Judge asks if Diddy retroactively wrote 'Legal' on his jail notes to implicate sex-trafficking prosecutors
The judge in Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking case has questions about the rap mogul's notepads.
Someone wrote "Legal" on the pads in the days after prison officials took evidence photos of them.
The judge is asking if the word was added retroactively to implicate prosecutors.
The judge in the Sean "Diddy" Combs sex-trafficking case is demanding answers for an apparent discrepancy concerning handwritten notes from the rap mogul's Brooklyn jail cell.
The jailhouse notes — which prosecutors allege show Combs attempted to pay witnesses — have been a point of heated contention this week.
At a hearing in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, defense lawyers argued that Combs' white, cardboard-bound legal pads, photographed last month during a Bureau of Prisons raid, had the word "Legal" clearly handwritten on their top binders.
Prosecutors' possession of these photographs — despite this clear warning — may warrant dismissal of the entire case due to attorney-client privilege violations, Combs lawyer Marc Agnifilo had argued, gesturing to the actual notepads on the defense table before him.
In response, assistant US attorney Christy Slavik said the material is not privileged, adding, "It's not clear when that 'Legal' label was attached."
District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, who's overseeing the case and has done some sleuthing into the matter on his own, has also weighed in.
"At the November 19, 2024 hearing, defense counsel presented the Court with an intact legal pad with "Legal" written on the binding, stating that the "Legal" label on this and the other pads showed that they were clearly protected by attorney-client privilege and should not be in the Government's possession," the judge wrote in an order late Wednesday night.
"The Court notes that the sealed exhibit to the Government's brief at Dkt. 72-1 includes photographs of two intact legal pads taken at the time of the BOP sweep. There is no writing on the binding of either pad," the judge wrote.
The parties have a bail hearing scheduled for Friday, where the defense "should be prepared to give the Court further context on the "Legal" label that the Court was presented with at the November 19, 2024 hearing."
The defense must also "address why this label doesn't appear on the photographs in the Court's possession, and why it wasn't addressed in defendant's submission to the Court made a few hours before the November 19, 2024 hearing," the judge wrote.
A lawyer for Combs declined to comment Thursday morning. Combs has pleaded not guilty to a federal indictment alleging he engaged in a decadeslong pattern of sexual and physical violence against women, including during elaborate, dayslong sex parties known as "freak offs."
He has insisted through his lawyers that the sexual conduct in the indictment was consensual and that his accusers have financial incentive to implicate him.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Slavik said Combs' jailhouse notes are evidence in an ongoing grand jury investigation into potential obstruction of justice charges.
The notes, part of a "to-do" list, include references to "the defendant paying a potential witness to, quote, 'find dirt' on a potential victim," Slavik told the judge.
The notes also include Combs' alleged plan for "following up with a paralegal to determine if a witness was paid off or not," she said.
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