Diddy seeks to dismiss federal charge claiming racial bias in prosecution

Yahoo

19-02-2025

Sean 'Diddy' Combs's legal team is seeking to dismiss one of the charges against the disgraced music mogul, claiming he's being unfairly prosecuted because of his race.
Diddy, who's currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, was charged in September 2024 with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
He has pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence.
On Tuesday, attorneys for the once-powerful Hollywood star filed a motion to dismiss the transportation charge, arguing their client 'has been singled out because he is a powerful Black man and [is] being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished.'
'This case is unprecedented in many ways, but perhaps most notably, and most disturbingly, no white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution,' attorneys wrote in the court filing, reviewed by the Daily News.
According to Diddy's legal team, count three in the superseding indictment against the 55-year-old Harlem native — transportation to engage in prostitution — should be dropped because 'there has never been a similar' prosecution under the Mann Act, a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of 'any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.'
The legislation, which was previously called the White-Slave Traffic Act, has 'racist origins' and is being used against a successful Black man, they claim.
Prosecutors have alleged that Diddy hired male sex workers to attend his infamous 'freak-off' parties. But according to the rapper's legal team, the charge of transporting escorts across state lines is based on a law that has a 'long and troubled history' and was 'used to target Black men and supposedly protect white women from them,' the filing reads. 'No other person, and certainly no white person, has ever previously been prosecuted under the White-Slave Traffic Act for hiring male escorts from another state.'
The government has 'concocted a criminal case' largely based on claims that Combs and his longtime girlfriends occasionally invited a male escort into their relationship, his attorneys say. According to the filing, the prosecution's handling of the case 'demonstrates bias and animus [and] it has gone out of its way to humiliate Mr. Combs and to prejudice the jury pool with pretrial publicity that plays on racist tropes.'
The federal trial against Combs is scheduled to begin May 5.