Diddy Asks Judge to Release Him from Jail

Lawyers for Sean Combs asked a judge on Tuesday to release him on a $50 million bond while he awaits sentencing for a federal conviction earlier this month on charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.

Mr. Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, was acquitted of more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy at the conclusion of a trial that lasted eight weeks.

After the music mogul’s conviction on July 2, the judge, Arun Subramanian, denied his lawyers’ request to have him released from detention pending his sentencing, saying that Mr. Combs’s history of domestic violence showed that he could pose a danger to others.

During Mr. Combs’s trial, prosecutors argued that the executive acted as a kingpin of a criminal organization and that he coerced two long-term girlfriends to participate in ritualized sexual encounters with male escorts. Among the evidence presented at court was a security video showing Mr. Combs assaulting one of those women, Casandra Ventura, at a Los Angeles hotel.

Had Mr. Combs been convicted of racketeering or sex trafficking, he could have faced life in prison. But the jury largely rejected the government’s portrayal of the famed producer, finding him guilty only of two prostitution-related counts under the Mann Act, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

In their motion filed Tuesday, Mr. Combs’s lawyers argued that the circumstances of his case justified his release. They described Mr. Combs’s case as “exceptional,” arguing, as they had at trial, that Mr. Combs and the women involved in the case had participated in a consensual “swingers” lifestyle that involved threesomes — and had not been coerced, as the government had charged.

“In the history of the statute,” the defense’s motion said, “the Mann Act has never been applied to facts similar to these to prosecute or incarcerate any other person.”

The defense also said the Mann Act, which was passed in 1910, had a history “rich with both racism and misogyny,” and that for the last 75 years it has primarily been used to prosecute cases involving “financial gain through the business of prostitution,” not against “johns” who make use of a prostitute’s services.

Mr. Combs’s legal team had made a similar argument to Judge Subramanian immediately after his conviction, and offered to post a $1 million bond and restrict Mr. Combs’s travel to the areas around New York City, Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla., where he lives.

The new bond proposal of $50 million would be secured by Mr. Combs’s island mansion outside Miami, the motion said.

After the jury’s verdict, Judge Subramanian made clear that he did not see an opening for Mr. Combs to be granted bail. The law requires that a defendant convicted under the Mann Act be detained ahead of sentencing, unless there are “exceptional” circumstances warranting release. Even then, the court must find that the defendant does not pose a risk of flight or danger.

The judge said Mr. Combs could not meet that standard because his defense had admitted to repeated domestic violence against one of the women at the center of the government’s case, Ms. Ventura.

“This type of violence, which happens behind closed doors in personal relationships, sparked by unpredictable bouts of anger, is impossible to police with conditions,” the judge said.

In arguing for his continued detention, the prosecution also highlighted a physical fight with another former girlfriend in 2024, when Mr. Combs knew he was under federal investigation; that woman, who testified under the pseudonym Jane, said his blows left her with bruising and welts. In their motion, Mr. Combs’s lawyers acknowledged that incident but said that Mr. Combs had been “provoked” by Jane.

“The only things exceptional about this defendant are his wealth, his violence and his brazenness,” Maurene Comey, a prosecutor, told the judge after Mr. Combs’s conviction. (This month, after the Combs verdict, Ms. Comey — who had also been a prosecutor in the cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — was fired from the U.S. attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York, though the reason was unclear.)

In an interview with The New York Times, Nicole Westmoreland, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, said the defense intends to appeal the Mann Act convictions. Mr. Combs’s legal team has long argued that the mogul had been unjustly prosecuted under that law.

Arguing against the charge before trial, the defense asserted that Mr. Combs was being selectively prosecuted based on his race. The lawyers highlighted what they described as the law’s “racist origins,” and its history of being used to target “Black male sexuality,” pointing to the prosecution of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, who was convicted under the law for transporting a white woman across state lines. (Johnson, who died in 1946, was pardoned by President Trump in 2018.)

In response, prosecutors highlighted a history of routinely charging defendants with violating the Mann Act alongside allegations of sex trafficking or other exploitative conduct.

Judge Subramanian rejected the defense’s argument, writing that “whatever the troubling history” of the law, “its present-day enforcement appears on its face race-neutral in this district, reaching across race and gender.”

Mr. Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest in September 2024. Ms. Westmoreland, in her interview, said that Mr. Combs remained in a dormitory-style unit called 4 North known to house high-profile inmates. She said that Mr. Combs has stayed in communication with his family and legal team and that his lawyers were committed to working for his release.

“We’re not going to be satisfied,” Ms. Westmoreland said, “until he’s home.”