Seeking an acquittal or a brand new trial, the incarcerated Sean “Diddy” Combs has pretty much already launched an appeal on his conviction of the lesser counts in the ‘I Need A Girl’ performer’s sex-trafficking trial and he hasn’t even been sentenced yet.
“Sean Combs sits in jail based on evidence that he paid adult male escorts and entertainers who engaged in consensual sexual activities with his former girlfriends, which he videotaped and later watched with the girlfriends,” asserts the Bad Boy Records founder’s defense team in a sprawling and preemptive 62-page memorandum of renewed motion filed late Wednesday in federal court. “That is not prostitution, and if it is, his conviction is unconstitutional.”
In a scolding rejection of the prosecution after an often eight-week trial, the eight men and four women New York jury earlier this month only found 55-year-old Combs guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Most tellingly, despite the government throwing everything and the turntable decks against the wall, the jury spared Combs a life sentence and found him not guilty of the marquee charges of sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
“If Mr. Combs had been charged solely with two Mann Act prostitution counts, this would have been a totally different trial,” the filing goes on to say, getting specific with the “misapplied, overbroad” statute. A fact, with the ‘All About the Benjamins’ performer now facing just a couple of years behind bars at most out of his October3 set sentencing, and a potential presidential pardon from Donald Trump, the defense clearly intends to thump on and on about in what is a precautionary appeal by any other name.
“It would have lasted perhaps a few days, and it would have focused on escorts and entertainers who actually travelled interstate—none of whom were even called to testify at trial,” the document from attorney Alexandra Shapiro adds, with one of but many linguistic bayoneting of the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York. “And it would not have included, in the government’s words, evidence of ‘so much violence.’ This is precisely the kind of case where concerns about spillover prejudice are the greatest.”
Shamelessly, the defense also now argues that the allegedly drug fueled and often filmed “freak-off” sex sessions Combs had with girlfriends and paid male participants are actually works of art. “When considered in its totality, the evidence presented by the government makes clear that Mr. Combs’s amateur porn, like many other adult films, was creative, intricate, and highly choreographed,” Shapiro states of the videos that left many a juror visibly aghast in court. “The videos accordingly have expressive content and are protected by the First Amendment.”
“If this Court declines to acquit him of those charges,” the filing concludes, “he at least deserves a new trial focused solely on those charges—a new trial without truckloads of otherwise inadmissible and inflammatory evidence.”
A.K.A. – No 2016 hotel security footage of Combs beating the crap outta then girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a LA hotel corridor. None or little mortifying testimony from ‘Me & U’ singer Ventura and other ex-girlfriends and staffers of abuse and assaults, like a 2018 rape Ventura described No domestic violence citations at all in fact, including by the defense itself. No allegations of jealous attempts at arson on Kid Cudi‘s car while the rapper was having an affair with Ventura. None of that and a lot more, or less, depending on how you look at it.
The anticipated and somewhat unusual pre-sentencing big swing from Combs’ Marc Agnifilo- and Teny Gerago-led defense comes just a day after the 10-lawyer deep team moved once again to get their client out of the Metropolitan Detention Center on a $50 million bond. Much-accused multiple Grammy winner Combs has been situated at the somewhat infamous Brooklyn facility since his arrest on sex-trafficking and other charges last September. Repeatedly failing to get bond over the last year, Combs remains at the MDC awaiting his early October sentencing by Judge Arun Subramanian on the prostitution verdicts.
With an eye to larger forces potentially at play, the memo was filed just minutes before a July 30 midnight deadline imposed by the circumspect Judge Subramanian on Combs finally successful achieving a bond release. The judge wanted a joint proposal from both the feds and the defense. In no small part due to the state of affairs at the once powerful SDNY and the recent (and not unexpected) firing by Trump’s Department of Justice of head prosecutor Maurene Comey (Yes, the daughter of the Trump hated ex-FBI Director James Comey), that wasn’t in the cards.
As any pardon move by the “strongly considering” Trump, as exclusively reported by Deadline on July 29, moves forward or not, Judge Subramanian has given the prosecution until end of day July 31 to respond to “Defendant Combs moves for release pending sentencing.” With the assurance they will reject any pre-sentencing release of Combs, regardless of what the feds submit, how robustly they baulk at tonight’s gladiatorial display by the defense is the real question.
Get in the ring.
