Sean “Diddy” Combs has been sent to jail to await trial in his federal s3x trafficking case after a judge ordered him to be held without bail until his s3x trafficking trial.

The music mogul pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, September 17,  to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He’s accused of inducing female victims and male s3x workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment against him also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.

On Tuesday, September 17, a federal judge in New York ruled to hold the music mogul behind bars at his arraignment, rejecting a bail proposal made by Combs’ attorneys.

Combs was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution, in a federal indictment unsealed.

At the arraignment, prosecutors alleged that Combs had drugs in the hotel room in which he was arrested on Monday, September 16.

Combs appeared at his arraignment Tuesday wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and grey sweatpants. The rapper and producer stood and entered a plea of not guilty in court.

Combs’ attorneys had proposed a $50 million bail package that would’ve included a $50,000 bond for the Bad Boy Records founder. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky sided with the government as prosecutors wanted him jailed.

Combs, one of the most powerful individuals in the music industry, is accused of forcing women to engage in long, orchestrated sex performances known as “freak offs,” some of which lasted several days.

“Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after listening to the allegations with his uncuffed hands folded in his lap.

The rapper, 54, was led out of court without being handcuffed

“Mr. Combs physically and sexually abused victims for decades. He used the vast resources of his company to facilitate his abuse and cover up his crimes. Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court.

She also said he had an “extensive and exhaustive history of obstruction of justice,” including alleged bribery and witness intimidation.

His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, acknowledged Combs was “not a perfect person.”

“There has been drug use. He has been in toxic relationships,” Agnifilo told the court. The lawyer said Combs was receiving “treatment and therapy for things that he needs treatment and therapy for.”

Agnifilo had said outside court earlier that Combs is innocent, and he argued in court that “the evidence in this case is extremely problematic.”

He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He didn’t name the woman, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.

The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.

Inside the NYC prison that will house Diddy until his sex trafficking trial

 

 

Embattled hip-hop mogul, Sean “Diddy” Combs was remanded in federal custody on Tuesday afternoon, September 17, after a judge denied him bail as his s3x abuse case proceeds to trial.

 

 

Diddy pleaded not guilty to charges of s3x trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in pr∅stitution, and will be housed in pretrial detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

 

The MDC holds around 1,600 inmates, all but a few dozen awaiting trial.

 

It has been New York City’s primary federal detention center since 2021, when the Bureau of Prisons shuttered Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Jeffrey Epstein died over the appalling conditions inside.

 

Combs’ lawyers even acknowledged the deplorable conditions in a motion for bail on Tuesday, noting that ‘several courts in this District have recognized that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention.’

 

‘Just earlier this summer, an inmate was murdered,’ the hip hop mogul’s defense attorneys wrote, according to the Daily Beast. 

 

‘At least four inmates have died by suicide there in the past three years.’

 

 

 

The attorneys were referencing the June 7 death of Uriel Whyte, who had been awaiting trial on gun charges for more than two years when he was stabbed to death.

 

The prison was put into a lockdown in the aftermath, ‘where essentially, we come out of our cell every three days for a 15-minute shower,’ one inmate told NY 1 at the time.

 

 

‘You’re literally in solitary confinement when you shouldn’t be,’ he said.

 

 

But just over one month later, another inmate, Edwin Cordero, died after being injured in a prison fight. 

 

His attorney called his death ‘senseless and completely preventable’ and said Cordero was ‘another victim of MDC Brooklyn, an overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal jail that is Hell on Earth,’ according to the New York Times.

 

Inmates and their lawyers have also claimed they found cockroaches on their food and mold in the showers, and in a number of recent legal cases, conditions at the prison were describes as ‘dreadful,’ ‘longstanding,’ ‘dirty,’ ‘inhuman’ and an ‘ongoing tragedy,’ Combs’ attorneys argued.

 

Diddy has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution charges, and following the hearing on Tuesday, his attorney promised to appeal Tarnofsky’s decision to deny bail.

 

‘Mr Combs is a fighter – he will fight this until the end. He is innocent. He came to New York to establish his innocence. He is not afraid – he is not afraid of the charges,’ Agnifilo said.

 

‘He has been looking forward to clearing his name and he is going to clear his name. We believe in him wholeheartedly. He didn’t do these things.’

 

If convicted on the racketeering charges, Combs faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a sex trafficking conviction would carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years behind bars.