Sean “Diddy” Combs will remain in jail ahead of his sentencing hearing, as his recent motion for bail has been denied by the judge who presided over his trial.
“Combs fails to satisfy his burden to demonstrate an entitlement to release,” Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in a letter on Monday. The order comes a week after Combs’ defense team filed a 62-page letter to the court, advocating for his release ahead of his Oct. 3 sentencing date.
On July 2, Combs was acquitted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, but he was found guilty of two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Prosecutors are recommending that he serve four to five years in prison — including the nearly 11 months he has already spent behind bars since his September 2024 arrest.
In their motion, Combs’ lawyers argued that the Mann Act, the statute under which he was convicted, has historically been applied to pimps or sexual crimes involving minors. In their view, Combs was simply consenting male escorts to make “amateur porn,” not running a prostitution business. “Sean Combs has basically been convicted for using the services of a sex worker, and that’s just not really prosecuted anymore,” Combs’ lead counsel, Marc Agnifilo, told Variety in an interview on Friday.
Evidence from his criminal trial showed that, over two decades, Combs paid male entertainers to engage in “freak-offs,” days-long, drug-fueled hotel parties at which he would watch and videotape as escorts had sex with his girlfriends. Accusers, including Combs’ ex Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, alleged these encounters were not always consensual, and were sometimes coerced through means of violence, threats of blackmail or drugs.
Throughout the trial, Combs’ lawyers conceded that their client had a pattern of violence. In one incident, which was caught on surveillance cameras and shown repeatedly to the jury, Combs kicked and dragged Ventura across a hotel elevator lobby after she exited a room in which a “freak-off” was taking place. Prosecutors argued that this was an example of sex trafficking; defense attorneys said Combs’ violent outbursts were unrelated to sex or “freak-offs.”
In his initial denial of bail, Judge Subramanian said this type of domestic violence, which “happens behind closed doors” and is alleged to have occurred as recently as June 2024, “is impossible to police with conditions.” Agnifilo told Variety that Combs had entered a domestic violence program prior to his arrest, and “we hope he gets back out [of jail] and starts to finish the hard work he started.”
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The judge reaffirmed his initial justification in his letter on Monday, writing, “As for risk of flight or danger, Combs fails to meet his burden by clear and convincing evidence for the reasons set forth on the record at the July 2, 2025, hearing. Increasing the amount of the bond or devising additional conditions doesn’t change the calculus given the circumstances and heavy burden of proof that Combs bears. … On this basis alone, Combs’s application is denied.”
The judge also found that, in their argument regarding the Mann Act, the defense did not provide an adequate “exceptional reason” warranting Combs’ immediate release.
“Combs’s Mann Act arguments might have traction in a case that didn’t involve evidence of violence, coercion, or subjugation in connection with the acts of prostitution at issue, but the record here contains evidence of all three,” Subramanian wrote. “While Combs may contend at sentencing that this evidence should be discounted and that what happened was nothing more than a case of willing ‘swingers’ utilizing the voluntary services of escorts for their mutual pleasure, the Government takes the opposite view: that Cassie Ventura and Jane were beaten, coerced, threatened, lied to, and victimized by Combs as part of their participation in these events. That makes this case unlike any of the cases Combs points to and places it outside the narrow exception to detention that Congress otherwise deemed mandatory.”
From Variety US