Law&Crime Sidebar - 5 Reasons P. Diddy Might Take a Plea in Sex Trafficking Case

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Sean “Diddy” Combs, 54, is accused of using his significant power and influence to coordinate sex parties known as “Freak Offs.” New York prosecutors say his alleged activities, like procurement of drugs and hiring of commercial sex workers, were criminal. Combs’ legal team is pushing for a May 2025 trial date, but a trial wouldn’t happen if Combs agreed to a potential plea deal.  Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes the options with R. Kelly prosecutor Nadia Shihata.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Is it likely that Sean Combs will take a deal that he will never go to trial? What would that even look like? Why would he do this? Would turning on others make sense? Well, we're going to break down, the top reason Sean Combs would take a plea deal in his criminal case, and we're going to bring on former R. Kelly prosecutor Nadia Shihada to break it down. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Well, since we learned about the federal charges facing Sean Diddy Combs when he was arrested and indicted last month, I'm talking

racketeer conspiracy, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution. I have said, from the very beginning, there is no way he's going to take a plea deal. No way. Why do I say that? I say that because I was convinced, look at what prosecutors are alleging, right? They're alleging that he's at the top of a criminal organization, the criminal enterprise, that he was the one directing assistants, associates to participate in illegal activity, that he was engaged in a campaign of threatening, forcing, coercing women to engage in sexual activity, including these elaborate, many times drug-fueled sexual performances called freak-offs, that he was sex trafficking, exploiting, abusing women for years. So how could prosecutors work out a deal

that wouldn't include significant prison time? I mean, currently he's facing what, 15 years to life in prison if he's convicted? You think they would agree to a deal that would just be a slap on the wrist in order to avoid a trial? How could they justify that? How could they justify minimal prison time when, by the way, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damien Williams, held a press conference after Combs was arrested, and he described the rapper and producer as essentially at the top of this criminal ladder. Sean Combs led and participated in a racketeering conspiracy that used the business empire he controlled to carry out criminal activity.

A year ago, Sean Combs stood in Times Square and was handed a key to New York City. today he's been indicted and will face justice in the southern district of new york so in my mind significant prison time has to be on the table in a plea deal anything less would it really be justice right and because of that it seems to me so unlikely that sean combs would agree to a plea deal because he wouldn't want to agree to any prison time after all it seems to me based on him forfeiting his passport months ago coming voluntarily to new york to surround to authorities, knowing he was about to be indicted, trying to sell his plane, being in constant contact or his attorneys being in constant contact with the prosecutors, he was doing

everything in his power to avoid being locked up in pretrial detention. He didn't want it. He thought he was probably going to make bail and that he probably thought he was going to be on house arrest. That didn't happen. He was denied bail twice. He's actively trying to get out of the Metropolitan Detention Center. That's where he currently resides, by the way, as he awaits trial.

he's now appealing this issue to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. But why do you think he's pushing for a May 2025 trial date? Usually criminal defendants would push out a trial date to make sure they're as ready as possible to fight all the charges, including, by the way, charges as complex as this. And especially when you have so much digital and physical evidence to review, we're talking terabytes of information. Why seemingly rushed a trial in less than a year for when you were indicted, unless you you really want to get out of jail as soon as possible.

He may really think he has a great case that he can win, that he can put this behind him, that he can get out of jail. That's my opinion. So it seems unlikely, again, in my mind, Combs would agree to plead guilty and accept prison time, which again, has to be quite substantial. Now, having said that, having said that, putting that whole monologue to the side is a plea deal totally out of the question?

Of course not. It happens. I was talking to a claimed criminal defense attorney Bradford Cohen about this on a previous sidebar. And he too feels like a plea deal is unlikely. But he also said, he's been proven wrong about this. You never think that certain defendants would take a deal, and they do. So now the question we have for you here, what are some reasons that Sean Diddy Combs would take a deal? Is it likely to happen?

Well, to answer that question, I want to bring in former federal prosecutor Nadia Shihata, one of the people who prosecuted and helped to convict R. Kelly of his federal sex crimes charges out in New York. Nadia, so good to see you. Thanks for coming back on. Thank you for having me. So I have laid out, I think, several reasons about why he might take a deal. And I'll go through them with you. But before we even get into what the reasons he could take a deal, is my analysis totally, totally off about why I think it's unlikely he would take a deal?

