Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs no ‘ordinary john,’ feds say in urging NY judge to keep him jailed
NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs was “no ordinary john,” but a violent and controlling mastermind of perverse sex sessions where participants were drugged and brutalized, prosecutors wrote in new court papers opposing his latest bail bid — and indicating they’ll push for a longer prison term than expected.
In late-night filings Thursday, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office pushed back on recent framing by Combs’ lawyers portraying him as persecuted. The feds said the rap mogul had presented nothing to dispute a judge’s determination that he was too dangerous to be released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Among a flurry of motions following his July 2 convictions on two counts of transporting people for prostitution, Combs’ legal team this week urged the judge to let him await his Oct. 3 sentencing under home confinement in Miami on a $50 million bond. They argued there was never a case like Combs’ and that prosecutors had criminalized an innocent “swingers’ lifestyle.”
“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 motion argued.
The verdicts against the Harlem-born multimillionaire found him guilty of transporting people across state lines to engage in dayslong, marathon sex sessions as he watched, filmed and masturbated. He was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges carrying a potential life sentence. The counts he was found guilty of carry up to 10 years each.
Prosecutors on Thursday said Combs had failed to address the proper standard for asking the judge to reconsider bail, “let alone meet it,” and that even if he had demonstrated exceptional circumstances to justify his release, he was still unable to prove he’s not a danger to the community or a flight risk. Having initially said federal guidelines suggest Combs should serve four to five years in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Foster said prosecutors now believed the appropriate range would be “substantially higher,” making him even more of a flight risk.
Foster posited that Combs’ lawyers were way off the mark in comparing his case to others who were granted bail after being found guilty of similar crimes and framing his continued jailing on the prostitution offenses as unique, writing that his detention was mandatory under the Bail Reform Act. She said they had further minimized the conduct he was convicted of by describing him “as a mere john.”
“Far from being an ordinary and casual consumer of commercial sex, the defendant transported individuals for the purpose of prostitution on hundreds of occasions over the course of decades, plied Cassie Ventura and Jane (as well as male commercial sex workers) with drugs to ensure their continued participation in the days-long Freak Offs, used violence against both Ms. Ventura and Jane in connection with Freak Offs, and employed a small army of personal staff to ensure that his every need was met during Freak Offs,” Foster wrote.
“The defendant’s actions surely distinguish him from an ordinary ‘john.’”
Manhattan Federal Judge Arun Subramanian considered releasing Combs in the wake of the verdict, ultimately denying his request in finding that the violence toward women he admitted to, “which happens behind closed doors in personal relationships, sparked by unpredictable bouts of anger, is impossible to police with conditions.”
Faced with explaining footage of him violently laying into his ex, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, in a Los Angeles hotel lobby in 2016, Combs’ lawyers at trial had argued that being a “jerk” who assaulted women didn’t make him guilty of the crimes he was charged with.
Foster said Combs had delivered nothing to disturb Subramanian’s findings.
“Nor can he. The trial record is replete with evidence of the defendant’s acts of violence towards others,” the prosecutor wrote, detailing trial evidence that established Combs “frequently punched, kicked, and dragged” Ventura throughout their 11-year relationship and also brazenly beat Jane, a woman who testified anonymously, when he knew the feds were looking into him.
“(T)he defendant brutally attacked Jane in June 2024, also in the context of a Freak Off,” the prosecutor wrote. “Moreover, the fact that the defendant committed this vicious attack just three months prior to his arrest — and while he was unambiguously aware that he was under federal investigation — highlights, as the court concluded, ’a disregard for the rule of law and the propensity for violence.’”
Prosecutors are also expected to respond to a request by Combs on Thursday asking the judge to throw out his conviction or give him a new trial, which argued, in part, that the sexual performances he dictated were a form of “amateur pornography” made for private viewing and protected by the First Amendment.
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