A month after Sean “Diddy” Combs was denied bail again, his attorneys filed a new motion Nov. 8 to release him from jail ahead of his May 5 trial.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is pushing back with his new filing.
One month after the rapper was denied bail for the second time, his attorneys filed a motion Nov. 8 requesting bail once again, arguing that “changed circumstances” and new evidence should allow him to be released from jail ahead of his May 5 trial, according to documents obtained by E! News.
The motion for bail claims that new evidence makes it “clear that the government’s case is thin.”
The defense alleged that new evidence refutes the prosecution’s claim that the March 2016 video of Combs physically assaulting a woman in a hotel occurred during a “coerced ‘Freak Off’” or elaborate sex performance, as cited in the initial indictment.
Instead, the motion claims that the video was “a minutes-long glimpse into a complex but decade-long consensual relationship between Mr. Combs and Victim-1.”
Combs—who was arrested in September on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and using transportation to engage in prostitution—pleaded not guilty to the charges in his case.
His attorneys also argued that the new evidence refutes the prosecution’s notion there was a “potential second alleged victim,” per their motion.
Combs has remained in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since his arrest in September.
E! News has reached out to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for comment and has not yet heard back. Combs’ attorneys have declined to comment.
During the September 17 hearing after Combs’ arrest, U.S. Assistant Attorney Emily Johnson cited a 2016 video that was released this May, in which she said the Bad Boy Records founder assaulted an unnamed victim.
“Following a Freak Off at the InterContinental Hotel, the defendant violently assaulted the victim who was trying to leave the hotel room and was walking down the hall to the elevators,” she continued. “He punched her, he threw her to the ground, he kicked her. He attempted to drag her back to the hotel room, and then later, he threw a vase at her. And it’s after this assault that the coverup started.”
Johnson argued that the incident and what she referred to as the subsequent disappearance of the footage was “critical to understanding both the physical danger of the defendant and the obstruction efforts that he goes to.”
She claimed that Combs “directed his staff to contact the hotel security staff in an apparent effort to obtain the surveillance video that recorded every moment of that assault” and that the video then disappeared, which she said was “not a coincidence.”
In May, a 2016 video of Combs physically assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura was published by CNN. The incident matched the description that Ventura—who dated Combs on and off for 10 years until 2018—detailed in her November 2023 civil lawsuit, in which she accused him of rape and abuse. Combs denied the accusations at the time and settled one day after it was filed without an admission of wrongdoing by the music producer.
He addressed the video days after the L.A. District Attorney’s office announced charges couldn’t be filed against him due to California’s statute of limitations.
“It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that,” Combs said on Instagram in May. “I was f–ked up. I hit rock bottom. But I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video.”
