September 19, 2024
"The racketeering conspiracy charge, which accuses [Sean Combs] of carrying out crimes as part of an 'enterprise,' carries up to life in prison."
"But defense lawyers... have argued that the federal laws are being deployed to charge less serious conduct than was envisioned when they were adopted.... In a bail hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Combs’s lead lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, objected to the government painting the encounters as sex trafficking, arguing that with Cassie... it was consensual — 'part of the way that these two adults wanted to be intimate together.'... Julie A. Dahlstrom, a legal scholar who has studied trends in American sex trafficking law, said she believed that the broader application of sex trafficking law by prosecutors had been driven, in part, by a more expansive use of the statute to bring civil claims during the #MeToo movement. 'We saw victims' rights attorneys try to use the tools that they had,' she said, citing as an example a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein that led a judge to acknowledge that a promise of possible career advancement in exchange for sex could help bolster a sex trafficking claim...."
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Now do human trafficking/ child sex trafficking across on open border - opened on purpose with Biden's executive orders. (all for massive illegals on the voter rolls for democrats)
Bragged about my Myorkas.
...led a judge to acknowledge that a promise of possible career advancement in exchange for sex could help bolster a sex trafficking claim...."
Willie Brown, call your office.
Just a friendly reminder that despite one of them being underage, all the women R. Kelly micturated upon did so voluntarily. One even said that she gave him such consent on the witness stand. Food for thought.
The entertainment industry should no longer get a free pass on sexual harassment and abuse laws. Neither should politics but let's address the more moral industry first
We've been telling people there's an entire industry of sex trafficking run by some of the richest people in the world and all we got for our troubles was to be called "conspiracy theorists."
I'm yawning at these revelations.
Do Tiger Woods.
"the federal laws are being deployed to charge less serious conduct than was envisioned when they were adopted" But I thought progs opposed prosecutors abusing their discretion to bend the law and inflict undue punishment? Or is even their opposion to arbitrariness arbitrary?
If you went to P. Diddy's house, got naked, got all oiled up, and started getting your freak on rolling around on the floor ... I kinda think those things are "evidence" that maybe you consent to all this stuff.
P Diddy is probably an asshole and is probably not averse to committing a crime here and there. And, yeah, we don't know the evidence. But please tell me I'm not the only one who senses that this is MeToo Redux, involving "victims" who did whatever sordid thing he wanted voluntarily and transactionally, and topped off with the requisite gold diggers pouring in now for some of that sweet "abuse" lawsuit action.
I'm OK with a bunch of whores emptying the wallets of their pimps.
I wrote a law review article about RICO in 1982. This defense won't work, IMO.
I'm OK with a bunch of whores emptying the wallets of their johns, too.
AFAIKOC everyone involved was a willing participant and knew what they were doing.
Narr I think he was talking about the lawyers....
The lawyers are always willing participants.
Count me among those who do not believe all women. But I'm perfectly fine with both sides of a sordid situation being wrong. Diddy was a "procurator" in the classic sense of the word, and someone wise to the pimp game like he was should've known better than to trust those women not to turn on him.
Prosecutors like to overcharge. Negotiating leverage is based on the size of the threat.
Diddy probably made the wrong enemy along the way- it is the only reason his political protection seems to have suddenly vanished.
I don't know the facts here, but federal prosecutors have been notorious for decades for overcharging to force pleas from defendants. Local prosecutors called it the "federal chickenshit doctrine."
Dear Puffy, now they're getting their freak off.
Federal law enforcement is vigorously pursuing sex trafficker, like at the border. /s
"traffickers"
the federal laws are being deployed to charge less serious conduct than was envisioned when they were adopted....
so, they're treating him like the President of the United States?
The attorney who had the bright idea one day that you could roll an instance of a boss offering financial/career inducements in exchange for sexual favors into sex trafficking criminal law must have been pretty pleased with themselves for having that thought.
No one cares do you?
Also, a significant amount of comments in this NYT article are whatabouting Trump - the worm in the liberal brain.
Fox News today put up an article describing Diddy's close collaboration over the relevant years with high-ranking members of the Democrat party, including Obama, Hillary, Biden and Harris. What did they know and when did they know it?
Between Combs, Weinstein, Epstein, Weiner, Condit (Dem senator from California whose intern/sexual partner Chandra Levy was murdered, case never solved), Biden, Bill Clinton (of course), Swalwell (banging a Chinese spy), etc., the whole Pizzagate theory is becoming more believable by the minute.
