Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers are seeking to have one of the charges against him in a federal racketeering case dismissed because, they say, it’s racist and has been been used disproportionately against Black men.
Combs is awaiting trial, tentatively scheduled to begin in May, on racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting someone across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.
On Tuesday evening, his legal team filed a motion casting the prosecution under the Mann Act as racist — something prosecutors have denied in previous hearings. “Mr. Combs has been singled out because he is powerful, Black, and he is being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished,” his lawyers argued in their motion.
The Mann Act was once called the White-Slave Traffic Act and was put into law in 1910 to prohibit the transportation of women for prostitution or other “immoral” purposes.
Combs’ lawyers, however, argued to the court that the law’s historic purpose has been to “target Black men and supposedly protect white women from them,” pointing to the prosecution of Jack Johnson and Chuck Berry as past examples. Johnson was pardoned posthumously in 2018.
“High-profile white men, including former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, have engaged in similar conduct but were never charged under the Act,” the motion said.
Combs is accused of hiring escorts and having them cross state lines for sex in a federal indictment unsealed last year.
According to the motion, the escort service, which the motion does not name, is “not some secretive underground operation that was previously unknown. It has been operating in the open for over a decade. It has a website and over 10,000 followers on X [formerly Twitter]. As the company’s own press page states, its operations have been featured in Playgirl, Glamour, Sheen, Hustler, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire.”
Combs, who is being held in a federal correctional facility in Brooklyn, N.Y., has pleaded not guilty and maintained that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
In a recently filed superseding indictment in Manhattan, federal prosecutors increased the number of alleged sex trafficking victims from one to three but does not identify them. The allegations of “Victim-1” mirror those made by singer and Combs’ former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, in a lawsuit filed in 2023. That suit was eventually settled. The expanded indictment also extended the duration of the alleged conspiracy, saying it began in 2004 instead of 2008 and lasted until 2024.
The indictment alleges the Bad Boy Entertainment founder used his empire to coerce victims into sex in gatherings known as “freak-offs.”
It alleges Combs “used force, threats of force, and coercion to cause victims, including but not limited to three female victims,” to engage in commercial sex acts.
Combs was arrested in September after nearly a yearlong federal investigation.
Prosecutors allege that, as part of a sex trafficking scheme, Combs and his entourage engaged in violence, abuse, arson, and kidnapping and, during one abduction, brandished a firearm.
Combs’ attorneys have unsuccessfully sought to exclude evidence they say was leaked, including a 2016 video, which shows Combs and Ventura in a hallway of the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles.
The video, obtained and published by CNN last year, shows Combs chasing Ventura down the hallway, kicking her, striking her and throwing a vase at her before dragging her back to the door of a room. The video, which quickly went viral, confirmed at least some of the physical abuse allegations against the singer detailed in the 2023 lawsuit.
Since the first indictment, a growing number of people have sued Combs, accusing him of sexual abuse, some of them minors at the time of the alleged acts. None of the federal allegations involve minors.
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