Sean Combs is denied bail for a 3rd time : NPR

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who’s awaiting trial after being charged with intercourse trafficking and racketeering, was denied bail for a 3rd time on Wednesday.

Final Friday, Combs appeared earlier than a federal choose in Manhattan to request bail on a $50 million package deal proposed by his attorneys. The small print of the bail package deal included circumstances that the hip-hop mogul would stay beneath 24-hour surveillance, not have a cellphone and stay within the state of New York forward of the trial. Combs has been held in a Brooklyn jail since September, the place he awaits a trial scheduled to start in Might 2025. He’ll spend the Thanksgiving vacation in jail.

In September, Combs pleaded not responsible on all expenses and he has repeatedly denied, by way of his attorneys, that he has ever trafficked, drugged or assaulted anybody.

Earlier this month, Combs’ protection crew, led by Marc Agnifilo, in contrast his case to that of former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries, who was arrested in October in relation to a intercourse trafficking investigation and was launched on a bail package deal that included a secured $10 million bond and residential detention with digital monitoring.

In a letter filed to Decide Arun Subramanian earlier than Friday’s listening to, the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace acknowledged that apart from the high-profile visibility of the defendants and the intercourse trafficking expenses, Combs’ case is totally different from Jeffries’ for a number of causes that embody Combs’ “repeated acts of violence” and “acts of obstruction” that they allege he continues to interact in by utilizing different inmates’ telephone privileges to aim to contact witnesses. Prosecutors additionally pointed to surveillance footage printed by CNN that depicted Combs beating and kicking his then-girlfriend Casandra Ventura in a Los Angeles resort in 2016 as proof that Combs might behave violently if launched.

Protection attorneys for Combs asserted that the surveillance video of their shopper assaulting Ventura doesn’t depict trafficking, however reasonably a home dispute. “It is our protection to those expenses that this was a poisonous, loving 11-year relationship,” Agnifilo acknowledged. As a part of their plea for bail, Combs’ attorneys claimed that the federal government submitted a doctored model of the surveillance footage to the choose.

The protection additionally argued that non-public notes from Combs’ jail cell had been unlawfully seized to attempt to preserve him behind bars. The prosecutors argued that these notes present that Combs had been making an attempt to coordinate a social media marketing campaign with folks, together with his grownup sons, as a way to sway public opinion forward of the trial.