Sean “Diddy” Combs is at present incarcerated in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Heart, awaiting trial on racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking, and interstate transportation to have interaction in prostitution fees. The beleaguered mogul is dealing with 15 years to life in federal jail for allegedly heading a legal enterprise of people that enabled him to drug and coerce ladies to take part in intercourse classes he referred to as “Freak Offs” with male intercourse employees he procured. His bail was denied twice, with New York’s Southern District citing his repeated witness tampering attempts(His subsequent courtroom look is a Sept. 24, convention listening to.)

Based on a number of legal protection legal professionals and different authorized consultants, SDNY prosecutors have a robust case in opposition to Combs primarily based on appreciable bodily proof and quite a few witnesses set to testify about his alleged hurt. Additionally they expressed that Combs being the one individual arrested from his alleged enterprise hints at the opportunity of his co-conspirators testifying in opposition to him.

Rolling Stone spoke to former federal prosecutors and authorized consultants who echoed SDNY legal professionals’ comparability of Combs’ RICO case to singer R. Kelly’s federal trial. In 2022, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years for racketeering predicated on legal conduct, together with sexual exploitation of kids, pressured labor, and Mann Act violations involving the coercion and transportation of girls and women in interstate commerce to have interaction in unlawful sexual exercise. He nonetheless faces intercourse crime fees in Illinois and Minnesota. Throughout Combs’ second bail listening to, a federal prosecutor famous that Kelly “was detained on all three grounds: Hazard, obstruction, and danger of flight. Like this case, there was a sample of obstruction that had occurred, and like this case, the sexual abuse that was alleged was violent and repeated.” When Kelly’s indictment was unsealed in EDNY, it had 5 Jane Does. Throughout Combs’ first detention listening to, his protection divulged that they had been bracing for 12 victims, together with potential Jane Does.

Throughout a Tuesday afternoon press convention, US Lawyer Damian Williams advised the press that they are nonetheless investigating Combs in a case that lawyer and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani tells. Rolling Stone is already “sturdy.”

“You are speaking about intercourse acts and intercourse trafficking involving pressure and duress,” he says. “Now we have the Cassie Ventura video that was mentioned within the indictment. Damian Williams spent a number of time speaking about [the seized “Freak Off” videos]There’s additionally allegations that [Combs] tried to make use of pressure, drug these intercourse employees, [and] Tried to dissuade them from testifying and coming ahead.”

the indictment alleges that Combs’ legal enterprise consisted of his enterprise entities in addition to staff and associates who helped facilitate his coercive intercourse classes and hold ladies ensnared by Combs for a interval starting in 2008.

Kenya Davis, a companion with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and former Assistant US Lawyer, says that the Southern District’s option to assemble the case as a racketeering group permits them to effectively lay out the total scope of the community’s alleged misdeeds. Her agency at present represents journalist and former report government Drew Dixon, who filed a sexual assault and harassment swimsuit in opposition to music government LA Reid and a defamation swimsuit in opposition to Russell Simmons. (The agency additionally represents a Jane Doe who filed a separate sexual assault swimsuit in opposition to Russell Simmons). All three circumstances are open; Reid and Simmons have denied all allegations.

“You are seeing extra of those sorts of circumstances get a RICO cost on high of it as a result of there are such a lot of totally different components which are at play that we won’t seize with one single depend of trafficking or transportation,” she says, noting. the advanced community of people that allegedly enabled Combs’ conduct. She provides that Combs’ standing as a music government provides a definite wrinkle to the alleged enterprise: “The truth that he [allegedly] ties the report offers or the discharge of 1’s data, within the case of Cassie, to their participation in these intercourse acts [is a unique element of this case], [As a victim]you actually are having to resolve whether or not or not you are going to take part, and he is capable of maintain that over your head.” Cassie’s November 2023 civil grievance alleges that after escaping Combs’ grasp, Unhealthy Boy Administration President James Cruz “tracked” her down and “advised her that her single wouldn’t be launched if she didn’t reply Mr. Combs’s cellphone calls.”

Lauren Hersh is the pinnacle of the advocacy group World With out Exploitation and a former prosecutor who served as Chief of Brooklyn’s Intercourse Trafficking Unit. She says that on the subject of Combs and Kelly’s circumstances, “the ideas are actually the identical. You might have an individual who has large energy, large entry, and the flexibility to prey on susceptible individuals.”

Davis says, ”You are seeing a number of the identical components when it comes to coercion, using a recording profession as a possible approach to encourage individuals to take part, [as well as] having personnel round [as] bodyguards and the like to assist the enterprise alongside as a result of no one can do that by themselves.” She additionally observes that each circumstances evoke the Mann Act, which she calls a “low-hanging fruit” of a cost as a result of “all you must present there’s transportation for the needs of some illicit sexual act.”

The US Lawyer’s workplace efficiently pushed to disclaim Combs bail. On Tuesday, they deemed him a “harmful” flight danger who “poses an ongoing menace to the security of the neighborhood.” Throughout his preliminary bond listening to and subsequent appealSouthern District attorneys revealed that Combs repeatedly reached out to victims and witnesses within the case: he contacted one witness 14 occasions, referred to as one other and recorded it on an confederate’s gadget, and contacted Diddy-Soiled Cash singer Kalenna Harper 58 occasions after their former groupmate. Daybreak Richards filed a civil swimsuit in opposition to him on Sept. tenth. Quickly after, Harper made a public assertion asserting, “Whereas I totally respect Daybreak’s proper to recount her experiences, I wish to emphasize that her account displays her private perspective and shouldn’t be interpreted as a common reality relevant to everybody concerned.”

