Legal Experts Weigh In on Bombshell Indictment

Sean “Diddy” Combs is at present incarcerated in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Heart, awaiting trial on racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking, and interstate transportation to have interaction in prostitution costs. The beleaguered mogul is dealing with 15 years to life in federal jail for allegedly heading a legal enterprise of people that enabled him to drug and coerce girls to take part in intercourse periods he referred to as “Freak Offs” with male intercourse staff he procured. His bail was denied twice, with New York’s Southern District citing his repeated witness tampering makes an attempt. (His subsequent courtroom look is a Sept. 24, convention listening to.)

In response to a number of legal protection attorneys and different authorized specialists, SDNY prosecutors have a powerful case towards Combs primarily based on appreciable bodily proof and quite a few witnesses set to testify about his alleged hurt. In addition they expressed that Combs being the only particular person arrested from his alleged enterprise hints at the potential of his co-conspirators testifying towards him.  

Rolling Stone spoke to former federal prosecutors and authorized specialists who echoed SDNY attorneys’ comparability of Combs’ RICO case to singer R. Kelly’s federal trial. In 2022, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years for racketeering predicated on legal conduct, together with sexual exploitation of kids, compelled labor, and Mann Act violations involving the coercion and transportation of girls and ladies in interstate commerce to have interaction in unlawful sexual exercise. He nonetheless faces intercourse crime costs in Illinois and Minnesota. Throughout Combs’ second bail listening to, a federal prosecutor famous that Kelly “was detained on all three grounds: Hazard, obstruction, and danger of flight. Like this case, there was a sample of obstruction that had occurred, and like this case, the sexual abuse that was alleged was violent and repeated.“ When Kelly’s indictment was unsealed in EDNY, it had 5 Jane Does. Throughout Combs’ first detention listening to, his protection divulged that they have been bracing for 12 victims, together with potential Jane Does.

Throughout a Tuesday afternoon press convention, US Lawyer Damian Williams advised the press that they’re nonetheless investigating Combs in a case that legal professional and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani tells Rolling Stone is already “sturdy.”

“You’re speaking about intercourse acts and intercourse trafficking involving power and duress,” he says.“ Now we have the Cassie Ventura video that was mentioned within the indictment. Damian Williams spent loads of time speaking about [the seized “Freak Off” videos]. There’s additionally allegations that [Combs] tried to make use of power, drug these intercourse staff, [and] tried to dissuade them from testifying and coming ahead.” 

The indictment alleges that Combs’ legal enterprise consisted of his enterprise entities in addition to staff and associates who helped facilitate his coercive intercourse periods and maintain girls ensnared by Combs for a interval starting in 2008. 

Kenya Davis, a accomplice with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and former Assistant U.S. Lawyer, says that the Southern District’s option to assemble the case as a racketeering group permits them to effectively lay out the total scope of the community’s alleged misdeeds. Her agency at present represents journalist and former file government Drew Dixon, who filed a sexual assault and harassment swimsuit towards music government L.A. Reid and a defamation swimsuit towards Russell Simmons. (The agency additionally represents a Jane Doe who filed a separate sexual assault swimsuit towards Russell Simmons). All three instances are open; Reid and Simmons have denied all allegations. 

“You’re seeing extra of those sorts of instances get a RICO cost on prime of it as a result of there are such a lot of completely different parts which can be at play that we are able to’t seize with one single rely of trafficking or transportation,” she says, noting the complicated community of people that allegedly enabled Combs’ conduct. She provides that Combs’ standing as a music government provides a definite wrinkle to the alleged enterprise: “The truth that he [allegedly] ties the file offers or the discharge of 1’s data, within the case of Cassie, to their participation in these intercourse acts [is a unique element of this case]. [As a victim], you actually are having to resolve whether or not or not you’re going to take part, and he’s capable of maintain that over your head.” Cassie’s November 2023 civil criticism alleges that after escaping Combs’ grasp, Dangerous Boy Administration President James Cruz “tracked” her down and “advised her that her single wouldn’t be launched if she didn’t reply Mr. Combs’s telephone calls.”

Lauren Hersh is the pinnacle of the advocacy group World With out Exploitation and a former prosecutor who served as Chief of Brooklyn’s Intercourse Trafficking Unit. She says that in the case of Combs and Kelly’s instances, “the rules are actually the identical. You will have an individual who has super energy, super entry, and the flexibility to prey on weak folks.” 

Davis says, ”You’re seeing loads of the identical parts by way of coercion, using a recording profession as a possible strategy to encourage folks to take part, [as well as] having personnel round [as] bodyguards and the like to assist the enterprise alongside as a result of no one can do that by themselves.” She additionally observes that each instances evoke the Mann Act, which she calls a “low-hanging fruit” of a cost as a result of “all it’s a must to present there may be transportation for the needs of some illicit sexual act.”

The US Lawyer’s workplace efficiently pushed to disclaim Combs bail. On Tuesday, they deemed him a “harmful” flight danger who “poses an ongoing menace to the protection of the group.” Throughout his preliminary bond listening to and subsequent enchantment, Southern District attorneys revealed that Combs repeatedly reached out to victims and witnesses within the case: he contacted one witness 14 instances, referred to as one other and recorded it on an confederate’s machine, and contacted Diddy-Soiled Cash singer Kalenna Harper 58 instances after their former groupmate Daybreak Richards filed a civil swimsuit towards him on Sept. tenth. Quickly after, Harper made a public assertion asserting, “Whereas I totally respect Daybreak’s proper to recount her experiences, I need to emphasize that her account displays her private perspective and shouldn’t be interpreted as a common fact relevant to everybody concerned.”

