Sean 'Diddy' Combs moves to throw out guilty verdicts in NYC sex crimes case

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Jul 31, 2025

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NEW YORK — In an effort to get Sean “Diddy” Combs out from behind bars, lawyers for the hip-hop mogul have asked the judge presiding over his Manhattan sex crimes case to set aside the recent guilty verdicts against him or grant him a new trial.

In a late-night motion Wednesday, Combs’ legal team argued that his July 2 conviction in Manhattan Federal Court on two Mann Act counts of transporting people for prostitution was unique, and that, according to their research, nobody else had ever been held legally responsible for the same conduct.

“It should not stand at all,” they said.

After a monthslong trial, Combs, who’s been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his September 2024 arrest, was acquitted of the most serious counts he faced, sex trafficking and RICO conspiracy. Those counts carried a potential life sentence.

“The government told the jury it had to convict so long as Mr. Combs arranged for a long-time girlfriend or a paid male escort or entertainer to travel across state lines to get together and have sex. And that is all the jury convicted him for,” Combs’ attorneys wrote.

“To our knowledge, Mr. Combs is the only person ever convicted of violating the statute for conduct anything like this. It is undisputed that he had no commercial motive and that all involved were adults. The men chose to travel and engage in the activity voluntarily. The verdict confirms the women were not vulnerable or exploited or trafficked or sexually assaulted during the freak-offs or hotel nights. And Mr. Combs never had sex with the supposed ‘prostitutes.’”

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which tried the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors are expected to respond to the request, in addition to Combs’ motion earlier this week asking the judge once again to grant him bail.

Judge Arun Subramanian shot down Combs’ request to be released on bail in the hours after he was found guilty, quoting his lawyer Marc Agnifilo’s admissions to the jury that Combs had assaulted his former romantic partners, violence that the judge said was “impossible to police with conditions.”

As it stands, he’s set to sentence Combs in October.

The lead prosecutor who had been handling Combs’ case, veteran Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, was fired by the Justice Department earlier this month without reason.

She also handled the sex trafficking prosecutions of deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted right-hand, Ghislaine Maxwell, the duo whose abuse of teenage girls and women has faced renewed interest amid the DOJ and FBI’s decision not to release 300 gigabytes of data recovered in investigations publicly.

In addition to his criminal case, Combs, the 55-year-old Bad Boy Records co-founder, faces dozens of lawsuits brought by men and women accusing him of engaging in sexual predation, including rape and sexual assault, for decades.