Davis says that Combs contacting witnesses “hit my coronary heart as a former prosecutor” as a result of “whenever you’re coping with somebody who’s highly effective, individuals are reluctant to be part of these circumstances. They do not wish to take part. And the management comes from this degree of affect.” She provides, “It represents for us who do that work a consciousness of guilt. Why are you calling anyone 50 occasions in the event you did not do something? If they are saying one thing about you that is not true, you possibly can declare defamation.”

The top of the Combs indictment accommodates a “forfeiture” part. Whereas some readers speculated that it meant Combs’ financial institution accounts and property had been instantly frozen, Rahmani clarifies that this is not the case, and the part is supposed to disclose the prosecution’s want to grab any property that they’ll show funded his legal enterprise. . Davis says that there are two causes that prosecutors search forfeiture: to maintain a defendant from making a gift of the proceeds of their enterprise to different individuals and to reroute the funds for potential restitution to victims.

However each Rahmani and Davis say Combs’ huge portfolio of enterprise pursuits would make it tough to hint the funds or how he doubtlessly profited from his enterprise. “Was he capable of get albums out of individuals and never pay a good value for them as a result of he had tapes to blackmail them with?” Davis asks. “We do not understand how he was ready to make use of the enterprise to get these proceeds.”

In the course of the US Lawyer’s press convention, Williams was coy about a number of features of the investigation and advised reporters, “I am not taking something off the desk” with regard to additional fees. Rahmani says that he feels Williams’ name for “anybody with info to come back ahead” might encourage extra potential witnesses to succeed in out to prosecutors. “Each month, it looks like we’re getting a brand new lawsuit,” Rahmani says. “So these folks that perhaps had been hesitant to come back ahead…I would not be stunned if we begin listening to extra, particularly now that legal fees have been filed.” Throughout Combs’ second bail listening to, Decide Andrew Carter revealed that the courtroom had begun receiving calls from potential witnesses after the mogul’s arrest.

Some have speculated on why the six weapons Homeland Safety retrieved throughout their raids of Combs’ properties (together with three AR-15s with scratched serial numbers) weren’t charged within the indictment. Elizabeth Geddes, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who delivered the closing arguments within the EDNY R. Kelly trial, explains that these weapons are out of the Southern District’s jurisdiction. “Possession of a defaced weapon, whereas that may be a federal crime, they usually may have charged that federally if it occurred of their district, it isn’t a predicate racketeering act, so they may not have charged it as a part of the racketeering case. ,” Geddes says. “Not all federal crimes will be included as racketeering acts. It is a fairly restricted variety of crimes, and weapons possession will not be amongst them.”

Geddes additionally says that she discovered it “just a little stunning” that the Combs indictment did not “extra particularly describe different victims.” She notes that SDNY prosecutors crafted their case to resemble a “Glacier-format” RICO conspiracya extra succinct indictment that permits them to withhold sure case particulars and has the good thing about affording extra safety to witnesses. “By continuing that approach, they do not need to listing out each single totally different predicate racketeering act that they are planning to show up at trial. They’ll simply listing broad classes of crimes [without] alleging the actual cases, or the actual victims,” she mentioned. This “provides confidence to their witnesses, and future witnesses,” that they’re going to be protected.

Davis says that Combs’ alleged obstruction of justice might have prompted the prosecution to come back ahead earlier than they’d completed their grand jury testimony and gotten enough proof for sure fees. She additionally contends that different individuals talked about within the indictment as a part of Combs’ alleged legal enterprise could also be within the strategy of cooperating in opposition to him. “What you are going to see is a number of cooperating witnesses, both individuals who have are available in and rolled over or individuals who have determined to cooperate with the federal government as they begin to consider their very own publicity and legal responsibility within the case.”

The prosecution can add extra fees in a later superseding indictment, they usually even have the latitude to supply Combs a plea deal for the present fees and inform him that they are going to add in different fees if he refuses the deal.

And because the case sprawls, it may rope in additional defendants. Rahmani says that “Diddy’s events had been the worst stored secret,” and there is a risk that different outstanding individuals could also be held to account in the event that they had been concerned in his intercourse acts. “Sadly, wealthy and highly effective males making the most of ladies [is] one thing that is far too frequent,” he says. “If I participated within the intercourse acts, I’d be particularly involved. That judgment day could also be coming.”

Each Hersh and Davis agreed that the Combs case may signify a reckoning for the leisure world. Davis says that the business as a complete must be extra accountable in calling out their friends. “I hear individuals say stuff like, ‘I used to be round. I noticed a black eye. I noticed this, I noticed that.’ However you did not say something. And now you wish to inform your story and perhaps even revenue from it,” she laments. “This doesn’t need to be a defining a part of our tradition for hip-hop or for Black individuals. It isn’t how the vast majority of us function on this world. There are many artists who’ve had nothing to do with this sort of stuff, they usually’ve been profitable. So this notion that you must pay this value with the intention to be part of the business…I pray that that notion ends with a case like this.”

Hersh says that “when highly effective individuals function with full impunity, they have an inclination to prey on our most marginalized.” However she additionally notes that “we’re lastly in the intervening time the place there’s accountability for actually highly effective individuals. And we’re additionally in a second the place, though the highly effective individuals have lengthy advised victims that they won’t be believed, society and the justice system is saying, ‘I imagine you.’ I believe that is very highly effective.”