The judge said Mr. Combs posed a risk of witness tampering and was a danger to the community while awaiting his sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Sean Combs to remain in jail until his trial for sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, rejecting an appeal by the music mogul’s lawyers requesting that he be released on bail.
At Mr. Combs’s arraignment on Tuesday, a magistrate judge rejected Mr. Combs’s bail request and ordered him detained, citing his history of substance abuse and alleged violence, prosecutors’ accusations of witness tampering and the serious nature of the sex trafficking charge.
“The alleged victims are people with whom there is a power imbalance,” Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky said, “who are susceptible to coercion, not necessarily threats, but concern about losing benefits that they have been provided in the past.”
In appealing that decision on Wednesday to a district judge, Andrew L. Carter Jr., Mr. Combs’s lawyers argued once again that he had been cooperating with the prosecutors’ investigation for months, had voluntarily surrendered his passport and had paid off an $18 million mortgage on his house in Miami Beach so that the property could be used to secure a $50 million bond.
The defense also disputed the government’s allegation that he had intimidated potential witnesses, saying that Mr. Combs had contacted people only to inform them that his counsel would be in touch to interview them. The government cited the example of Kalenna Harper, a performer who was in the group Diddy — Dirty Money with Dawn Richard, who last week filed a lawsuit that accused Mr. Combs of groping and threatening her.
In the four days after Ms. Richard’s suit was filed, the government said, Mr. Combs called or texted Ms. Harper 58 times; prosecutors called it an example of how he has tried to keep potential witnesses “in his pocket and at his disposal.”
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