Looking at life in prison if found guilty in his sex trafficking criminal trial, the much accused Sean “Diddy” Combs may be facing even more charges, prosecutors admitted today.
In a brief hearing before federal Judge Arun Subramanian over a variety of discovery issues, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told the court that she could not say much about the feds ongoing investigation. Remarking that the government had no plans to alter the set trial date, Johnson did note that “any additional charges will have little discovery information.”
While prosecutors in the recently resigned Damian Williams-run office have suggested further indictments could be coming, the almost casual way a superseding indictment was brought up today indicates that more charges are almost certain. Otherwise, noting that “technology is fickle,” AUSA Johnson promised the government would get more material to the defense as quickly as possible. Johnson did say that all material and communications between “Victim 1” and Combs has already been delivered to the rapper’s legal team.
Arrested by the NYPD on September 16 in a Big Apple hotel lobby, Combs is charged with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Currently already behind bars and repeatedly denied bail, the heavily lawyered up Combs’ trial is set to start May 5 next year.
As he has been for all sessions in this case, Combs was in the courtroom Wednesday and had a brief greeting conversation with the judge before the 19-minute hearing began. Unlike past hearings, Combs’ mother was not presented, but several of his children were.
With the next hearing in the toxic matter scheduled for March 17, Combs is going to stay locked down in the harsh Metropolitan Detention Center for at least three more months.
The government alleges that Combs and his aides coerced women and men into marathon sexual encounters, called “freak offs,” with male prostitutes, and that the women were drugged, threatened with violence and physically barred from leaving the hotel rooms where “freak offs” were staged and videotaped. Among the dozens of civil cases filed against Combs in recent months, the performer is alleged to have raped and assaulted minors as young as 13-years-old.
Combs has repeatedly denied all the charges and allegations against him.
The Bad Boy Records founder has officially given up on bail after three failed bids for pre-trial release including an offer to put up a $50 million bond and confine himself to a rented Manhattan apartment with private security guards as monitors. But his lawyers continue to wage an aggressive defense on his behalf, attacking the government’s case as tainted by, among other things, a prejudicial leak of footage aired by CNN that showed Combs assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016.
Noted in the criminal case against Combs as “Victim 1,” Ventura actually set off a lot of the legal spotlight on her ex when she sued him in November 2023 for rape and abuse. While Combs denied everything, some of which he walked back when the 2016 video became public, he very quickly settled with Ventura for around $30 million, according to well-placed sources.
Prosecutors and investigators in the case have signed sworn statements to Judge Subramanian saying they haven’t leaked any information. On Monday, the judge denied a defense motion for an evidentiary hearing on alleged government leaks and for additional discovery.
Combs’ lawyers also objected to prosecutors acquiring defense paperwork from a search of Combs’ storage locker at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where the “All About the Benjamins” rapper has been held since his arrest earlier this fall. Prosecutors said that the raid at MDC was part of a routine, pre-planned security sweep of the jail by Federal Bureau of Prison agents, and that Combs was not targeted.
Judge Subramanian nevertheless ordered prosecutors to destroy all copies of almost 20 pages of material from the sweep, in a win for Combs. The judge has also ordered jail officials not to share Combs’ attorney visit forms with the government.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik argued that nothing in the paperwork was privileged but that it did contain evidence of “continued obstruction” by Combs, including details about efforts to bribe or find dirt on government witnesses. The government also said that Combs at one point was attempting to use other inmates’ phone time to avoid having his calls monitored, a claim the defense denied.
Even the terms of Combs’ jailhouse access to a laptop containing defense case materials have been in dispute. The judge ruled last week that Combs can view the laptop daily between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. in his jail unit’s visiting room and video teleconference room.
On another note, today saw the feds drop charges against Combs associate Brendan Paul, who was snared as a part of the heavily covered spring raids on the ‘Love’ performer’s L.A. and Miami homes by Homeland Security, the FBI and local police. Copping a plea, Paul was placed in a drug treatment program, which he has now completed.
Still, for Combs, the onetime hitmaker-turned-mogul, whose rap, media and fashion empire was in free fall in recent years, continues to face dozens and dozens of civil suits — most filed by Texas lawyer Tony Buzbee. The flood of litigation has also ensnared another New York hip-hop star, Jay-Z, who was accused in a recently refiled lawsuit with Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 at a party after the MTV Video Music Awards in New York.
Battling Buzbee on multiple fronts, including a filing today de facto accusing the Houston-based attorney of potentially destroying evidence, Jay-Z a.k.a Shawn Carter has denied the allegation and the “99 Problems” rapper’s lawyers called the case a “sham.”
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