Sean “Diddy” Combs Bail Request Delayed; Judge wants prison communications information

There will be no ruling today on Sean “Diddy” Combs’ latest bail request.

After a contentious two-hour hearing in New York City just concluded, a federal judge has told both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the defense team that he wants more clarification on how Combs has communicated behind bars in the two months since his arrest d. accusations of sex trafficking. Judge Arun Subramanian also wants to know exactly from both sides what forms of communication Combs is actually allowed by the Bureau of Prisons.

The feds and the defense have until November 25 at 12 ET to submit the information. A ruling by Judge Subramanian could come before Thanksgiving. In what may be a decisive consideration for the judge, officials with the Bureau of Investigation sided with prosecutors and recommended Diddy’s large bail package, with a trio of private security guards monitoring him 24/7 and enforcing strict limits on outside contacts.

That said, no new hearings have yet been set on the calendar.

With family and friends nearby, Combs sat there Friday unchained in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse. The notoriously self-promoting rapper was denied bail twice before in quick succession by other judges just after his arrest two months ago.

Seeing a new civil suit filed nearly every day during the years his celebrity took part in drug-fueled and videotaped “freak offs,” Combs is charged in the criminal case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with extortion, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. The 55-year-old Grammy winner pleaded not guilty. Combs faces up to life in prison if convicted in a trial that begins May 5.

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Today’s courtroom appearance follows Combs’ attorneys’ latest tactic of chipping away at the government’s case with two new hammers. They have focused on evidence obtained from a recent sweep of the Brooklyn jail where Combs is being held; and a video that prosecutors used to bolster their case against freeing Combs ahead of a trial set to begin next year.

Instead of all that, the feds have said over and over that one of their biggest concerns about Combs being on the street is efforts to intimidate and “blackmail” potential witnesses and Janes Does.

The defense team says the jail affidavit is privileged attorney-client information and the video was deceptively edited by prosecutors to persuade a judge to deny Combs bail. The material obtained from Combs’ cell was photographed by a Bureau of Prisons investigator in a prison-wide search for contraband. As for the widely viewed video, prosecutors claim all they did was blur the face of Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in the 2016 footage when the ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ singer attacked her.

The harrowing video was first seen on CNN earlier this year and was picked up everywhere almost immediately

Ultimately getting the case thrown out as he gets his client out on bail, Diddy’s defense attorney Mark Agnifilo wants the judge to consider removing the prosecution team from the case if he can’t get the charges dismissed entirely.

Soon to be under Donald Trump’s new chief appointee Jay Clayton, Assistant US Attorney Christy Slavik countered earlier this week in a separate hearing that the disputed materials turned up during a prison sweep that was “pre-planned” by the Bureau of Prisons. She added that her office did not communicate or coordinate with the agency in question, and the material was reviewed by a so-called “Filter Team” before prosecutors even saw it.

The feds have also rebuffed earlier moves by the defense to smear them for leaking to CNN the 2016 video of Combs kicking the crap out of Ventura. Current US Attorney Damian Williams’ SDNY office denied having the video itself when it surfaced this spring. The office also said that Homeland Security officials, who participated in the raids on Combs’ homes in LA and Miami earlier this year, also did not have the video to leak.

Shortly thereafter, the defense dropped that discussion.

In response to the often impassioned submissions from both sides, Judge Subramanian earlier this week ordered the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan to destroy all of its copies of the 19 pages of materials seized from Combs’ storage locker at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The once high-flying Bad Boy Records founder has been held at the notoriously rough NYC facility since he was handcuffed and arrested in a hotel lobby by the NYPD and others in mid-September.

Combs offers to post a $50 million bond, wear an ankle monitor, stay off the Internet, live in one of his homes in NYC or Miami under the surveillance of a private security agency, and clear all contact with family members through the government in advance. Painting the government as hypocrites, offering one form of justice to one defendant and another to Combs, defense attorneys have pointed to the $10 million bail package approved in October for another accused sex trafficker, former Abercrombie & Fitch executive Michael Jeffries . Accused of soliciting male models and others to sex parties with promises of money and career opportunities, the ex-executive faces a federal criminal trial in Long Island.

For all that, with their client’s passport already in the hands of US authorities, Combs’ lawyers have long said he is not a flight risk. At one point this afternoon, Judge Subramanian appeared to be seriously considering granting Combs’ release as the bench and lawyers discussed possible locations for the defendant to be housed in, with an Upper East Side apartment chosen as the best.