Yes and I am tired of the infantilizing of adults. Diddy's girlfriend was 22 when they began dating. Media presents this information like she was a child he corrupted. She chose to remain in the relationship for a decade. Did he treat her horribly - sure. But hardly warrants federal charges. She stuck around for the Cash and got paid.
The federal statutes relating to sex trafficking are drafted very generally and quite sloppily. 18 USC Section 1591 provides, in relevant part, that “[w]hoever knowingly … recruits [or] entices … a person … knowing, or in reckless disregard of the fact, that force, threats … fraud or coercion … will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act” has committed a crime. Section 1591(a)(1) has a longer list of verbs than “recruits [or] entices,” but the same analysis applies no matter which ones in that list (or all of them) are considered. Section 1591 also subjects to liability “[w]hoever knowingly … benefits financially … from participation in a venture which has engaged in a [sex trafficking violation] … knowing, or in reckless disregard of the fact, that force, threats … fraud or coercion … will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act”.
The statute thus requires a clear temporal relationship between the acts of “recruiting [or] enticing” (or any of the other verbs in Section 1591(a)(1)) and the required knowledge (or reckless disregard) of the “fact” that “force [etc.] … will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act”. Thus, at the time when the defendant engages in the “recruiting [or] enticing,” the defendant must already have the required knowledge of, or was acting in reckless disregard of, the required “fact” about a future event (that “force [etc.] … will be used to cause …”). Section 1595 creates a civil cause of action for a victim of a Section 1591 offense.
Many courts have wrestled with this language in Section 1591 and have concluded that proof that defendant’s knowledge (or reckless disregard) of an established “modus operandi” or a definite and pre-formed plan, prior to the acts of “recruiting [or] enticing,” is sufficient to establish the element that the defendant had the required knowledge of, or was acting in reckless disregard of, the required “fact” about a future event (that “force [etc.] … will be used to cause …”). Of course, there are many statutes in which Congress has expressly predicated criminal liability on proof of a scheme, plan or plot – mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, among many others, come to mind. Had Congress intended to impose liability for trafficking upon proof of a “modus operandi,” or a pre-formed plan or scheme, it surely knew how to do so. In short, those cases attempt to preserve the statute by rewriting it.
Note also that the statute requires that the defendant know (or recklessly disregard) the fact that force, fraud, etc. "will be used" to cause the victim to engage in a "commercial sex act," i.e. prostitution.
The play in the joints on the civil side has focused on a claim that fraud was used to cause the victim to prostitute herself. The fraud, as in the Weinstein cases (and putting aside the claims of rape which are a hard fit for trafficking because rape isn't a form of a "commercial sex act"), involved false promises of benefits in exchange for the commercial sex act. That's where guys like Coombs may be exposed to a trafficking charge.
Not to mention the condemnation and criticism of significant age gaps between couples from some sectors. To hear some of these people disapprove of even a 5 year age gap between a man and a woman you'd think it was statutory rape in their minds. Women are strong and independent, at any age, so if they're 18 years old or older they're not too young to tango.
They're big girls and empowered, enough of the feminine entrapment BS.
The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
to bring civil claims during the #MeToo movement.
Sentence first—verdict afterwards.
I read today RFK jr is being investigated for cutting parts off a dead whale. Love those feds. Posess an eagle eagle feather or a rifle with vertical front grip it's a felony, but let many thousands into the country illegally, and nada. It's just statistics. Piss earth in full stench.
Diddy did it and so did Donald - many times, but Willie Brown has never even been legally accused.
Trump lost a lot of cash when he had to stand trial against Jeanie Carroll and Diddy will lose in court. Donald has been accused of sexual misconduct by 17 other women and two cases involving many of them remain open.
I don't know about this particular case, but RICO charges are applied far more often than they should be. They started as a way to inflate penalties for crimes committed by mobsters. (right?) Now they seem to be applied, at the prosecutors discretion, whenever two people co-operate to commit a crime.
I suppose the root difficulty lies in coming up with a good legal definition of "crimes committed by mobsters".
He woke up one morning and discovered he had become an enemy of the state.
Trafficking is another word that has lost its meaning.
"It was real in my mind." - E. Jean "Sanpaku Eyes" Carroll
“ a promise of possible career advancement in exchange for sex could help bolster a sex trafficking claim...."
If that had been true last century Hollywood wouldn’t exist today.
Sorry Professor Althouse, but why should any sane person give a rat’s patooty about anything pertaining to Sean Combs. A big nothing.
In the North American sector of Piss Earth every f****** possible human action is a federal crime since 1964. And all of this is further exacerbated by the fact that both parties, both poles of our political system, want everything they like to be federal policy and everything they hate to be a federal crime. And so we end up with a Piss Earth in full stench.
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