Prosecutors have accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of continuing efforts to obstruct the federal racketeering and trafficking case against him from a Brooklyn jail.
They alleged in court papers that the disgraced hip-hop mogul had been trying to evade government monitoring by seeking to arrange three-way phone calls and to buy the use of other inmates’ phone privileges.
The government’s account came a week before another hearing to decide whether Combs would be granted release on bail. Since September, he has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, inside a special housing unit where high-profile inmates are often assigned.
In the court filing, the government accused the rapper of “relentless efforts” to contact potential witnesses, including by attempting to use three-way calls to contact associates whom prosecutors consider part of his “criminal enterprise.”
Prosecutors also accused Combs of making unauthorized calls by using the telephone accounts of at least eight other inmates, instructing others to pay them — sometimes through their commissary accounts — to secure their cooperation.
“The defendant has demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding — employees, family members, and M.D.C. inmates alike,” prosecutors wrote.
Details of the recipients and the substance of the phone calls were redacted in the court documents.
The calls generated using other inmates’ privileges were not identified as being directed at witnesses, but prosecutors said they were evidence of the hip-hop mogul’s disregard for the jail’s regulations and were part of what they described as obstruction efforts.
Combs has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied the criminal charges, arguing that the drug-fueled sexual encounters called “freak offs” at the heart of his case were all consensual.
The rapper's lawyers have said that if granted bail he would be put under extremely restricted conditions with no access to a phone or internet, and would abide by limitations on whom he contacts.
The proposed bail package includes a $50 million bond and a team of private security personnel to monitor Combs at all hours to assure the court that he would not engage in obstruction efforts.
The judge who denied the rapper bail in September, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others, has since recused himself because of a professional and social relationship with a new lawyer hired by the ’ team.
Combs renewed his efforts to secure release with the new judge on the case, arguing that the government’s allegations of witness tampering were not supported by evidence.
“The evidence makes clear that the government’s case is thin,” the rapper's lawyers wrote in a filing this month, later noting that if witnesses were contacted to support his defense, “that alone does not amount to obstruction or evidence any risk of obstruction.”
Prosecutors have focused on a witness named Kalenna Harper, a performer who was in the group Diddy — Dirty Money with Dawn Richard, who filed a lawsuit shortly before Combs’ arrest that accused him of groping and threatening her.
The government has highlighted Combs’ repeated contact with Harper after the lawsuit was filed, arguing that she was pressured to post a statement on her Instagram account countering some of Richard’s claims in the suit.
The rapper's lawyers claimed that Harper volunteered that statement herself. Referring to Harper as “Witness 2” in court papers, prosecutors said they recovered new evidence about those communications in a recent sweep of the Metropolitan Detention Center, which was part of continuing efforts to address persistent complaints of inhumane conditions at the jail.
Prosecutors said that investigators from the Federal Bureau of Prisons found notes in Combs’ cell related to Harper.
The contents of the notes were redacted, but prosecutors wrote that the “strong inference” was that the rapper paid Harper after she posted her statement to Instagram.
Combs’ lawyers have already taken issue with the jail sweep, writing in court papers that he was removed from his unit as officers “ruffled through” his notes and seized his pens, leaving him unable to take notes on the huge tranches of discovery that are being gradually transferred over to the defense by the government.
At M.D.C., Combs has been living in the same unit as Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul convicted of fraud, sleeping in a dormitory-style room with a group of other defendants and getting access to his family through monitored phone calls and an email system that requires payment.
The singer’s lawyers took issue this month with their inability to get their client a secured laptop to prepare for his trial, which is scheduled to start in May.
Now, Combs’ access to the outside world is likely to be further contested, as the government argues that the defendant is using his resources and communications with his family to try to both contact potential witnesses and pursue a “public relations” strategy to influence public perceptions of his case. One example that the government cited was Combs’ involvement in planning a video posted to social media that showed his children wishing him a happy birthday.
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