Sean “Diddy” Combs vowed Wednesday to not let women visit him at his Florida mansion as his defense team pleaded with a judge to release him on home detention pending trial on sex trafficking and extortion charges.
The 54-year-old rapper is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court for the second consecutive day at 3:30 p.m. for a hearing seeking his release from the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center on $50 million bail.
His lawyers argue that the electronic monitoring devices and many other conditions should assure the judge and prosecutors that Combs won't flee or harm others while awaiting trial.
The hip-hop mogul was being held without bail on Tuesday after pleading not guilty to three charges.
During the hearing, prosecutors successfully persuaded the magistrate judge that no release condition would protect the community from Combs and would prevent him from fleeing or attempting to tamper with witnesses.
But Combs' lawyers filed a letter Wednesday morning adding further restrictions to the bail proposal that they hope will convince the judge to release him, including a promise to bar him from visits with any women other than his family or the mother of his children.
The Bad Boy Records founder also said he is currently in the process of selling his private jet, which will be stored in Los Angeles or another location in California in the meantime – a fact he claimed shows he has no intention of escaping the law.
Combs vowed to remain under home detention under GPS monitoring in his $50 million mansion in Miami, Florida, and to restrict his travel to parts of South Florida, New Jersey and New York.
He also offered to put his Florida mansion up as collateral for the bond, and said seven family members and himself would co-sign the bond.
Combs already handed over his own passport and the passports of five other family members to his lawyers in April, and his lawyers say they plan to turn them all over to the court.
Other guarantees Combs has offered include including his mother's Miami home in his bail, limiting visitors to family, property managers and friends (who are not considered co-conspirators in the case), and having a security company keep a record of visitors and submit it to the court each night.
He has also agreed to weekly drug testing and promised to refrain from contact with witnesses to the incident.
“Sean Combs has never in his life run, shunned, evaded or fled from a challenge,” his lawyers said, arguing that he has no plans to flee before trial. “He has no plans to run now. Just as he has overcome every obstacle before, he will face this case head on, work hard to defend himself, and prevail.”
Combs' defense team also criticized prosecutors for pretending to arrest him even though he had been in New York since September 5 and intended to turn himself in.
“We asked them for a deadline to surrender but they did not respond to us,” the letter states. “The government only withheld this information in order to arrest Mr. Combs and not allow him to surrender. He flew to New York to surrender.”
In a shocking indictment unsealed Tuesday, prosecutors allege Combs “committed repeated acts of physical and sexual violence against multiple victims over a period of decades.”
Prosecutors allege Combs organized elaborate, drug-laced “freak-off” sex sessions, sometimes lasting for days, in which he coerced women into having sex with male prostitutes while masturbating and secretly filming the sessions.
Prosecutors allege that Combs used wealth, power, violence and the threat of violence to lure women into abusive situations, then used the Freak-Offs videos as collateral to coerce them into further sexual acts.
During Tuesday's hearing, Combs' attorney, Mark Anifilo, argued that only consenting adults participated in the sexual acts.
Also in Wednesday's letter, Combs' lawyers said the indictment actually identifies only one victim, Combs' longtime ex-girlfriend, Kathy Ventura, as “Victim 1.” A shocking video released earlier this year showed Combs beating Ventura.
His lawyers argued that the pair had been in a 10-year relationship and had been “very much in love for a long time.”
And when the pair split over mutual infidelity and jealousy, Ventura tried to blackmail Combs with embarrassing sexual assault allegations, the lawyers argued in a letter Wednesday.
“There was no sex trafficking and no sexual crimes of any kind, and we intend to prove that conclusively at trial,” the letter said.
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment.