No, I think you're spot on. You know, he is facing a really significant prison sentence, and this is the type of case where I don't see prosecutors offering a really sweetheart type of plea deal that would involve anything less to including a plea to the most serious charge, which is the sex trafficking, which has a 15-year mandatory minimum. So in those circumstances, it's not very likely. You know, one of the things I love about hosting sidebar is the opportunity to speak with really smart. Mark, good lawyers, as you see here. And how can I highlight great lawyers without talking about Morgan and Morgan, our sponsor, America's largest injury law firm? And by the way, for a reason, they win a lot. I'm talking recent verdicts of $12 million in Florida, $26 million in Philadelphia, $6.8 million in New York. These are all higher than the highest insurance offers in these cases.

There's no upfront fee to pay. The whole process can be done simply on your smartphone. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar. Now let's get into this world where it's a possibility he takes a deal. Reason number one, the case is just too strong against him. He doesn't think that he can win. Maybe cut his losses and take a deal. You tell me, do you think that that is a possibility when you, and to be clear, we don't know all of the evidence the prosecution has, but through their filings, they've talked about what

the, it said how much physical evidence, digital evidence they have. Do you think that could be a reason? And let's expand upon that. It can always be a reason. Look, one of the reasons defendants plead guilty in cases is because they know at the end of the day, if they're found guilty, they're going to be sentenced by a judge. And I think most defendants, it's, it's rational. to not want the judge who's sentencing you to sit through weeks and weeks of evidence coming out

in excruciating detail, including from victims who testify, and remember that when they're sentencing you. It's much, you're kind of better off, even if, you know, each side files voluminous sentencing materials, there is a difference between hearing from people on the stand and reading about what the allegations or the evidence would have shown at trial. And that can can serve to benefit a person, at least marginally, potentially in sentencing. So if we're talking about that it could be quite likely he's convicted of these charges, at a minimum. I know this might be tough given you're not a part of this case.

You don't know all the details. We don't know all the evidence. But if he's looking at racketeering conspiracy, if he's looking at sex trafficking by force fraud or coercion, if he's looking at transportation to engage in prostitution, if he's convicted across the board, I've mentioned what the range is, 15 years to life in prison, I believe. But realistically, what do you think he could be facing if he's convicted? So, I mean, at least 15 years, but likely significantly higher than that, depending on how many, you know, victims are involved, which we understand there's certainly

more than one from what the prosecutors have said. And so that can all affect kind of the guidelines calculation. So, you know, it could be in the realm of the R. Kelly case where he got 30 years on the racketeering. So something, you know, 20 to 30 years, potentially even more. And that's a life sentence. He's 54 years old. I mean, it's not a life sentence. You'd be in his 80s, but, I mean, think about what we're talking about if we're talking about a 30-year prison sentence.

And by the way, talking about the strength of a case, I mean, they've said they'll put on evidence to say this was all consensual. This wasn't sex trafficking. nobody was forced into anything. There's no racketeering conspiracy. There's no criminal agreement, right? There's no criminal organization or enterprise. But at a minimum, at a minimum, do you feel like his attorneys are saying, listen, I don't know how we're going to defend against the last charge, the transportation to engage in prostitution. If prosecutors say they have records, they have payment receipts, they have travel records, it feels really hard to deny that he, brought in sex workers for prostitution. And I think for that charge, he's looking at possibly

10 years in prison. So as we calculate how strong the case is and whether he's not going to take a deal, am I off about that? Because how do you defend against that last charge? I mean, I think you're right that that charge is the most difficult to defend against because it doesn't require, you know, that much proof and certainly not force fraud or coercion. But it's also the least harsh potential sentencing faces. So it's anywhere from zero to. 10 years. And while the maximum is 10 years, that doesn't mean the guidelines will put him anywhere near that range. I suspect if by some miracle he were offered a plea to just that charge, that that would be a plea he would consider. But I don't expect that it would be one

that prosecutors would offer. It goes back to the idea of justice. What's justice when you're saying he's at the top of this criminal enterprise. So let's now talk about another reason. And is it a possibility that, you know, prosecutors don't necessarily want to go to trial. It's time-consuming. It's expensive. It's the issue of having these accusers to get up on the stand, relive what they have to say. It's a painful experience. I'm sure they would like to avoid trial.

