Getty PhotosAttorneys for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs will seem in courtroom on Wednesday to problem a choose’s ruling that denied Mr Combs bail after he pleaded not responsible in a sex-trafficking case.
A New York federal choose remanded the musician in custody on Tuesday after prosecutors argued he was a “critical flight danger”.
Mr Combs, 54, was arrested on Monday night, accused of working a legal enterprise from at the very least 2008 that relied on medication and violence to pressure ladies to “fulfill his sexual needs”, in accordance with prosecutors.
A 14-page indictment costs him with racketeering, intercourse trafficking by pressure, and transportation to have interaction in prostitution.
If convicted on all three counts, the rapper and file producer faces a sentence of 15 years as much as life in jail.
He was sporting a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants throughout Tuesday’s courtroom look in Manhattan.
Requested by US Justice of the Peace Choose Robyn Tarnofsky how he wished to plead, Mr Combs stood up and mentioned: “not responsible”.
Mr Combs’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, mentioned afterwards that the musician’s defence group already had launched an attraction of the choose’s bail choice.
“We imagine him wholeheartedly,” Mr Agnifilo advised reporters exterior the Manhattan courtroom. “He did not do this stuff.”
‘Freak Offs’
In line with courtroom paperwork, Mr Combs “wielded the facility” of his standing to “lure feminine victims… to have interaction in prolonged intercourse acts” referred to as “Freak Offs”.
“Throughout Freak Offs, Combs distributed a wide range of managed substances to victims, partially to maintain the victims obedient and compliant,” the indictment mentioned.
In a information briefing, US prosecutor Damian Williams mentioned officers discovered firearms, ammunition and greater than 1,000 bottles of lubricant throughout raids on Mr Combs’s properties in Miami and Los Angeles, about six months in the past.
Mr Williams mentioned federal brokers additionally discovered three semi-automatic rifles with defaced serial numbers, and a drum journal.
He advised reporters that additional costs have been doable, with out providing particulars.
Mr Agnifilo, the musician’s lawyer, maintained, “there isn’t any coercion and no crime.”
“He isn’t afraid of the fees,” he mentioned, including that he believed Mr Combs was the goal of “an unjust prosecution”.
Of their supply to maintain Mr Combs out of jail, his attorneys have beneficial to the choose a $50m (£37.8m) bail package deal.
If accepted, Mr Combs would await trial from his mansion on Miami’s unique Star Island.
In courtroom paperwork, federal prosecutors mentioned that Mr Combs had “abused, threatened, and coerced ladies and others round him to meet his sexual needs, shield his popularity, and conceal his conduct”.
Prosecutors accuse Mr Combs of “making a legal enterprise” whose members – underneath his course – engaged in intercourse trafficking, pressured labour, kidnapping, arson and bribery.
“On quite a few events”, the paperwork mentioned, Mr Combs assaulted ladies by “putting, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them”.
The indictment didn’t specify what number of ladies have been alleged victims. It additionally doesn’t accuse Mr Combs himself of partaking instantly in undesirable sexual acts with ladies.
The Unhealthy Boy data founder, who was additionally identified throughout his profession as P. Diddy and Puff Daddy, has confronted lots of the accusations earlier than.
Final November, his ex-girlfriend, singer Casandra Elizabeth Ventura, filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to him that included graphic descriptions of violent abuse. He denied the accusations, however settled the case a day after it was filed.
In Could, Mr Combs launched a public apology after video footage from a Los Angeles lodge appeared to indicate him beating Ms Ventura in a hallway.
Tuesday’s indictment in opposition to Mr Combs accuses him of comparable violence.
Ms Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor​​​​, declined to touch upon Mr Combs’s arrest.
The indictment follows a string of sexual assault allegations in opposition to Mr Combs, one of the crucial profitable music moguls within the historical past of rap.
4 ladies, together with Ms Ventura, have filed lawsuits accusing him of sexual and bodily abuse.
In an announcement issued final December, Mr Combs defended himself in opposition to what he described as “sickening allegations” made by “people in search of a fast payday”.
In June, he returned a ceremonial “Key to the Metropolis of New York” following a request from Mayor Eric Adams, who had bestowed the honour on him simply 9 months beforehand.
Days later, Howard College introduced it was revoking Mr Combs’s 2014 honorary diploma.
The musician is credited with serving to flip rappers and R&B singers corresponding to Usher, Mary J Blige and Infamous B.I.G. into stars within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.
