Sean “Diddy” Combs is due to appear in Manhattan federal court Thursday for a pretrial conference in his sex trafficking and racketeering case as he pushes to get out of jail and go on trial by next spring.
Combs’ lawyers are expected to ask a judge to set a trial date for next April or May and expand on their allegations that the government leaked widely watched, explosive CCTV footage depicting him assaulting Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, his former partner, with whom he ultimately settled a lawsuit for a reported $30 million.
In filings Wednesday, Combs’ lawyers accused the Department of Homeland Security of being behind the leak to CNN, taking a leaf out of the defense playbook of Mayor Adams, who last week accused federal prosecutors of leaking grand jury information to the press in his bribery case.
“We do not contend that the leaks were orchestrated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Rather, we contend that the false media statements and the grand jury leaks complained of below were planned and executed by DHS,” Combs’ lawyers wrote in their Wednesday night motion for an evidentiary hearing.
“The reason a hearing is needed is to determine exactly what the DHS did, and did not do regarding these leaks, and what the U.S. Attorney’s Office did and did not do to stop them,” they said.
Following his Sept. 16 arrest, Combs has been behind bars at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. In written arguments to the Second Circuit federal appeals court this week, his attorneys challenged a judge’s decision to incarcerate him pretrial based on the prosecution’s witness-tampering allegations. The music mogul has offered to put up a $50 million bond to remain under house arrest at his Florida mansion.
Combs, 54, potentially faces decades in prison if convicted of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation for purposes of prostitution. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges he headed a vast criminal enterprise from 2008 through last year, in which he forced women to participate in highly orchestrated “freak offs” with male commercial sex workers, often under the influence of sedative drugs to keep them “obedient and compliant.”
Combs has pleaded not guilty and maintains that participants in the violent and debauched sexual performances he allegedly directed and recorded gave their consent.
The feds say victims sometimes sustained injuries so severe they were forced into hiding for weeks at a time and were hooked up to IV bags after the “freak offs” due to the physical exertion and drug use involved.
The Bad Boy Records founder allegedly relied on his employees to facilitate the abuse, and several are described as participating in his sex trafficking, as well as forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice, according to the indictment.
The feds are expected to shed light on evidence disclosures at Thursday’s hearing, which they say are “voluminous, totaling several terabytes of electronic material,” and lay out a timeline for when they’ll hand over everything to Combs’ defense.
