Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have been building a case against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs for months. Combs was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution on Tuesday. He entered a not-guilty plea.
we’ve been anticipating it for months s and it finally happened , charges filed against sean diddy combs alleging coercion violence, all wraapped up in a RICO charge.
while a few are still showing their support, the evidence is piling up against one of the top selling rap artists of all time.
we are takinga closer look at the best evidence the prosecution has that could sens sean combs to prison for the rest of his life.
54 year old sean diddy combs was let out of a federal courtroom in new york on thuesday by marshals uncuffed but headed straight for jail.
spent the night in the MDC the metropolitan detention center out in Brooklyn,it’s a notorious jail that has had some pretty bad history of violence ,suicides….
sex offender Jeffrey epstein being held there prior to his trial when he was found dead in his cell in 2019.
actually interestingly enough mr williams the US attorney for the southern district of New York
was actually asked if he was worried comb’s safety given the jeffrey epstein’s situation essentially said “look , we have to strive to keep everyone protected this is just the way the criminal justice system works.”
interesting question nonetheless.
by the way a form filed with the court on tuesday afternoon list sean combs as the defendant and then under bail disposition -dentention risk of flight / danger it has an x mark next to it .
also checked is the box next to defendant arrain pleads not guilty.
Right now we want to talk about something else , so the documents what they do is they give us a better idea of what homeland security agents found inside of comb’s homes in Los angeles and Miami when they were raided back in march
as well as other evidence that they collected during the course of this investigtion.
the southern district of new york is well known for being one of the top courts in the country according to statistics from the United states .
the sentencing commission in fiscal year 2023 the SDNY had more than 1,000 cases and of those cases 94% of the defendants ended up taking a plea while only 6% chose to take their case to trial .
and the court’s conviction rate is reported to be 95 % so in other words …
if the southern district of new york prosecutors files charges against you , it’s safe to assume they done their homework and think that they have a really solid case .
so the US attorney here was asked during a news conference why the charges against combs were brought to new york instead of Florida or california.
” i think that we um have an outstanding track record of bringing some of the most impactful sprawling complex difficult um sex trafficking uh human trafficking,labor trafficking ,you name it.. um the southern district of new york can do it and so we’re very proud of that and so the scope and complexity of this investigation isn’t something that we ran from it’s something that we embrace and we will continue to do that .”
It seemed they’ve interviewed a number of witnesses at least 50 victims and witnesses that have already been sort of interviewed and hhave agreed to cooperate in this. and they are even looking for more.
he came to new york, was at the park high,his attorneys knew he was going to be hit with charges in fact his attorney said to the media beforethe indictment was unsealed we anticipate racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
but yet despite that they took issue with the way that he was arrested and he was apprehended and taken into custody.
the bottom line is he’s accused of very serious crime, there was harm allegedly harm done to people and if they want to go out and arrest him and do it in that manner that’s their prerogative and franly that’s their rights.
so for them to say well, he was going to turn himself he was going to do this ,we don’t know what he he’s going to do because he he right after or near the time of when the first search warrant was done at his place in LA , apparently he got on a plane and flew down to florida.
so he’s already shown a propensity to move when there’s pressure, so the new york authorities thought well we got to make sure we get this right , we don’t want to take any chances of a flight from this guy if they try to track him down in a foreign country it would be an absolute nightmare.
why didn’t he just leave the country right he knew the charges were coming, well, the authorities could have arrested him immediately on the spot if they knew but would that mean that they weretracking him beforehand ? they knew when he was boarding a flight?
and he’s beien moving around ,he hasn’t just stayed in one place during the course of this investigation what would prevented him from getting on the plane and having a flight plan for let’s say…california ,let’s say colorado.
let’s say new york and just saying keep going and go to some contry that doesn’t have extradition.
what prevented him from doing that and what would be the way authorities could track him and stop him from doing that ?
well , to do that it takes alot of moving parts because he’s going to have to get pilots that are going to participate in that conspiracy to flee,the pilots also have to filed a flight plan they also have to pick a country to go that’s going to be friendly to his issues , itäs not going to extradite him and he also when that plan is filed then he has to go through a process with customs and border protections.
to be in terms of being able to go to the next country. sure he had considered that and sure he took the advice of his lawers and decided not to do that because if he had fled then this would have amplified and then the full force of the United states government would come down on tracking him down and bringing him back .
Based upon the number of peole who hae come forward in terms of the indictment, they had people that were likely reporting on him , reporting on his actions and his movements.
as well as th fact that they put so many resources to this, it would be reasonable for them to be watching his phones,watching his computer activity and frankly having more people around him who are informing on him and his behavior.
to be clear it’s not entirely evident what the prosecution has what people said to them, what the physical evidence is, what the digital evidence is but let’s go through it .
so the prosecution says that many of the accusations against combs can be corroborated by witnesses and this is mentioned several times in the prosecution’s letter to judge Robin Tarnavski where they were arguing against bail
for example page two ot that letter it says quote: at least a dozen witnesses will confirm that they personally observe the defendant’s violence towards women and or the injuriy sustained by women at the defendat’s hand.
then on page 11 it says dozens of victim and witnesses have provided detailed credible and corroborated informaton against the defendant.
