UPDATE (Nov. 27, 2024, 5:53 p.m. ET): Sean “Diddy” Combs’ latest attempt to secure bail was denied Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.
Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs name-checked Donald Trump in his latest attempt to secure bail amid his ongoing sex trafficking case. And federal prosecutors aren’t feeling it.
On Monday, Combs’ attorneys filed a letter affirming their belief that his request for bail should be granted. This was required by Judge Arun Subramanian after prosecutors claimed that Combs should be denied bail because he was allegedly trying to to manipulate witnesses from jail and influence potential jurors.
The letter says Combs is “not required to sit idly by” amid a “nonstop drumbeat of negative publicity [that] has destroyed his reputation and will make it virtually impossible for him to receive a fair trial.”
The letter continues:
He has a right to a fair trial and a constitutional right to speak out on his own behalf. The government’s arguments that asking his children to post birthday wishes on Instagram and that he is not entitled to publicly express his opinion that this prosecution is racially motivated are, quite simply, an unconstitutional effort to silence him.
So Combs is seeking the Trump treatment and asking the judge to apply the broad First Amendment protections that the president-elect was afforded in his federal election interference case in Washington.
“In United States v. Trump, the D.C. Circuit ‘assume[d] without deciding that the most demanding scrutiny applies to’ pre-trial speech restrictions on criminal defendants, ‘and that only a significant and imminent threat to the administration of criminal justice will support restricting [a defendant’s] speech,’” Combs’ lawyers wrote.
Trump, of course, went nuts on social media under his partial gag order in D.C.
The lawyers also contend that the judge should apply the Jan. 6 case’s “heightened standard when considering Mr. Combs’ speech here.” Trump, of course, went nuts on social media under his partial gag order in D.C.
But prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are raising a seemingly obvious difference between Combs and Trump.
In Trump’s case, the court “faced the unique task of balancing the right of a current candidate for the presidency to speak publicly about his charges against the public’s right in a fair trial,” the prosecutors wrote in response Monday.
The prosecutors argued that “[t]hose same First Amendment interests are not at stake here,” adding:
Further, the defendant’s comments go well beyond attempts to claim that he is innocent of the charges against him and make clear that he intends to use the press to deliberately manipulate “outside influences to be biased in his favor.”
The judge is expected to rule on Combs’ latest bail attempt — his third, after two failed tries — sometime this week. As someone who has written about the disturbing similarities between Combs and Trump, it comes as no surprise that the former is now adopting the latter’s legal strategy.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.