Sean “Diddy” Combs may or may not be a lot of things, but the Bad Boy Records founder is certainly persistent in the short term and the long game.
Stewing in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest on sex-trafficking and other charges last September and awaiting his October sentencing on the lesser claims of which he was found guilty earlier this month, Combs is attempting Tuesday for the umpteenth time to get sprung from behind bars.
“The prosecution and continued incarceration of Sean Combs are unique in the history of the Mann Act,” the Marc Agnifilo- and Teny Gerago-led defense said in a letter sent to Judge Arun Subramanian today. Just like in the previously failed bail and release motions Combs’ 10-lawyer team has made over the 10 months since his arrest, the defense is offering up a “$50 Million bond secured my Mr. Combs’ home in Miami,” as well as travel and interaction restrictions.
Facing a maximum of 20 years in prison, Combs is set to be sentenced October 3 on the dual counts of transportation to engage in prostitution that the New York City jury of eight men and four women found him guilty of July 2 after a relatively short and contentious deliberation. In a near TKO of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, the panel acquitted Combs of the harsher sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy claims. If a guilty verdict had been delivered on the larger charges, the 55-year-old Combs would be spending the rest of his life in a federal prison instead of the two or three years he’ll likely receive in the fall, with time already served factored in.
“There has literally never been a case like this one, where a person and his girlfriend arranged for adult men to have consensual sexual relations with the adult long-term girlfriend as part of a demonstrated ‘swingers’ lifestyle and has been prosecuted and incarcerated under the Mann Act,” the 12-page correspondence says, harkening to themes and topics of morality, “racism and misogyny” that have been brought up in previous moves to get their client out of custody. “Combs and two of his long-time girlfriends had a private, intimate life that is not uncommon today. It may not have been common on June 25, 1910, when the Mann Act, or as it was originally called, the White-Slave Traffic Act, was passed. But attitudes about sex and morality have come a long way in the last 115 years.”
“Sean Combs should not be in jail for this conduct. In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of john, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend, when he did not even have sex with the escort himself.”
The SDNY, which has been rocked by unrest since Donald Trump’s return to office in January and saw lead Combs prosecutor Maurene Comey pink-slipped a couple of weeks ago, had no comment on today’s letter from the defense. However, in the tactical competition this case and the dozens of other civil cases of abuse and assault involving Combs is for the lawyers, the feds’ silence may betray the expectation that Tuesday’s correspondence could be an opening move by the defense in a longer play.
From the moment their client was found guilty after an eight-week trial, Agnifilo, Geragos and crew made it clear they would be appealing the conviction. That process formally kicks off after sentencing. Yet, with the lack of success on any big-bucks bail or release requests before, today’s plaintive and largely repetitive letter may be a bit of a loss leader.
Which means, even with Donald Trump pondering a pardon for his old pal Combs, watch that docket.
