OAN Staff James Meyers and Sophia Flores
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
UPDATE 2:05 PM: A judge has ordered that Sean “Diddy” Combs will be held without bail pending trial in a three-count sex-trafficking indictment.
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On Tuesday afternoon, Manhattan federal Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky made the ruling following a two-hour long hearing.
His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, stated that the rapper is innocent and called him a “fighter.”
“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” Agnifilo said outside of court.
8:13 AM: Controversial rapper and hip-hop star Sean “Diddy” Combs has been hit with charges amid a long-running federal sex-trafficking probe, according to federal prosecutors.
The 54-year-old Combs was arrested on Monday night at the Park Hyatt in Manhattan, just six months after the feds raided his mansions in Miami and Los Angeles during their investigation.
The rap mogul was slapped with federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution, according to the three-count indictment unsealed early Tuesday.
Combs is also expected to be placed before a Manhattan federal judge on the charges.
The rapper “for decades … abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct,” the indictment said.
“To do so, Combs 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 allegedly “manipulated women to participate in highly orchestrated performances of sexual activity with male commercial sex workers,” the indictment said. “He allegedly made arrangements for women and sex workers to fly to him, and he allegedly coerced the women into participating by giving them drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and threatening to cut off the same, and using intimidation and violence.”
Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lawyer, claimed that he “knew this was coming,” according to a statement that he told reporters on Tuesday on his way to federal court. “We brought him to New York two weeks ago because, sure, we knew this day would come and it’s here.”
The arrest comes after he was hit with multiple lawsuits in the past year by those who allege that he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse during the height of his fame as a producer in the 1990s and 2000s.
He was first accused of a years-long pattern of domestic and sexual violence, and even trafficking, against his former girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie Ventura, in a federal lawsuit she filed against him last November.
Meanwhile, the case was quickly settled out of court as a multiple other lawsuits alleging sexual assault followed, all of which Combs denied.
The rap mogul also claimed that those who were suing him were just “looking for a quick pay day.”
“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the black community,” Agnifilo said in the wake of Combs’ arrest.
“He is an imperfect person but 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,” he continued.
“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.”
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