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MANHATTAN (CN) — Entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs will head to trial on May 5, 2025, a federal judge decided Thursday afternoon in the criminal sex trafficking case.
Combs, previously known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, was arrested in a Manhattan hotel last month, half a year after federal investigators searched his luxury homes in Los Angeles and Miami, and faces criminal charges that he carried out a sprawling sex trafficking conspiracy involving abusive coercion, drug-fueled sexual exploitation and surreptitious video recording of group sex participants.
He has been detained at MDC federal jail in Brooklyn for over three weeks since a magistrate judge denied him bail at his initial presentment in the Southern District of New York on a three-count criminal indictment for racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs, 54, has pleaded not guilty.
His defense team at the hearing on Thursday included attorneys Marc Agnifilo, Teny Geragos, Anthony Ricco and Anna Estevao.
Wearing matching tan jail attire, Combs appeared cheerful and animated as he entered the 26th floor courtroom and closely hugged each lawyer, whispering in their ears.
The Bad Boy Records founder later remained mostly stone-faced during the status conference, occasionally nodding his head up and down — once as a federal prosecutor described Agnifilo’s recent TMZ interview in which the attorney decried the case as a racially motivated “takedown of a successful Black man.”
Combs’ lawyers claimed in a court filing late Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for leaking to the media of a hotel surveillance video of violently assaulting his former longtime girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.
His lawyers said the video aired by CNN in May along with other purported government leaks “have led to damaging, highly prejudicial pretrial publicity that can only taint the jury pool and deprive Mr. Combs of his right to a fair trial.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson refuted the claims of improper disclosures as “baseless” and said Combs’ motion for fact-finding hearing was just an effort “to try to exclude a damning piece of evidence disguised as a press statement.”
“Not a single one of those alleged leaks are from a member of the prosecution team,” Johnson said.
She also reported that the “investigation is continuing” and prosecutors may bring a superseding indictment. They are in the process of extracting data from dozens of electronic devices seized from Combs’ homes, containing an “extraordinary” amount of data to turn over to his defense.
Investigators have had difficult unlocking several seized devices, including laptops, phones and “some hard drives with encryption,” Johnson said.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian did not rule from the bench on Combs’ motion for an evidentiary hearing regarding the purported leaks from Department of Homeland Security, and instead said he will consider briefings on the matter and determine whether a hearing is needed.
Subramanian, a Biden appointee, is presiding over the case after U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter recused himself.
After the hourlong hearing concluded, Combs clasped his hands together over his heart and blew kisses to his many family members in attendance at the hearing, including his mother Janice Combs and several of his grown children.
He has another bail appeal pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
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