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A judge has denied rapper and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs’ request to be released on bail ahead of his trial for federal sex trafficking charges.
Combs’ lawyers had asked he be released on $50 million bond, saying he would stay in a three-bedroom apartment on New York’s Upper East Side and pay the cost to have private security monitor him around the clock.
District Judge Arun Subramanian denied the request, ruling, “The Court finds that the government has shown by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
Subramanian concluded that “there is compelling evidence of Combs’s propensity for violence” and that if released while awaiting trial, “there is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”
Combs was arrested in September and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky at the time ordered Combs be held without bail, but the rapper’s legal team has filed several requests to have him released since then. They have all been denied.
Combs is being held at a detention center across the East River from Manhattan in Brooklyn, New York, according to online records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Combs is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women at events Combs referred to as “Freak Offs.”
“The ‘Freak Offs’ sometimes lasted days at a time, involved multiple commercial sex workers and often involved a variety of narcotics, such as ketamine, ecstasy and GHB, which Combs distributed to the victims to keep them obedient and compliant,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, of the Southern District of New York, told reporters last month.
Combs has denied any wrongdoing. One of his attoneys, Marc Agnifilo, said last month, “We’re going to fight this case with everything we have, as is he, and eventually, he’s going to be shown to be innocent.”
His trial is scheduled for May 2025.
Alex Sundby
contributed to this report.
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