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs?
Combs is well known as one of the vital influential figures in hip-hop.
Combs is likely one of the best-known music executives, producers and performers throughout hip-hop, having received three Grammys and labored with artists comparable to Infamous B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, Usher, Lil Kim, Religion Evans and 112. He based Dangerous Boy Information in 1993, the influential trend line Sean John, a vodka model and the Revolt TV community. He bought off his stake within the latter firm in June of this 12 months.
Within the ‘00s, he was a producer on MTV’s actuality tv collection “Making the Band,” and “Making His Band,” launching the careers of artists just like the lady group Danity Kane whereas embodying a sort of temperamental, “grandiose tv persona,” A.D. Carson, affiliate professor of hip-hop at College of Virginia factors out.
It has been 17 years since Combs had a prime 10 hit — 2007’s “Final Evening” that includes Keisha Cole hit No. 10 on the Billboard Sizzling 100. Nonetheless, his profession and cultural contributions proceed to be celebrated. In 2022, Combs obtained the Lifetime Achievement Award on the BET Awards. Final 12 months, he carried out on the MTV VMAs and launched his fifth studio album, “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” his first new album since 2006 chart-topping “Press Play.”
“The Love Album” was nominated for greatest progressive R&B album on the Grammy Awards. Combs didn’t attend.
The place is Combs in jail?
Combs, 54, was despatched to the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn on Tuesday — a spot that’s been described as “hell on earth” and an “ongoing tragedy.”
The ability, the one federal jail in New York Metropolis, has been suffering from issues because it opened within the Nineties. In recent times, its circumstances have been so stark that some judges have refused to ship folks there. It has additionally been dwelling to various high-profile inmates, together with R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a press release, the federal Bureau of Prisons mentioned: “We additionally take significantly addressing the staffing and different challenges at MDC Brooklyn.” An company staff is working to repair issues, together with by including everlasting correctional and medical workers, remedying greater than 700 backlogged upkeep requests and answering judges’ considerations.
A decide on Wednesday denied a request by Combs’ legal professionals to let him await trial below home arrest at his $48 million mansion on an island in Miami Seaside, Florida.
Combs’ legal professionals argued in paperwork looking for his launch that the Metropolitan Detention Middle isn’t match for pretrial detention. They cited current detainee deaths, and the considerations shared by judges that the jail isn’t any place for anybody to be held.
Requested about preserving a high-profile inmate like Combs locked up, notably in mild of Epstein’s 2019 demise, Manhattan-based U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams mentioned: “We’re involved with anybody’s security at any time when they’re detained previous to trial.”
“I don’t draw any form of connection between Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide and what might or might not occur to some other defendant whereas they’re detained pretrial,” he added.
Combs’ lawyer mentioned Wednesday that the rapper is being held in MDC Brooklyn’s particular housing unit, which gives an additional layer of safety however could make trial preparation extra onerous. He requested that Combs be moved to a New Jersey jail, however a decide mentioned it is as much as the Bureau of Prisons to determine.