“Mr. Combs fully intends to face these charges,” they wrote. “The prospect of a conviction does not significantly alter his incentives here, where his reputation has already been damaged by the government’s allegations and aggressive and misleading media tactics, and may can only be rebuilt by winning a lawsuit.”

The defense team had the November 19 hearing scheduled on an emergency basis after claiming the seized notes contain privileged details of his planned legal defence. In fact, defense attorneys Agnifilo and Teny Geragos pointed out to the court that some of the footage was clearly marked “legal” in Combs’ own handwriting when they were photographed without his knowledge.

in an order published Wednesday, Subramanian wrote that Combs’ lawyers need to resolve an apparent discrepancy. The judge wants to know why the word “legal” appears on the folder Agnifilo handed over to the judge Tuesday when it doesn’t appear in photographs of the same folder from the raid.

That’s when, today, Agnifilo admitted to the judge that he wasn’t sure what material had “legally” written on it and what didn’t, much to Judge Subramanian’s clear displeasure.

Friday’s admission was certainly a kick to Agnifilo’s proclamation in court Tuesday that the October prison raid was a “pretext” whose true target was Combs. The government is violating Combs’ right to a fair trial, Agnifilo said, by using the material — which includes the name of a potential defense witness, among other things — to oppose Combs’ offer of a big-ticket bail package and continue building a case against the record company’s CEO .

The photographed notes also went to a federal grand jury that continues to investigate Combs and that subpoenaed the Bureau of Prisons after the prison review, AUSA Slavik told the court earlier this week, arguing that nothing in the 19 pages was privileged. Also in the chain of custody, the prosecutor said, was a “filter team” of government lawyers who operate separately from the prosecution team to weed out privileged information that prosecutors cannot have.

Slavik argued that nothing in the 19 pages was privileged. Under a handwritten heading of “things to do,” she said, were phone numbers, personal finance notes, family birthdays and inspirational quotes. There was also evidence of “continued obstruction” by Combs, including details of efforts to bribe or find dirt on government witnesses, AUSA said.

The defense’s latest bail memo, filed on Thursday, provides an insight into life behind bars for the faded media mogul. Regardless of what the government says, Combs, the defense insisted they did not use other inmates’ phone time to avoid having his calls monitored. “If anything, the fact that Mr. Combs has to resort to sharing minutes demonstrates that the conditions at MDC do not permit adequate defense preparation,” they wrote.

The memo also called the government’s rationale for opposing bail “fictitious.”

Defense attorneys argued that even before Combs’ arrest, federal prosecutors had footage that corroborated his version of a violent incident with then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura — but instead went to the original judge in the case, Andrew Carter, with “an altered video that omitted key scenes and presented events that were materially out of order” to push for Combs’ detention.

The harrowing clip, which first aired on CNN, shows an enraged Combs chasing, kicking and throwing Ventura to the ground in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.

Prosecutors cite the hard-to-view video that Combs bought the day after the assault for tens of thousands of dollars as evidence that Ventura was “Victim 1” of the sex-trafficking ring described in the indictment, though prosecutors do not name her or refer to other victims by number. It is not yet clear whether the grand jury still investigating Combs will issue a revised indictment identifying more victims.

Combs’ attorneys, meanwhile, have repeatedly argued that Ventura — who sued Combs in a civil case that ex. Making the band The producer and star settled quickly – was no victim, but a willing participant in sex parties that Combs staged in homes and hotel rooms for years.

The government alleges that Combs and his assistants forced Ventura and other women into group sex with male prostitutes, and that the women were drugged, fed IV fluids to prevent them from passing out from dehydration and exhaustion, and physically prevented from leaving the locations , where these marathon sexual encounters were staged. Some “freak offs” were filmed, in all likelihood to compromise or silence participants, prosecutors say.

Combs’ attorneys prefaced today’s hearing by offering to put a forensic video analyst on the stand to walk the judge through the unedited footage of the hotel incident and show that Combs and Ventura did not have a violent domestic altercation in the hallway. Combs, seen on camera wearing only a towel around his waist, was simply trying to retrieve his clothes and cellphone after Ventura ran off with them, his lawyers wrote.