Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs at Federal Sex Trafficking Trial (19459000)
Sean “Diddy Combs” appeared before a New York Federal Court on Friday to discuss his upcoming trial for sex-trafficking.
NBC News reported Combs’ attorneys had asked the court for jury selection to begin on 5th and 6th May. Combs appeared before the court on May 5 and 6 to plead no guilt to an indictment that was superseded in 2004. The indictment accused Combs of hanging a woman from a balcony, among other crimes.
Read: Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Sex Trafficking Case is now being indicted again
Combs, who was charged with federal crimes of sex-trafficking, racketeering and transporting women to prostitution, was arrested on September 16, 2024 outside a Manhattan Hotel. Combs was denied bail in two instances, after Judge Andrew L. Carter found that there were “serious risks” associated with witness tampering.
Combs’ legal team requested home detention and GPS monitoring. They offered $50 million in bail, and Combs’ home as collateral.
The government has proved that the defendant poses a threat. Carter denied Combs bail for a second consecutive time, stating that the bail was insufficient to cover even the risk of escape.
Federal authorities conducted raids on Combs’ homes in Holmby Hills and Miami, California. The raid, according to reports, was part of an ongoing investigation into sex-trafficking that led to his arrest a few months later.
Raids were reported four months after Ventura’s ex-girlfriend accused Combs of abuse and sex trading. She claimed in a lawsuit worth millions of dollars that Combs forced her into having sex. A day after the suit was filed, both parties settled.
In May 2016, a video emerged showing Combs hitting Ventura in a Californian hotel. Combs released a video after the release of the video, expressing regret for his actions.
A week after Ventura filed her lawsuit, two more women came forward. Combs allegedly drugged her and sexually assaulted her in New York at Syracuse University, in 1991. Combs initially denied the allegations, but a third woman, Liza Gardner made similar accusations against him.
Gardner claimed that Combs, and Aaron Hall the singer and songwriter, drugged her and another friend after an Uptown Records concert in 1990. Gardner claimed she was 16 years old at the time. Combs was accused of choke-holding Gardner a week after the attack.
Two more women have filed suits against Combs days after the video of his 2016 attack was made public. April Lampros was one of the women who filed a lawsuit against Combs. She is a New York Fashion Institute of Technology graduate student, and reportedly first met Combs back in 1994. Lampros claimed that Combs sexually assaulted her four times between the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Lampros said Combs had promised her mentorship and to connect her with fashion executives. Combs, however, allegedly made her drink alcohol before raping in her hotel room. Lampros remembered another incident in which Combs forced Lampros to have oral sex with her while an attendant was watching.
Combs was accused in 30 lawsuits of sexual abuse or facilitation. One, filed last October, claimed that he, Jay-Z, and a girl aged 13 in New York were raped in 2000. In February, the accuser of that case was dismissed from her case.
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[Feature Photo: Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP, File]
