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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Is Denied Bail a Third Time

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    A federal judge ruled against the music mogul’s efforts to be released from jail while he awaits trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul who has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering, was denied bail again on Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his lawyers’ third attempt to challenge his detention.Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in the order that prosecutors had presented evidence of Mr. Combs’s propensity for violence and that he had violated jail regulations by trying to obscure his communications with the outside world.The judge wrote that “there is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”The decision orders Mr. Combs to remain at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a hulking federal facility on the Brooklyn waterfront, until his trial, which is scheduled for May. Mr. Combs, 55, has been detained since his arrest in September after a nearly 10-month federal investigation.After Mr. Combs’s arrest, his lawyers offered a robust bail package that they argued was more than sufficient to assuage the court’s concerns about the risks of his release. They offered a $50 million bond, secured by Mr. Combs’s Florida mansion and said that Mr. Combs would pay for round-the-clock security, with visitors restricted to family. Apart from contact with his lawyers, he would have no access to phones or the internet.Prosecutors asserted that there was no way the government could trust that private security guards, paid for by Mr. Combs, could be depended on to prevent efforts toward obstructing justice, which, they argued, he had been engaging in before and after his indictment.Judge Subramanian agreed, writing in the order that “the Court doubts the sufficiency of any conditions that place trust in Combs and individuals in his employ — like a private security detail — to follow those conditions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Accuse Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs of Trying to Contact Witnesses From Jail

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      The government said the music mogul had been attempting to obstruct federal prosecutors by instructing others to make three-way calls and securing help from other inmates.Prosecutors accused Sean Combs of continuing efforts to obstruct the federal racketeering and sex trafficking case against him from a Brooklyn jail, alleging in court papers filed on Friday night that the music mogul had been trying to evade government monitoring by seeking to arrange three-way phone calls and to buy the use of other inmates’s phone privileges.The government’s account came a week before another hearing to decide whether Mr. Combs would be granted release on bail. Since September, he has been incarcerated at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, inside a special housing unit where high-profile inmates are often assigned.In the court filing, the government accused Mr. Combs of “relentless efforts” to contact potential witnesses, including by attempting to use three-way calls to contact associates whom prosecutors consider part of his “criminal enterprise.” Prosecutors also accused Mr. Combs of making unauthorized calls by using the telephone accounts of at least eight other inmates, instructing others to pay them — sometimes through their commissary accounts — to secure their cooperation.“The defendant has demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding — employees, family members, and M.D.C. inmates alike,” prosecutors wrote.Details of the recipients and substance of the phone calls were redacted in the court documents. The calls generated using other inmates’ privileges were not identified as being directed at witnesses, but prosecutors said they were evidence of Mr. Combs’s disregard for the jail’s regulations and were part of what they described as obstruction efforts.Representatives for Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, did not immediately respond to the allegations about Mr. Combs’s communications. He has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied the criminal charges, arguing that the drug-fueled sexual encounters called “freak offs” at the heart of his case were all consensual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seeking Release on Bail, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Downplays Risk of Witness Tampering

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      In an appeal, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that a judge’s decision to withhold bail was not based on evidence that he had sought to interfere with the sex trafficking investigation.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge’s decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.Mr. Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.In their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.The lawyers, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Mr. Combs’s decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government’s custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.“Mr. Combs is presumed innocent,” they wrote in the filing. “He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into “highly orchestrated” sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Happens Now in Young Thug’s YSL Trial?

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      Already the longest in Georgia history, the star rapper’s trial has been turned upside down. Here’s the latest as the case resumes after an eight-week delay.More than two years since the arrest of the star Atlanta rapper Young Thug on racketeering, gang conspiracy and weapons charges, his trial alongside five co-defendants is already the longest in Georgia’s history. And it is nowhere near finished.On Monday, some 19 months after the start of jury selection and nine months following opening statements, the jury will return to the courtroom to hear testimony for the first time since June 17.They will do so in a changed landscape: Judge Ural Glanville, who had been presiding over the case since the start, was instructed to step down last month and was replaced by Judge Paige Reese Whitaker following a series of heated back-and-forths and motions from the defense about the handling of an uncooperative witness for the prosecution.About 75 witnesses have testified so far, and prosecutors have told Judge Whitaker that they plan to call some 105 more; estimates backed by the new judge predict the trial will likely last through the first quarter of 2025.But the appointment of Judge Whitaker — actually the case’s third judge, because of another typically dramatic twist — is in some ways a fresh start, as she attempts to put a runaway train of a trial back on track.“This has been a long-running and multifaceted proceeding,” Judge Whitaker wrote in one of many decisions she had to make before the case could resume. “Challenges have been myriad and formidable. Frustrations may have been mounting while fortitude was waning.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Young Thug Lawyer Clashes With Judge in Chaotic Gang Case

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      Brian Steel, a lawyer for the Atlanta rapper, was ordered to serve 10 weekends in jail after a dispute with the judge, further complicating a messy gang conspiracy trial.A star witness jailed for refusing to testify. A change of heart after a weekend spent behind bars. And then, a lead defense lawyer taken into custody for implying that an improper secret meeting led to the witness’s about-face.Welcome to another week in the gang and racketeering trial of the chart-topping rapper Young Thug, a courtroom epic in Atlanta that continues to surprise as it approaches 18 months since jury selection began.On Monday, Judge Ural Glanville took the extraordinary step of holding Brian Steel, the rapper’s primary lawyer, in contempt for refusing to disclose who told him about a closed-door meeting between the judge, prosecutors, the uncooperative witness and his lawyer.Mr. Steel had argued in court that the conversation was unconstitutional and that the defense should have been present, or at least notified. But in a heated exchange, Judge Glanville took issue instead with how Mr. Steel had learned of the meeting, and later sentenced the lawyer to a maximum of 20 days in jail for failing to reveal his source.“Listen, if you don’t tell me how you got this information then you and I are going to have some problems,” the judge said in court, to which Mr. Steel responded, “I have problems right now.”Judge Glanville, who has overseen the case since Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, was indicted alongside 27 others in May 2022, appeared increasingly frustrated when he continued: “How did you get that information supposedly from my chambers? Did somebody tell you?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

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      Bill Cosby Case: Judges Review Decision to Allow Multiple Accusers

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusClassic Holiday MoviesHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBill Cosby Case: Judges Review Decision to Allow Multiple AccusersSeveral Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices hearing Cosby’s appeal of his sexual assault conviction expressed concern that five additional women had been allowed to testify at his 2018 trial.Bill Cosby entering court during his 2018 trial on sexual assault charges. An appeal of his conviction in that case was heard Tuesday by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated PressBy More