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While most of the nation enjoyed a family-oriented turkey dinner this Thanksgiving, former music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs sat alone in his cramped jail cell after being denied bail once more. Before you play the world’s smallest violin for him, new court documents show that he wasn’t just violent with his love affairs; his employees allegedly got a healthy dose of his physical vitriol as well.
Diddy appeared in court on Nov. 22 with his lawyers to ask for bail a third time. He’s currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), and has been since Sept. 16. He’s charged with racketeering involving threats and coercion, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian sided with prosecutors and ruled that there were no conditions that would reasonably assure the safety of the community if Diddy was released, despite Diddy’s lawyers offering a $50 million bail package including 24/7 monitoring by a private security company in a three-bedroom Upper East Side apartment.
While Diddy’s violence towards women has been well documented and was a major reason for the bail denial, it turns out Diddy’s employees were also subject to his tyrant-like wrath. According to prosecutors, Diddy would threaten to kill his employees and throw objects at them. They would be “struck, punched, and shoved” by Diddy, and they claimed seeing him treat other coworkers with similar malicious intent.
Prosecutors wrote a 13-page brief about how there was simply no way to release Diddy in a way that would make it safe for the community. That security firm that would provide the protection, by the way, is called Sage Intelligence Group. It’s owned by none other than Herman Weisberg, a private detective who worked for Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers.
Seems like an easy deal, right? No. Well, it turns out that Weisberg is “already working as a private investigator” for Diddy and has been reaching out to witnesses ahead of the trial, something not revealed by his defense attorneys.
Prosecutors also argued that Diddy broke a gag order on Nov. 5 when his family released a social media campaign on his birthday. They said he orchestrated the whole thing and told one of his kids that he wanted to “reach for this jury. I just need one,” in a jail conversation.
As for Diddy’s lawyers, they invoked none other than President-Elect Donald Trump and the gag order imposed on him during his trial. Diddy, they argued, should be held to a “heightened standard” because he has “a greater constitutional claim than other trial participants … to criticize and speak out against the prosecution and the criminal trial process that seek to take away his liberty.”
Not sure that asking for special privileges while facing sex trafficking charges and allegedly beating up your employees is the best way to go but hey, they had to try. “Mr. Combs is not required to sit idly by and acquiesce to all of this,” attorney Alexandra Shapiro wrote to the court. “He has a right to a fair trial and a constitutional right to speak out on his own behalf.”
Shockingly, that defense didn’t work. One thing’s for sure though, Diddy is going to have trouble finding people to beat up, employees or otherwise, while he sits in his jail cell and awaits his May trial.