Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs have responded to his new indictment on federal sex crime charges. Their latest argument is that one of the charges comes from a law with a racist history that’s being used against the rapper.
Combs’ defense attorneys filed a motion to dismiss one of the rapper’s charges from his three-count federal indictment. Attorneys previously argued that Combs only ever had consensual sexual interactions and denied all allegations of sex abuse, blackmail and drug abuse, per court documents.
However, this time, attorneys argued that the White-Slave Traffic Act, or Mann Act, is being weaponized against Combs despite its racist history. Attorneys wrote that one of the people who cosigned the bill back in the early 1900s cited a story of a “Negro” who allegedly bought and sold a white woman in Chicago, per court documents. Among other racist connotations cited in the creation of the Mann Act, attorneys said the law’s target is “Black male sexuality.”
“From Jack Johnson to Chuck Berry, the statute’s most notorious prosecutions targeted famous black men accused of deviant sexual behavior. This case continues the trend,” the attorneys wrote.
As The Root previously reported, the act was a federal law created to make the use of commerce to transport women for “immoral purposes” illegal, according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. Back then, the law spawned from the investigation into immigrant prostitution and the claim immigrant men lured young white women into what they called “white slavery.” However, the term “immoral purpose” was broadly applied in many cases, especially consensual sexual relations between white women and Black men.
Besides racism, attorneys also argued Combs is the first defendant to be charged under the Mann Act for hiring male escorts from a website whose name was redacted from the document. Attorneys wrote that any high-profile white man prior (while name-dropping New York Governor Eliot Spitzer) who engaged a third party for sexual relations never triggered prosecution under the Mann Act.
Therefore, Combs is being discriminated against because he’s a successful Black celebrity and such discrimination is grounds for count three of transportation to engage in prostitution should be dismissed, his lawyers believe.
Combs is facing that charge along with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution against allegedly three victims. He’s pleaded not guilty and was denied bond. He awaits his May 2025 trial behind bars in Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn.