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Sean “Diddy” Combs denied bail again ahead of federal sex trafficking trial
A judge has denied rapper and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs’ request to be released on bail ahead of his trial for federal sex trafficking charges.
Combs’ lawyers had asked he be released on $50 million bond, saying he would stay in a three-bedroom apartment on New York’s Upper East Side and pay the cost to have private security monitor him around the clock.
District Judge Arun Subramanian denied the request, ruling, “The Court finds that the government has shown by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”
Subramanian concluded that “there is compelling evidence of Combs’s propensity for violence” and that if released while awaiting trial, “there is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”
Combs was arrested in September and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky at the time ordered Combs be held without bail, but the rapper’s legal team has filed several requests to have him released since then. They have all been denied.
Combs is being held at a detention center across the East River from Manhattan in Brooklyn, New York, according to online records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Combs is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women at events Combs referred to as “Freak Offs.”
“The ‘Freak Offs’ sometimes lasted days at a time, involved multiple commercial sex workers and often involved a variety of narcotics, such as ketamine, ecstasy and GHB, which Combs distributed to the victims to keep them obedient and compliant,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, of the Southern District of New York, told reporters last month.
Combs has denied any wrongdoing. One of his attoneys, Marc Agnifilo, said last month, “We’re going to fight this case with everything we have, as is he, and eventually, he’s going to be shown to be innocent.”
His trial is scheduled for May 2025.
contributed to this report.
A stowaway somehow made it onto a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday from New York City to Paris without a boarding pass, officials confirmed.
The woman boarded Delta Flight No. 264 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, CBS News learned. She was discovered while the plane was in midair and was taken into custody in Paris.
In a social media video posted by a passenger, the captain can be heard over the plane’s intercom — after the plane landed in Paris — telling flyers that “we’re just waiting for the police to come on board, they may be here now, and they’ve directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that’s on the plane.”
The circumstances of how she was found were unclear, and her name was not immediately released.
A Transportation Security Administration source told CBS News that the woman went through an advanced imaging technology body scanner at a checkpoint in JFK Airport after somehow bypassing the document and ID check portion of the TSA process.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a TSA spokesperson said that it could “confirm that an individual without a boarding pass completed the airport security screening without any prohibited items. The individual bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations and was able to board the aircraft.”
In order to be present at an airline departure gate for boarding, an individual must have cleared a TSA security checkpoint.
After getting through TSA security, it’s unclear how exactly the woman boarded the Boeing 767-400ER without showing a boarding pass or passport to Delta staff.
“Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security,” Delta said in a statement. “That’s why Delta is conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”
French law enforcement and the TSA are separately investigating. The woman could be subject to a civil penalty or fine for bypassing the document check process.
There is new technology known as e-gates that are being rolled out at airports which involves using biometrics to check travel documents as part of the international departure boarding process. Such technology would have caught the stowaway.
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