But would there ever be a situation where he gets minimal prison time? What would, I guess the question is, What's the minimum that a plea deal would look like in terms of prison time? With a case like this, unless something were to seriously go wrong with the prosecution's case or evidence, I don't see them making any offer that would not involve the sex trafficking charge, which would have the minimum of 15 years. I just think it's highly unlikely that that would happen in a case. certainly one like this where new victims are kind of coming out of the woodwork every day.

There's so much publicity regarding the case. I think something would seriously have to be problematic about their evidence for them to offer something less than that. That's significant. I mean, that even of itself is very significant. So that becomes like every criminal, a lot of criminal defendants, they have to weigh, do I take this deal where I'm sent away for 15 years? You know, he's 54, but 15 years is not 30 years.

years versus going to prison for, you know, 30 years, 40 years. That's a difficult, that's a difficult decision. Now, if he took a plea deal, and let's say he did get a minimum of 15 years, would he get any early release? Would that be possible under the federal guidelines? So there's no parole in the federal system. There is something called good time credit. And so assuming you are incarcerated without any kind of serious infractions, of prison rules and so forth, then you do get credit for your good time, meaning so your sentence is ultimately reduced a little bit. And I can't remember kind of the exact calculation of what it is. It changed recently under the First Step Act, but it would kind of lessen it a little

bit. Let me go to another reason why he might take a deal. Maybe he doesn't want to go to trial for personal reasons. Maybe, you know, trial's too expensive to go through. He's got all these civil lawsuits he's got to worry about. Maybe a trial would just be too emotionally tough for him and for his family. Maybe he doesn't want all of those details coming out at a trial. Is that a possibility? Look, it's certainly a possibility. Everything's possible. And these are things that all defendants kind of have to consider when they're deciding how to proceed in a case. I'm not sure that that consideration though here would weigh that strongly because there are so many civil lawsuits out there now that so much information about him is coming out anyway or allegations

at least. And that is really all in the public domain now. And those civil cases, whether or not he pleads guilty in the criminal case, will likely move forward. And so unless he settles all of them, you know, more is likely to come out. And the indictment without even naming names is pretty bad. I mean, it's hard to recover from that, those allegations. But I will ask you this, talking about personal reasons about not going to trial, what about this? Would the government say to him, listen, if you take a deal, we won't charge any of your family members or friends, maybe even your sons with criminal activity. We know there's allegations against these sons in civil lawsuits. Is that a deal that the government will put on the table? If you take a plea, Sean

Combs, we won't go after your family? That would be highly unusual. Um, In fact, there's a policy in the Department of Justice against offering those types of deals. So I would be very surprised if a deal like that were to be offered. Literally, I thought of it. I was brainstorming ways that they might take that a deal might be on the table. There's no evidence to suggest that that's what they said. I just thought of it. I was speculating.

So just want to make that clear. No evidence that the government has offered that or even thinking of that. Let me ask you this. What about the idea, and this has come up a lot, that Sean Combs would take a deal in exchange for revealing big names to give up bigger fish? And I think this one's interesting. You know, would the government work out a deal for him to cooperate against other high profile people, other celebrities?

And what's strange to me thinking about that is, isn't he at the top? Isn't he the biggest fished? I don't, I keep getting that question. I'm curious what you think. Yeah, so he's certainly alleged to be the top of his organization. It's certainly possible that he has information about other criminal activity involving even more people that are high profile or that could be of interest to the government. But I think, and certainly the government in all sorts of cases, mob cases, has made cooperation agreements with people at the top of their criminal organizations, even people have committed murders. And that happens all the time in federal cases.

But it's usually, you know, the prosecutor has to really believe they are getting some really good evidence and information to even consider something like that when someone is charged with these types of crimes and when they are alleged to be the head of the criminal organization. And assuming it would be about this alleged conduct, would they even need him to testify or provide information or is everything documented on tape, videos, digital evidence, text messages, what? value would a Sean Combs cooperation be for them? I was also struggling with that as well as we talk about if he could take a deal. Yeah, it depends on what there are other evidence is, which we don't have, you know, a great insight into right now. But to the extent a lot of it is on video, then you know, you're certainly not going to as a prosecutor in a case like this. It's highly unlikely that you're going to enter a cooperation agreement with him to do what's known as cooperating down to convict people that are lower on the chain. That's not what prosecutors generally do

in these types of cases. But if you think about it, just taking the government's allegations is true that he's the head of this criminal enterprise and he's involved with guns and he's involved with drugs. If he had connections to, again, this is purely speculating, I'm trying to think about it. If he knew about crime lords, if he knew about cartels, if he could lead the federal government to some really, really other kind of serious players in the game, murderers. Would that be of something of interest to the government and working out a plea? Potentially, without knowing kind of what that information is, it's hard to say. But, you know, if his lawyers were to say, we have, you know, he has information about

