Sean “Diddy” Combs will stay locked up in a infamous New York federal jail on intercourse trafficking and conspiracy prices after his lawyer’s request to put him underneath home arrest on $50 million bail was denied.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter stated Wednesday {that a} bail package deal that will have saved the hip-hop mogul underneath home arrest at his Star Island mansion in Miami, with safety and no entry to cellphones, the Internet or girls aside from his household, was not sufficient to launch him pending trial.
Combs has been the topic of a broad federal investigation since at the least the start of the 12 months and was arrested in New York on Monday. He arrived on the courthouse on Wednesday from his cell on the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The facility, which has held inmates together with R. Kelly, Michael Cohen and Jeffrey Epstein, has a historical past of violence and squalid conditions.
On Tuesday, prosecutors unsealed the indictment in opposition to Combs, charging him with intercourse trafficking, conspiracy and transportation for prostitution. He pleaded not responsible and was denied bail at that listening to as nicely.
The indictment alleges that Combs and his associates lured feminine victims, typically underneath the guise of a romantic relationship. Combs then allegedly used power, threats of power, coercion and managed substances to persuade them to have interaction in sexual acts with male prostitutes in what Combs known as “freak offs.” Combs is accused of giving the ladies ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “preserve them obedient and compliant” throughout the performances.
The encounters, which prosecutors stated typically lasted for days, had been elaborate productions that Combs organized, directed, masturbated throughout and sometimes recorded, in response to the indictment. Prosecutors allege in a detention memo filed in courtroom that the sexual performances occurred repeatedly from at the least 2009 by means of this 12 months and that the resort rooms the place they had been carried out typically suffered important injury.
According to the indictment, throughout searches of Combs’s houses in Miami and Los Angeles in March, authorities seized narcotics and greater than 1,000 bottles of child oil and lubricant that Combs’s employees had allegedly saved in resort rooms for sexual functions.
It was an incident throughout considered one of these productions in 2016 in Los Angeles that prosecutors level to as proof that Combs is a hazard and can’t be trusted to be launched from custody.
In an incident captured on safety video, Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura (recognized solely as Victim One within the indictment), is seen working down a hallway of the InterContinental Hotel earlier than Combs catches as much as her, punches her repeatedly, and throws a vase at her.
In courtroom Wednesday, Judge Carter described the video of Combs attacking Ventura as “disturbing.”
Combs’s attorneys stated Tuesday in courtroom paperwork looking for his launch that the lady within the video hit him within the head and stole his garments after discovering a photograph of one other girlfriend on his cellphone.
One of Combs’s attorneys, Marc Agnifilo, advised the decide Wednesday that on the time of the video, Combs had anger points and drug dependancy. Agnifilo stated Combs and the lady seen within the video had been in love, had gone to rehab collectively and had chosen to have intercourse with a 3rd particular person collectively.
But prosecutors painted a distinct image, saying the video, first aired by CNN in May, confirmed a girl making an attempt to flee pressured intercourse with Combs and a paid prostitute. They stated Combs unsuccessfully tried to silence one of many resort’s safety guards with a bribe, and on Wednesday they stated Combs threatened two different victims with the discharge of their movies in the event that they cooperated with authorities.