Page 13 quote as to witnesses to date the government has conducted interviews with over 50 victims and witnesses many of whom saw or experienced the defendat abuse, the government only expects that number to continue to grow giving the investigation, which is now public is ongoing.
so how does law enforcement even go about this finding this people,conducting this interview ?
number one ,he cooperated his behavior himself, with that video that came out of him assaulting his girlfriend in the hotel
secondly the basic question you asked at the beginning ,middle or the endof the interview is there any body else ? oh yeah , this girlfriend that also suffered this type of behavior from him and then you go to that person oh yeah i got this person i get this .
so it ends up being a string or a network of people because frankly these women are most likely associates with each other or know each other and they may even be close friends and they’ve been in the circle that was basicalyy targeted by sean on PD combs as well as the people around him that were assisting him in this behavior.
but how do authorities corroborate what they ‘re being told , is it they hear a consistent pattern over speaking to multiple people if five people say the same thing -okay , unless they coordinated this, it looks like it might be true or it looks like there might be probably cause here.
or is it also lookng at their phones,looking at other evidence that was collected during the course of the raids. -and saying that matches up to their story, the fact that the idea that anybody can sue anybody , your supposed to file frivolous lawsuits.
but it seems on the outset that you have prosecutors twho are believing the accounts of these accussers,
the very least it seems cassandra ventura.
and filing criminal charges based on those accounts , so it seems that authorities are believing what’s being told and they have the corroboration,it’s not just the accounts of theses people but other evidence to back it up-now again , their stories mighth be similar.
But the question is how do authorities corroborate what they’re being told.
well, the first thing pattern is cooperation , so you have 50 people saying the behavior was the same pattern , he took the same actions and he’s been accused . we don’t know until he seen his day in court what really happened.
but that’ts the first level of cooperation ,the second things is apparently tey seized videos from his house in california and that’s going to be extreme cooperation right there because you know it’s going to play out right in front of him.
and then the third piece of this is the digitial evidence is the text messages is the communications that he had with these women based upon and every one of them is likely save those text messages on their phones and were able to give screenshots to the authorities.
so it appearts that the evidence is overwhelming however we’re only going to know that
if it truly is overwhelming once he has his day in court .
it is interesting how many people werea apperently interviewed and we ‘re not entirely sure if all the people who filed law suits against sean combs are the main accusers,
but it seems to me at least from cassandra ventura’s point of view , it seems the prosecutors have built their case based on those allegations.
it’sone thing for somebbody to sue somebody else, righ? we have a lower standard they shouldn’t file for lawsuits but you have to kown filing acivil lawsuit is very very different than criminal charges for prosecutors to believe these accounts
and seemingly have it , people who are corroborating one another there’s a pattern there but also maybe corroborated by the pyhiscal the digital evidence, that is very significant that you have civil law suits that may have triggered a criminal prosecution .
The civil colpaints which we saw-there were many.defently got the ball rolling .
but it was the video of cassie that violent incident that we saw in that hotel loby ,what put the nail in the coffin, that was actually cited to in the indictment as something they plan to use as evidence and actually believed led to the enhancements, that we saw on what the’re seeking as far as prison time.
end essentially he could be looking at life in prison ,if he’s convicted across the board.
they’re saying there’s a lot there ,they’re saying he operated a criminal organization that engaged in force labor, kidnappning ,violence, they’re saying it was acommon purpose to protect diddy to satisfy his sexual desires to make money,
there’s a lot thrown out there m is this a tough case to ultimately prosecute? and you have the sex trafficking charge , you have the transportation for purpose of prostitution charge .
is this a though case to prosecute ? is it a clear case to prosecute?
bringing this indictment in terms of having that intitial hearing andsort of having him arrested and bringing these charges .
diddy has very competent legal counsel , They have seen this probably coming for some time while this case feels like our kelly all over again.
where you obviously have sort of video of underage person that was involved and introducedthis has sort of sapling of that ,but assume that th defense is going to say ” he did not do this”
that this wasn’t an organizedcrime syndicate,that the prosecutors are accusing him of.
this is a group of friends, having a sex party-yah it’s not what you want to necessery hear about no one really possibly likes it
but it is what it is .
people like diddy ,poeple wanted to be around him and they allowed themself to be sort of manupulated
sometimes into perhaps doing things that sound unsavory when heard in the news. thatäs the crux of the defense’s sort of argument will be.
and the question will be “what do you believe?”
continued on with this when agents ended up searching combs back in march they left with a lot of evidence
there were weapons, both seemingly legal and illegal.
