Diddy Prosecutors Spend This Week Listing His Bad Deeds

Federal prosecutors say they are spending this week making a list of all the ways Sean “Diddy” Combs is a criminal — including some offenses he has been acquitted of — to use against him at his October 3 sentencing.

Prosecutors are drafting a confidential, so-called “summary of offense conduct” they say they’ll submit to federal probation officials by Friday, according to a pre-sentencing schedule approved by the judge on Tuesday.

It’s promising to be a long list, full of drug use and domestic violence that Combs has been acquitted of as elements of the unsuccessful sex trafficking and racketeering charges, but which he has also admitted to repeatedly since the start of the trial.

More than a dozen prosecution witnesses described violence and drug use during the two-month trial.

“Sean Combs has a temper, and when he drank, or when he did the wrong drugs, he would get violent — my client is not proud of that,” defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors in May 12 opening statements.

But “domestic violence is not sex trafficking,” Geragos told the jury repeatedly.

The defense “mea culpa” appears to have worked. Jurors apparently did make the distinction, convicting him only on two transporting for prostitution counts.

Combs was acquitted of top counts that alleged he essentially ran his businesses as a mob boss, and that he used drugs and violence to coerce two girlfriends into years of “freak offs,” sexual performances with male escorts.

But these defense drug and violence admissions, strategic during trial, may come back to haunt Combs at sentencing, according to defense attorneys and former prosecutors.

These experts told Business Insider that judges can consider prior bad acts — even acts that resulted in acquittal — in sentencing, especially when the defendant has admitted to them.

Combs faces anywhere from zero jail time up to 20 years in prison on the two prostitution charges. Prosecutors said last week that they may seek somewhere in the four-to-five-year range, but warned that those numbers will very likely be revised upward.

“They’re going to go full blast,” defense attorney and former prosecutor Michael Bachner predicted of prosecutors on Tuesday.

“They can say the defendant is somebody who was admittedly a violent individual,” he said.

“And they can also bring up his prior arrest record,” said Bachner, who was part of the defense team that won gun possession and bribery acquittals for Combs and a former bodyguard in a 2001 trial in state court in Manhattan. Probation officials will use the defense list in drafting a pre-sentencing report that will recommend an amount of jail time, the former prosecutor said.

Prosecutors will have to ask the judge to consider acquitted conduct if they hope to win anywhere near a 20-year, maximum sentence, former federal prosecutor Nadia Shihata, who prosecuted the R. Kelly sex trafficking case, told BI after the verdict.

The judge can decide if there was a preponderance of evidence proving those acquitted crimes, she told BI.

“If so, 20 years is more likely,” she said, adding that she believes the ultimate sentence will be far less.

Combs has remained behind bars since his arrest in mid-September.

After Wednesday’s verdict, US District Judge Arun Subramanian denied Combs’ fourth request for bail, a decision that left the rap mogul in a federal jail in Brooklyn.

Combs will remain jailed at least until October 3, the current date for his sentencing.

The jury found that Combs knowingly arranged for R&B singer Cassie Ventura and a later girlfriend, who testified pseudonymously as “Jane,” to crisscross the country for drug-fueled hotel sex sessions.

Agnifilo had asked after the verdict that Combs be released on $1 million bail and allowed to live at his homes in Miami and Las Vegas while awaiting sentencing. He argued the conviction on the more minor charges didn’t warrant being held without bail.

But the judge agreed with lead prosecutor Maurene Comey, who argued that Combs faces significant jail time and remains a threat, as a trio of federal judges has found in denying bail in the weeks after his arrest.

Combs continued to break the law last year after his homes were searched when he knew he was under investigation, the judge said.

Combs has admitted, through his lawyers, to domestic violence and drug use, the judge said.

“You, full-throatedly in your closing argument, told the jury that there was violence here,” the judge told lead attorney Marc Agnifilo in denying bail on Wednesday.

“And domestic violence is violence.”