X, Y, and Z. What generally happens is the prosecutors would ask for what's known as an attorney proffer to decide whether they want to proffer him and get this information straight from him. So they would start with that to see if it's the type of information that they would actually consider to enter into a cooperation agreement. Now, I have another potential reason why he might take a deal. The idea that he would want to plead guilty to these charges in the hopes that no more charges come down the line. What do I mean by that? There has been a lot of talk. about minors. And although he is not charged with respect to minors, soliciting minors, sexually assaulting minors, those are allegations that have been brought up in a lot of the civil

lawsuits. Now, the federal government would have the opportunity to include instances with minors as part of the federal charges. We saw it with R. Kelly. We saw it with Jeffrey Epstein. We saw it with Galane Maxwell. Is there a possibility the government could say, if you plead guilty to these charges, we will not bring additional charges against you, including charges with respect to minors, which, as you and I both know, is a lot tougher to defend. What do you think? Yeah, so that question goes to what's put into what's known as the coverage paragraph in a plea agreement. And that basically is a standard part of most plea agreements, which says what the government, in exchange for your guilty plea, will not prosecute

will not bring charges against you for. And in a case like this, you know, prosecutors might just put the charges they've already filed. So the other count, depending on what count of the indictment he pled guilty to, they would include just kind of what's set out in the indictment. But it is possible for the defendant to ask for other things to be included. And then it's a question of negotiation. Again, in a case like this, where they are continuing to investigate, and we don't know what is included in their continuing investigation, but to the extent that they have already uncovered evidence

about, you know, illegal sexual activity with minors, they may not be willing to put that in a coverage paragraph, or they might require him to plead guilty to that conduct, even if it's not currently in the indictment. Yeah, because they, the prosecutors have indicated that the possibility, that it's possible there could be a superseding indictment. And one of the things that was lacking in or that was missing in this indictment was the fact, the current indictment was the fact there was nothing regarding underage people. I thought that was curious. A lot of my legal analysts I've spoken with said it was curious given the allegations that have been leveled against Sean Combs. So it made me wonder, do they have something else up their sleeve in an effort to, as a

bargaining chip, to say, all right, you know, this might be a way. I guess the difficulty of thinking about that, accepting a plea deal where they wouldn't charge him for those additional crimes is that's not justice for the other alleged victims, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that would certainly be a complaint about a plea deal like that. My guess is it was the conduct involving minors was not outlined in the indictment because they didn't feel they had enough to bring such charges, at least at that point. But as I said, you know, they've made clear they're continuing to investigate. I'm sure they're interviewing lots of people. and those charges may yet be to come.

And that may be, you know, one of the reasons that the defense team pushed for a trial date and one that was, you know, is coming up quite soon at this point. Nadia, before I let you go, will we know whether or not there were negotiations regarding a plea deal? Is that happen at any sort of status conference, any point in this federal criminal process where we will know that there were plea negotiations and they broke down? was maybe offered, what was rejected? What will we know about that if that's ever on the table? So sometimes the judge will ask about that in a status conference, whether any plea offers have been made. And so if they're directly asked, you know, they will need to answer the question.

In many federal cases, plea offers are routinely extended without any, you know, asking for them by the defense that, you know, indictment happens. You send out a plea offer. This isn't one of those typical cases. I think because the defense is also made clear publicly that they don't intend to plead guilty, you know, they're not going to say something different right now unless directly asked by the judge. And if something has in fact happened, then as lawyers, they'll have to answer truthfully, obviously, to the court. All right. Well, Nadia Shihata, we will wait and see what happens. As I said, I thought, I think it's unlikely. He's going to agree to prison time. but as he sits there in detention, waiting for trial,

he may be feeling differently day in and day out and we'll wait to see what happens next. Nadi Shihata, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate your perspective. Excellent analysis, as always. And thank you so much for the work that you do and the work that you've done. Thank you again.

All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Let's meet you next. time.

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