US attorne damian williams showed photographs of some of them during that news conference.
here some items they recovered :
a drum magazin,large capacity and contains 59 rounds.
3 AR -15, the number has thorougly defaced ,
a picture of more ammunition.
and parts of two AR-15s.
so why would someone deface weapons like this?
well to hide the ownership of weapon or the origin of the weapon, so depending on where he got it he may be defacing it or whoever defaced it so if that weapon head been used in a crime prior to him possessing it.
so that’s one of the number reasons as well as be able to keep transferring that weapon amongst other people because there’s no way of tracing that weapon.
but he was in charged specifically, which is a federal crime ,possession ofa weapon that hs an obliterated serial number
the suspect in the second attempted assassination of former donald trump has been hit with that charge.
but combs what not hit with that.
but it’s coming, they are gonna supersede with this indictment with more charges ,they start with this one kind of see how it fleshes out and then they’ll determine what they need to actually add on depending on how the evidence start playing out amongs the people that are going to start forward.
because they’re probably looking not only to cooperate this human trafficking but they also want to cooperate all this possession of al these firearms.
more about strong evidence- apperently investigtors collected a lot of electronic data which can be crucial in a case like this , we talked about it, but the prosecution writes in their bail letter:
the electronic evidence is similarly wast, the government has sought and obtained numerous search warrants for such evidence in addition to obtaining evidence voluntarily from certain victim and witnesses setting aside devices seized in connection with the government arrest .
the government has obtained over 90 cell phones , laptops ,cloud storage accounts as well over 30 other electronic and storage devices , such as hard drive ,thumb drives, cameras and surveillance system.
this electronic data comes from the defendant himself as well as co -conspirators vitims and witnesses and chroniclees much of the defendant’s criminal act activity. as it occurs.
and the government also sent out susbpoenas to all sorts of companies and associates connected to combs says quote
finally the evidence includes recors obrained pursuant to over 300 grand juyry subpoenas and other volutary productions these material come from over 1oo entities and individuals including communications provides , tech companies , social media companies, banks and other financial institutions , airlines, hotel, car services, and other travel related companies, escort services, and even the defendants company and wealth management firm
That is a lot , what can we expect?
The homeland security investigations are leading this investigation and frankly they’re are good at whatthey do, sure they have a team or even a task force looking at this because the criminal- the alleged criminal conspiracy is so wast and there’s so many victims
once they get through this evidence-the evidence appears to be overwhelming because your’re going to see all the text message all of his statements that are going to incriminate himself with all of this people.
and frankly this has been going on for so long , there was a comfort level that he had or his circle had where they thought they weren’t going to get caught
they could just continue to do this and then frankly that the hammer fell, so there’s so much here that if there was going to be a trial it would likely be something that would take months in terms of presenting all of this evidence.
they say the investigation is ongoing , is it possible that investigators are still combing through this material,-it’s been a while ,it”s been since march since they , did those raids but remember they interviewed people, they spoke to these alleged victims,
that could have been going on before or after the raid , do they combing through this evidence when they say the investigation is ongoing. it means more people to come forward
how does i twork?
they are going t continue to comb through that evidence then once they comb through that evidence that might lead to more search warrants or more subpoenas or more court orders to get cloudbased information as well the fact that more people are going to be coming forward and then theyäre going to lead them to getting more electronic evidence.
so this thing is going to go on until there’s a trial or there’s a plea agreement.
I’ll just finish up with this last part that the prosecutors they sent to the judge before bail hearing this attachment exhibit A -which was the surveillance video of combs allegedely attacking his then girlfriend cassandra ventura in los angeles hotel
and ventura was attempting- was allegedly attempting to leave the hotel after a allegedly freak off sessionwhere she was apparently drugged and force to have sex with male prostitutes and combs come running down the hallway in a towel, throws her to the ground thatäs the alegation from the video.
now the government says this very disturbing footage is proofs of comb’s tember is violent nature , it shows how far he will go when he doesn’t gets what he wants,
but that’s a key piece of evidence,but i also think it’s important, if it was in comb’s possession if it was found during the course of this investigation- that is significant because it would.. i think bolster the claim that he tried to get that footage and he tried to silence this .
it was somehow leaked from the hotel and it was independent of him so actually that actually leads to more credibility forthe evidence ,because it came from an independent source that had nothing to do with tihs and then further more he came out afterwords and apologized for his behavior andsaid he was in a bad place so that apology basically wasan confession that it was indead him
obviously we know it was him but then he basically owned his behavior, so with that he basically authenticated the video and cooperated the video with his own statement right afterwards when it was released to the media.
so that video yeas that is very damning and i believe they attacked it because it was already inthe public domain but it appears that they have more of this type of video -this behavior onvideo based upon all the stuffthat they seiz from his houses in california , / miami.
THE RAIDS
