NEW YORK ― Sean “Diddy” Combs is expected to stand trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges on May 5, 2025, a judge determined.
The hip-hop mogul appeared Thursday for the first time before U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, who will oversee the trial. Combs was joined in court by all of his children and his mother, who had traveled from Florida to attend the hearing, defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said.
Combs was arrested in September in a sweeping indictment from the Southern District of New York. He has remained in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, although his attorneys are fighting to have him moved from that long-troubled facility to the nearby Essex County Correctional Facility.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“We believe him wholeheartedly,” Agnifilo said of his client in September. “He didn’t do these things.”
Combs has been denied bail twice so far, as prosecutors successfully argued that he should not be released pending trial due to his history of attempting to intimidate witnesses and the flight risk he poses.
Dressed all in white, Combs was seated in court alongside Agnifilo and his team of attorneys for a status conference.
Central to the case are allegations that the billionaire artist and businessman sexually abused unnamed individuals at so-called “freak offs,” and threatened them in order to ensure their silence.
Lawyers estimated the trial would take approximately four weeks, although prosecutors emphasized the possibility of a superseding indictment with additional charges, as their investigation is still ongoing.
A stunning amount of data is expected to be produced in discovery, with one device containing some 90 terabytes of data.
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Prosecutors said they seized around 96 electronic devices from Combs’ residences in Los Angeles and Miami, along with those he had on his person during a search at a private Florida airport. Some of the data on the devices has proven difficult to extract, however, because the government does not yet have the ability to decrypt some of the newest devices on the market.
Since Combs’ arrest, an attorney in Texas said he planned to sue him and unnamed associates on behalf of 120 people who say they were sexually abused. Combs has also been named in several civil lawsuits, including a suit brought by the singer Cassie, who was seen beaten by Combs in security footage published by CNN earlier this year.
