Federal agents arrested Sean “Diddy” Combs at a Manhattan hotel on Monday evening after a grand jury indicted the embattled music mogul on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges.
During a court appearance on Tuesday, Combs pleaded not guilty. His legal team proposed that he be released on a $50 million bond and confined to home arrest with electronic monitoring. But prosecutors argued that he should be held without bail, saying he had reached out to some witnesses and alleged victims. Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said the witnesses “have universally expressed fear of the defendant.” Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed and ruled that the rapper be held without bail until his trial.
The indictment comes in the wake of a wide range of sexual-violence allegations against him. Since last November, at least ten people — including his former girlfriend, the singer Cassie (legal name Cassandra Ventura) — have sued Combs, accusing him of physical abuse, sexual harassment, rape, nonconsensual pornography, and sex trafficking. Combs has denied all allegations against him. (Though in May, he apologized for his actions after CNN published graphic footage showing him physically assaulting Cassie.)
The arrest comes nearly six months after federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations — an agency that investigates sex-trafficking allegations, among other things — raided Combs’s Miami and Los Angeles homes.
The indictment alleges Combs “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.” To do so, the indictment continues, the rapper “relied on the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled — creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.”
Combs’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, responded to the arrest in a statement to Vulture, calling the prosecution of his client “unjust” and saying they were disappointed with the Southern District’s decision to pursue the case. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal. “To his credit, Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges,” Agnifilo said. “Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts. These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
