Reuters
Sean “Diddy” Combs is no “mere John,” federal prosecutors say in urging he be kept behind bars.
Combs is “far from being an ordinary and casual consumer of commercial sex,” they argue, lambasting the rap mogul and his baby oil-soaked history of freak offs in a new, 11-page court filing opposing his latest bail effort.
Combs hopes to be set free from a notorious Brooklyn jail pending his October 3 sentencing. He argues that last month’s split verdict found him guilty of being, at most, a “John” who paid for male escorts he didn’t even sleep with.
Instead, his lawyers argue, trial testimony consistently described Combs sitting in the corner of a series of luxury hotel suites in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles, watching, masturbating, and recording as his girlfriends had sex with muscular strippers and porn stars.
But if Combs is just a John, he’s a very, very bad one, prosecutors say in opposing bail in a filing made public early Friday.
“The defendant transported individuals for the purpose of prostitution on hundreds of occasions over the course of decades,” wrote the five remaining members of the Manhattan-based prosecution team — minus lead attorney Maurene Comey.
(Comey, who also prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, is the daughter of former FBI director and longtime Trump nemesis James Comey. She was fired by the Department of Justice two weeks after the Combs verdict.)
Far from being a “mere John,” the remaining team wrote, Combs “plied Cassie Ventura and Jane (as well as male commercial sex workers) with drugs to ensure their continued participation in the days-long freak offs.”
R&B artist Ventura spent four days on the stand describing Combs’ violence and her own regret and humiliation in the decade ending in 2018. The second girlfriend, who testified as Jane Doe, told a similar tale from dating Combs in 2021 to 2024.
Combs “used violence against both Ms. Ventura and Jane in connection with freak offs, and employed a small army of personal staff to ensure that his every need was met during freak offs,” the prosecutors’ filing tells US District Judge Arun Subramanian..
“The defendant’s actions surely distinguish him from an ordinary ‘John.'”
In his own filing earlier this week, Combs had asked Subramanian to let him live at his Miami mansion on $50 million bail in the two months between now and sentencing.
His lawyers argued that the stakes are lower now, because he has been cleared of the most serious charges against him.
On July 2, the jury in Combs’ six-week Manhattan trial rejected prosecutors’ allegations that he sex-trafficked Ventura and Jane.
The jury also rejected a racketeering charge that alleged he ran Combs Global, his multimillion-dollar media, entertainment, and lifestyle empire, as a criminal enterprise.
Combs was found guilty only of the least serious counts he had faced. The jury convicted on two violations of the federal Mann Act, finding that Combs caused the two girlfriends and several male escorts to be transported across state lines for purposes of commercial sex acts.
The felony Mann Act convictions are flawed and should be tossed out, Combs argues.
Combs “lacked a commercial motive and did not intend for paid escorts to have sex with him,” his lawyers argued Wednesday night in a legal filing signed by defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro.
Instead, Combs was creating “amateur porn,” filming as the male escorts had sex with longtime girlfriend, Shapiro argued.
Combs was “primarily a bystander” to the encounters, Shapiro argued. “Paying people to film them in sexual performances is protected by the First Amendment,” she also argued.
This is Combs’ fifth attempt at bail since his September arrest.
In denying Combs’ July 2 bail request, made hours after his verdict, Subramanian said that by law, Combs’ felony convictions require that he remain in jail pending sentencing.
In previous bail denials, Subramanian and two other judges cited Combs’ admitted domestic violence against his girlfriends, including in the months before his September arrest, when he knew he was under investigation.
They also cited prosecution allegations that Combs possessed illegal drugs when he was arrested and had tried to obstruct the trial by reaching out to witnesses from jail before it started, claims the defense has denied.
Prosecutors have said they plan to seek a sentence of five years or more on the two Mann Act convictions.
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