NEW YORK – Sean Combs, an embattled music mogul who has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering, will remain in jail after a federal judge Friday said he would continue to weigh arguments about Combs’ release.
Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, said at a hearing that he would make a decision in coming days on Combs’ third and latest request to be released on bail.
The decision by Subramanian means that Combs will, at least for now, remain at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a hulking federal facility on the Brooklyn waterfront; his trial is scheduled for May. Combs, 55, has been detained since his arrest two months ago after a nearly 10-month federal investigation. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
After his arrest in September, Combs’ lawyers offered a robust bail package that they said was more than sufficient to assuage the court’s concerns about the risks of his release. They offered a $50 million bond, secured by Combs’ Florida mansion – as well as his mother’s house there – and said that Combs would pay for round-the-clock security at his home, with visitors restricted to family. Apart from contact with his lawyers, he would have no access to phones or the internet.
The first two judges who considered the bail issue were persuaded by the government’s arguments that Combs posed a danger to the safety of others, relying largely on leaked hotel footage from 2016 of Combs abusing his girlfriend, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, which was broadcast in May by CNN. Ventura, who filed a bombshell lawsuit a year ago, is the center of the government’s case, although she is identified only as “Victim-1” in its indictment.
In the indictment, which charges Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution, the government described him as the boss of a yearslong criminal enterprise that threatened and abused women. Prosecutors accused him of coercing the women to participate against their will in drug-fueled orgies with male prostitutes, and of threatening them with violence or the loss of financial support if they refused.
In court papers and in pretrial hearings, prosecutors have said their case involves multiple victims, but they have not publicly cited any other than Ventura. In a court filing this week, Combs pointed to the government “labeling” a potential second victim, but said that prosecutors had never spoken to her, and that this person, who was not named in court papers, had been “voluntarily intimate with Mr. Combs for years.”
The video of Cassie has been a focal point of the detention efforts with Andrew L. Carter Jr., the district court judge first assigned to the case, calling it disturbing during a September bail hearing.
In their third attempt at securing bail, Combs’ lawyers sought to undercut the impact of that video by arguing that the government had not presented the footage in good faith, accusing prosecutors of omitting key scenes and presenting events out of order.
Prosecutors have worked to keep Combs in jail by arguing that he has engaged in efforts to obstruct the prosecution, both before and after he was indicted in September.
Prosecutors have accused Combs of contacting grand jury witnesses, paying a potential witness to make a public statement in his favor and attempting to use three-way phone calls from inside jail to contact associates whom prosecutors consider part of his “criminal enterprise.”
Combs’ lawyers argued that their defendant’s contacts with witnesses have been entirely “innocuous” and simply intended to help build up his defense for trial. They underscored that the government had pointed to no threatening communications, and they characterized the accusations about him breaking jail policy around phone privileges as “overblown.”
In recent days, Combs’ legal team has railed against prosecutors for using evidence collected in a government sweep of the jail where Combs resides to try to argue that he should remain incarcerated.
On Tuesday, Subramanian ordered that prosecutors delete their records of handwritten notes that were found in Combs’ jail cell while he reviews whether the prosecution should have been in possession of those documents in the first place. The government has highlighted two excerpts from those notes as evidence of obstruction efforts, including one that was related to Combs’ directing someone to find “dirt” on two alleged victims.
Subramanian questioned prosecutors on Combs’ treatment by the government compared with another defendant charged with sex trafficking: Michael S. Jeffries, the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch. The government last month accused Jeffries of luring dozens of men to events around the world, where they were sexually exploited by him and his romantic partner.
In that case, prosecutors agreed to Jeffries’ release on a $10 million bond and with home detention. Combs’ lawyers pointed to the case as an example of the government permitting less-restrictive treatment of a similar defendant.
Prosecutors countered that the two high-profile cases were different because unlike the charges against Jeffries, Combs is facing a racketeering conspiracy charge, which includes accusations of repeated acts of violence by Combs and his associates. They also noted that when authorities raided Combs’ residences in March, they discovered firearms and ammunition, including defaced AR-15s.
The grand jury has continued to meet since Combs was charged and prosecutors have said that their investigation is continuing.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
