A federal judge on Tuesday ordered prosecutors to “get rid” of notes belonging to Sean “Diddy” Combs that were seized from a raid of Combs’ Brooklyn jail cell until he determines whether they are privileged, Courthouse News reports. “The government should get rid of all those so you don't have them,” U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Joe Biden appointee, told prosecutors at an emergency hearing. “However, the court will have them, so we will figure out the privilege issue.” Those notes contained a reference to Combs wanting to “find dirt” on potential witnesses and victims ahead of his May 5 sex trafficking trial, as well as a reference to “paying a potential witness,” prosecutors said at the hearing. Combs on Monday claimed that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York engaged in “outrageous government conduct” when they cited those notes in earlier court filings being used to argue for Combs’ continued detention until trial. With Combs’ bail hearing scheduled for this Friday, he asked Subramanian for an “immediate hearing” to determine precisely how those notes came into the government’s possession. Subramanian granted the request, prompting Combs to appear in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. The music mogul was dressed in khaki prisoner attire, but unlike prior hearings, was not bound by shackles. Combs’ defense attorney Marc Agnifilo lamented the government’s handling of Comb’s notes, which supposedly were contained in at least one manilla envelope with “legal” handwritten across the front.
Agnifilo said he had no idea the notes were taken because prosecutors never told him and only had photographs — not the physical notes themselves — in their possession. Those notes are privileged, Agnifilo argued, as they contained key legal strategies and jottings from Combs’ meetings with his attorneys. “The government now knows potential defense witnesses for a May 5 trial,” Agnifilo said. “That’s prejudicial. They should not have it.” Agnifilo said that, at best, the incident was a “complete institutional failure.” At worst, it was a malicious attempt from prosecutors to use privileged material to keep his client locked up pending trial. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Slavik clarified that prosecutors in this case had nothing to do with the seizure of the notes. Rather, they were photographed by a Bureau of Prisons investigator who was inspecting Combs’ cell as part of an unrelated jail-wide safety sweep at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Prosecutors only intended to use two excerpts from Combs’ notes at Friday’s bail hearing: the supposed references to finding “dirt” and “paying a potential witness.” They claimed in a Monday filing that the notes are proof of Combs’ continued efforts to “reach out to witnesses” and “influence the jury pool.”
Comments