- Lawyers for Sean Combs filed his bail appeal on Tuesday night.
- Combs is hoping to be freed to home detention pending trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
- His appeal accuses his former judges of failing to clearly justify why he is being held.
Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs filed his bail appeal on Tuesday night — citing Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere as examples of sex offenders whose denials of bail were clearly explained and justified, unlike his own.
Combs has remained jailed in Brooklyn since his September 16 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges. His lawyers have argued since then that he should be allowed to serve home detention on a $50 million bond while awaiting trial.
Combs has also offered to comply with weekly drug testing, to have no access to phones or the internet, and to restrict those who visit him to family and friends not involved in the case.
The 31-page motion for pretrial release was filed with the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, in Manhattan.
It argues that while judges gave a lengthy and detailed explanation for denying bail for Epstein, Maxwell, and Raniere — as required under federal law section 3142(g) — no such detailed explanation has been made for keeping Combs confined pretrial.
According to Combs’ lawyers, the district court has made a “legal error by failing to make any factual findings or weigh the required factors.”
In US v Epstein, US v Maxwell, and US v Raniere, “the detention orders were supported by detailed factual findings and explicit weighing of the 3142(g) factors,” the appeal read.
“This Court has reversed similarly defective detention orders,” the appeal added, citing a Second Circuit reversal of a bail denial from 1988.
Combs has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have attacked the DOJ’s case strenuously in prior court appearances, describing the charged conduct as consensual and the primary witness against him as not credible.
Tuesday night’s appellate filing reinforces these two themes. It describes the DOJ’s trafficking case as based on sexual conduct by willing participants — specifically what the government described in its indictment as “freak offs,” or “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded.”
“Mr. Combs believes the evidence will show that to the extent such activities occurred, all individuals who participated were adults voluntarily engaged in consensual sex,” Combs lawyers wrote Tuesday.
The government’s case, the lawyers argue, is also overly reliant on a single “widely publicized March 5, 2016 video of Mr. Combs depicting a domestic violence incident with a former girlfriend.” This point in the appeal was a reference to footage showing Combs punching and kicking R&B singer Cassie Ventura at a California hotel.
Combs issued an apology when CNN first published the video in May, but his lawyers have since adopted an attack-the-accuser strategy.
Combs and Ventura shared “a long-term loving relationship that became strained by mutual infidelity and jealousy” and which was “often mutually toxic,” his lawyers wrote Tuesday.
Combs is described in the appeal as “a 54-y-o father of seven, a US citizen, an extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, and philanthropist, and one of the most recognizable people on earth.”
The appeal, signed by newly-retained attorney Alexandra A. E. Shapiro, additionally promises that Combs will not attempt to flee, obstruct justice, or intimidate witnesses, three major concerns cited by prosecutors.
“He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee,” the filing read.
Those steps, per Combs’ lawyers, included relocating from Miami to a New York hotel so he could be on hand to surrender, putting his private airplane up for sale, paying off the $18 million debt on his $48 million home in Miami in August “so it could provide unencumbered security for any future bail package.”
Prosecutors will reply to Combs’ appeal before a decision is made.
Combs, meanwhile, is scheduled to next appear in court on Thursday, for a status conference scheduled before US District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, who has already stated he will not hear further bail arguments.
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