Federal prosecutors opposed Sean Combs’s bid for release from jail on Wednesday, asserting that the music mogul should not be allowed to use his wealth to set up a proposed bail release package that would include hiring a private security detail to guard him.
Mr. Combs, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail ahead of his trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in May, has appealed a court’s decision to deny him bail, which was based in part on a finding that he posed a danger of witness tampering.
His lawyers proposed an elaborate system — effectively a private version of house arrest — in which Mr. Combs would be monitored by security staffers at all hours, would have no access to phones or the internet and could only be visited by an approved list of guests. They suggested a bond set at $50 million.
In their response to Mr. Combs’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the prosecutors pushed back on Mr. Combs’s argument for release.
“The District Court rightly rejected Combs’s effort to pay his way out of detention,” the prosecution wrote, “when the record established that no set of conditions could ensure the safety of the community.”
The government has accused Mr. Combs, 54, of running a “criminal enterprise” that wielded the mogul’s power in the entertainment industry to commit crimes, including coercing women to engage in sexual activity with male prostitutes in drug-fueled encounters known as freak-offs. Lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty, have denied the charges, asserting that any sexual activity involved consenting adults.
Lawyers for Mr. Combs said in their appeal that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had tried to interfere with the investigation into his conduct.
Prosecutors pushed back, citing Mr. Combs’s contact with a witness associated with a lawsuit filed shortly before his arrest. They asserted that a core part of the indictment is their position that Mr. Combs is guilty of obstruction, bribery and witnesses tampering. In the indictment, for example, the government accused Mr. Combs of using recordings of coerced sexual activity as “collateral” to help ensure participants’ silence.
“Combs’s longstanding and sophisticated methods of obstructing justice and silencing witnesses more than established his dangerousness,” the prosecutors wrote.
Lawyers for Mr. Combs have sought to poke holes in the government’s contention that Mr. Combs has tried to obstruct justice in the case. For example, they argued that while their client may have had contact with two grand jury witnesses, the government, they said, has not produced any evidence that these encounters included threats or intimidation.
Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled for Nov. 4. But on Thursday, Mr. Combs’s lawyers asked the appellate court to postpone the proceedings because they intend to present a new release application to the lower court based on “certain relevant new information.” The new information was not specified in the filing.
This week, the defense also asked the court to order the government to identify the alleged victims it cited in the indictment, writing that the lawyers had been forced to play a “guessing game” about the particulars of the prosecution’s case — one that they said has been complicated by a cascade of civil suits, some from anonymous plaintiffs.
The defense said it anticipates that the discovery in the case will include videos of consensual sexual activity involving Mr. Combs, making it difficult to “ascertain which of his prior sexual partners now claim, years later, that they felt coerced.”
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