Davis says that Combs contacting witnesses “hit my coronary heart as a former prosecutor” as a result of “while you’re coping with somebody who’s highly effective, individuals are reluctant to be part of these instances. They don’t need to take part. And the management comes from this stage of affect.” She provides, “It represents for us who do that work a consciousness of guilt. Why are you calling any person 50 instances if you happen to didn’t do something? If they are saying one thing about you that’s not true, you may declare defamation.”

The tip of the Combs indictment comprises a “forfeiture” part. Whereas some readers speculated that it meant Combs’ financial institution accounts and belongings had been instantly frozen, Rahmani clarifies that this isn’t the case, and the part is supposed to disclose the prosecution’s want to grab any belongings that they’ll show funded his legal enterprise. Davis says that there are two causes that prosecutors search forfeiture: to maintain a defendant from giving freely the proceeds of their enterprise to different folks and to reroute the funds for potential restitution to victims. 

However each Rahmani and Davis say Combs’ huge portfolio of enterprise pursuits would make it tough to hint the funds or how he probably profited from his enterprise. “Was he capable of get albums out of individuals and never pay a good worth for them as a result of he had tapes to blackmail them with?” Davis asks. “We don’t know the way he was ready to make use of the enterprise to get these proceeds.”

In the course of the U.S. Lawyer’s press convention, Williams was coy about a number of features of the investigation and advised reporters, “I’m not taking something off the desk” with regard to additional costs. Rahmani says that he feels Williams’ name for “anybody with data to return ahead” could encourage extra potential witnesses to achieve out to prosecutors. “Each month, it looks like we’re getting a brand new lawsuit,” Rahmani says. “So these those that perhaps have been hesitant to return ahead…I wouldn’t be stunned if we begin listening to extra, particularly now that legal costs have been filed.” Throughout Combs’ second bail listening to, Choose Andrew Carter revealed that the courtroom had begun receiving calls from potential witnesses after the mogul’s arrest. 

Some have speculated on why the six weapons Homeland Safety retrieved throughout their raids of Combs’ properties (together with three AR-15s with scratched serial numbers) weren’t charged within the indictment. Elizabeth Geddes, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who delivered the closing arguments within the EDNY R. Kelly trial, explains that these weapons are out of the Southern District’s jurisdiction. “Possession of a defaced weapon, whereas that may be a federal crime, and so they might have charged that federally if it occurred of their district, it isn’t a predicate racketeering act, so they might not have charged it as a part of the racketeering case,” Geddes says. “Not all federal crimes will be included as racketeering acts. It’s a reasonably restricted variety of crimes, and weapons possession just isn’t amongst them.”

Geddes additionally says that she discovered it “somewhat stunning” that the Combs indictment didn’t “extra particularly describe different victims.” She notes that SDNY prosecutors crafted their case to resemble a “Glecier-format” RICO conspiracy, a extra succinct indictment that permits them to withhold sure case particulars and has the good thing about affording extra safety to witnesses. “By continuing that manner, they don’t need to listing out each single completely different predicate racketeering act that they’re planning to show up at trial. They’ll simply listing broad classes of crimes [without] alleging the actual cases, or the actual victims,” she stated. This “offers confidence to their witnesses, and future witnesses,” that they’ll be protected.

Davis says that Combs’ alleged obstruction of justice could have brought on the prosecution to return ahead earlier than that they had completed their grand jury testimony and gotten ample proof for sure costs. She additionally contends that different folks talked about within the indictment as a part of Combs’ alleged legal enterprise could also be within the strategy of cooperating towards him. “What you’re going to see is loads of cooperating witnesses, both individuals who have are available and rolled over or individuals who have determined to cooperate with the federal government as they begin to consider their very own publicity and legal responsibility within the case.”

The prosecution can add further costs in a later superseding indictment, and so they even have the latitude to supply Combs a plea deal for the present costs and inform him that they may add in different costs if he refuses the deal.

And because the case sprawls, it might rope in additional defendants. Rahmani says that “Diddy’s events have been the worst stored secret,” and there’s a chance that different distinguished folks could also be held to account in the event that they have been concerned in his intercourse acts. “Sadly, wealthy and highly effective males making the most of girls [is] one thing that’s far too frequent,” he says. “If I participated within the intercourse acts, I’d be particularly involved. That judgment day could also be coming.”

Each Hersh and Davis agree that the Combs case might symbolize a reckoning for the leisure world. Davis says that the trade as a complete must be extra accountable in calling out their friends. “I hear folks say stuff like, ‘I used to be round. I noticed a black eye. I noticed this, I noticed that.’ However you didn’t say something. And now you need to inform your story and perhaps even revenue from it,” she laments. “This doesn’t need to be a defining a part of our tradition for hip-hop or for Black folks. It’s not how nearly all of us function on this world. There are many artists who’ve had nothing to do with this type of stuff, and so they’ve been profitable. So this notion that it’s a must to pay this worth as a way to be part of the trade…I pray that that notion ends with a case like this.”

Hersh says that “when highly effective folks function with full impunity, they have an inclination to prey on our most marginalized.” However she additionally notes that “we’re lastly in the intervening time the place there may be accountability for actually highly effective folks. And we’re additionally in a second the place, though the highly effective folks have lengthy advised victims that they won’t be believed, society and the justice system is saying, ‘I imagine you.’ I believe that’s very highly effective.”