Sean (Diddy) Combs pleads not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering charges
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WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
Sean (Diddy) Combs pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes, coercing and abusing women for years while using blackmail and shocking acts of violence to keep his victims in line.
Charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, the music mogul is accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes days long sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs,” prosecutors said. The indictment against him also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.
Later Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky refused to grant Combs bail and ordered him to be jailed pending trial.
Combs took a long swig from a water bottle, then was led out of court without handcuffs. As he walked out, he turned toward family members in the audience.
“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said after court. As a start, he said he would appeal the bail decision.
The 54-year-old founder of Bad Boy Records is accused of striking, punching and dragging women, throwing objects and kicking them — and getting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all.
“Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after listening to the allegations while showing little reaction, his uncuffed hands folded in his lap
Federal prosecutors called Combs dangerous and urged that he be jailed without bail.
Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, says the investigation into the music mogul is ongoing and encouraged anyone with information about the case to come forward.
“Mr. Combs physically and sexually abused victims for decades. He used the vast resources of his company to facilitate his abuse and cover up his crimes. Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court. His lawyers, meanwhile, proposed in court papers that he be released on a $50 million US bond to home detention with electronic monitoring.
“He is not a perfect person. There has been drug use. He has been in toxic relationships,” Agnifilo told the court. Earlier outside the court he said Combs came to New York voluntarily to “engage the court system and start the case.”
Prosecutors said in court papers that they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses and expect the number to grow. They said they would use financial, travel and billing records, electronic data and communications and videos of the Freak Offs to prove their case.
A conviction on every charge in the indictment would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence.
Agnifilo, however, argued that “the evidence in this case is extremely problematic.”
Defence lawyer Marc Agnifilo, speaking before details of a sealed indictment against Sean (Diddy) Combs were released on Tuesday, said his client is going to ‘fight this with all of his energy and all of his might.’ Combs faces federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering in New York.
He maintained that the case boiled down to one alleged victim — whom he didn’t name, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long relationship with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
The Freak Offs, Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“Is it sex trafficking? Not if everybody wants to be there,” Agnifilo said, arguing that authorities were intruding on his client’s private life.
What is racketeering?
Racketeering does not describe a specific criminal act. Instead, racketeering refers to illegal activities committed by a coordinated group that aim to turn a profit — which can often be misrepresented as legitimate businesses.
In the unsealed indictment, prosecutors alleged Combs violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — a federal law originally passed in 1970, designed to go after criminal enterprises such as the mafia and drug cartels.
RICO allows prosecutors to charge members of a criminal organization with crimes their group committed, even when the person charged may not have had a direct hand in all the specific criminal acts of concern.
As the Mafia in the U.S. has largely been dismantled, prosecutors have applied the law to all sorts of groups that they characterize as criminal enterprises. Both R. Kelly and former U.S. President Donald Trump have been charged under the law, while the 2014 Varsity Blues college admissions scandal was also prosecuted under RICO charges.
Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor in the U.S., explains what a RICO charge is — and what it might mean for former president Donald Trump and his associates.
The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise, whose members and associates engaged or attempted to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labour, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offences, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to “intimidate, threaten and lure” women into his orbit, “often under the pretence of a romantic relationship,” the indictment says.
It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often recorded, creating dozens of videos.
He sometimes arranged to fly the women in and ensured their participation by procuring and providing drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and using intimidation and violence, according to the indictment.
Narcotics, firearms seized, indictment says
It alleges that Combs sometimes kept videos of victims engaging in sex acts and used the recordings as “collateral” to ensure the women’s continued obedience and silence. He also exerted control over victims by promising career opportunities, providing and threatening to withhold financial support, dictating how they looked, monitoring their health records and controlling where they lived, according to the indictment.
In a court filing, prosecutors accused Combs and an unidentified co-conspirator of kidnapping someone at gunpoint a few days before Christmas in 2011 in order to facilitate a break-in at another person’s home. Two weeks later, they wrote, Combs set fire to someone’s vehicle by slicing open its convertible top and dropping in a Molotov cocktail.
All of this, prosecutors allege, was happening behind the facade of Combs’s global music, lifestyle and clothing business.
“A year ago, Sean Combs stood in Times Square and was handed a key to New York City. Today, he’s been indicted and will face justice,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said at a news conference Tuesday.
Combs returned the key in June after Mayor Eric Adams requested it back.
‘I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now,’ Sean (Diddy) Combs said in a video statement posted Sunday to Instagram and Facebook addressing 2016 security footage that showed him punching and kicking Cassie, an R&B singer who was his protégé and longtime girlfriend at the time.
Allegations turned him into industry pariah
Combs was recognized as one of the most influential figures in hip-hop before a flood of allegations emerged last year.
As the threat of criminal charges loomed, Combs and his associates pressured witnesses and victims to stay silent, offering bribes and supplying false narratives of what happened, the indictment says.
In November, Cassie filed a lawsuit saying Combs had beaten and raped her for years. She accused Combs of coercing her, and others, into unwanted sex in drug-fuelled settings.
The suit was settled in one day, but months later, CNN aired hotel security footage showing Combs punching and kicking Ventura and throwing her on a floor. After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I was disgusted when I did it.”
The indictment refers to the attack, without naming Ventura, and says Combs tried to bribe a hotel security staffer to stay quiet about it.
Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ventura, declined to comment Tuesday.
Combs and his attorneys denied similar allegations made by others in a string of lawsuits.
A woman said Combs raped her two decades ago when she was 17. A music producer sued, saying Combs forced him to have sex with prostitutes. Another woman, April Lampros, said Combs subjected her to “terrifying sexual encounters,” starting when she was a college student in 1994.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura and Lampros did.
For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911
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