Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to appear in New York court seeking spring trial on sex trafficking charges

NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs will appear in court May 5 in his sweeping sex trafficking case, a judge ruled during a hearing Thursday — and the FBI said he may face more charges in the meantime.

Combs, dressed in brown prison garb, blue vans and shackles around his ankles, blew kisses to his mother, Janice Combs, and several of his children sitting in the gallery, who had traveled from Florida for his first federal court appearance in Manhattan before Judge Arun Subramanian, who will preside over the trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told Subramanian she expected it would be about three weeks before the government’s case would be presented to a jury. She warned that there was a “possibility” that prosecutors would file a superseding indictment that would change that timeline. Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo said his team will need about a week to present their defense.

In response to Combs’ latest allegations that the government leaked widely seen, explosive surveillance footage of him attacking his ex, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, to CNN, the prosecutor called them “baseless” and simply an attempt to “create a damning piece of evidence to exclude. ”

In their filings, Combs’ lawyers on Wednesday accused the Department of Homeland Security of being behind the leak, taking a leaf out of the defense playbook of Mayor Eric Adams, who last week accused federal prosecutors of leaking grand jury information to the media in his bribery case.

“The concern is that the officers leaked grand jury information,” Agnifilo said in court Thursday, asking the judge to issue a gag order.

Johnson said prosecutors didn’t even have the footage when CNN published it in May, months after Combs settled a lawsuit with Ventura for a reported $30 million. In the wake of that settlement, the music mogul was hit with a litany of lawsuits accusing him of similar behavior that foreshadowed the allegations in his criminal case.

Subramanian set a timeline for both sides to file additional arguments on the leaks and said he would issue an order banning anyone involved from publicly commenting on confidential material. He recently took over the case from Judge Andrew Carter, who resigned due to a close social and professional relationship with Combs’ new attorney Anthony Ricco.

Combs, 54, could face decades in prison if convicted of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation for the purpose of prostitution. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan alleges that from 2008 through last year, he led a massive criminal enterprise in which he forced women to participate in highly orchestrated “freak offs” with male commercial sex workers, often under the influence of narcotics to to keep them ‘obedient’. and compliant.”

The FBI says victims sometimes suffered injuries so severe that they were forced to go into hiding for weeks and were hooked up to IV bags after sessions because of the physical exertion and drug use involved.

The Bad Boy Records founder allegedly relied on his employees to facilitate the abuse, with some described in the indictment as participating in his sex trafficking, as well as forced labor, kidnapping, arson and bribery.

Combs claims that participants in the violent and debauched sexual performances that he allegedly directed and recorded for blackmail purposes gave their consent.

On Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Johnson said in court that an “extraordinary” amount of data from Combs’ seized electronic devices would be provided to his defense team within about a month, as the music producer stared motionless into space. She said prosecutors are still trying to decrypt some of the devices taken from his multimillion-dollar homes in Florida and California.

Subramanian continued Combs’ bail status, leaving the hip-hop icon on Forbes’ list of the highest-paid entertainers in 2022 in Brooklyn’s scandal-plagued Metropolitan Detention Center while he challenges his pretrial sentence in a federal appeals court.

In his third bid for release, filed Tuesday, Combs’ attorneys asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse judges’ decisions to keep him locked up pending trial based on the allegations of witness tampering by the prosecution. He is offered to post $50 million bail so he can remain under house arrest at his Florida mansion.

After Thursday’s hearing concluded, Combs was allowed to sit back and interact with his family members as court security officers herded the media out of the courtroom, unlike most criminal defendants in custody, who have only seconds to interact with loved ones in attendance. communicate.

When asked how the famous rap figure is doing at the MDC, Agnifilo told the New York Daily News, “I think the food is probably the roughest part of it.”