Transcript

[Speaker 2]

I’m going to make an example of him and really come down hard, push for a trial versus a settlement.

[Speaker 1]

Well, I just don’t see how he avoids a trial when he’s facing so much time. They were to offer him something other than a life sentence potentially, but what he’s looking at in the conduct is so egregious and it’s so serious that he may be forced to go to trial. At the same time, it’s hard for me to say.

We haven’t seen all of the evidence yet. What’s been offered is not necessarily proven, but what the government thinks that it will be able to prove.

[Speaker 2]

Now, in the attorney’s press conference today, there was a phrase used a number of times, at least three by my count, freak off, and that is not something that feels like a traditional legal term. Have you heard it before or is that unique to this case?

[Speaker 1]

Well, that’s definitely not a legal term. My reading of the references to the freak off was something that Combs created. It was some kind of sexual event where women who were coerced or sex trafficked were forced to engage in sexual conduct with male sex workers, sometimes being drugged, sometimes under the threat of violence, and violence and drugs were used to coerce people to stay.

If they weren’t participating in those acts, they were threatened, and not just through threat or violence, but really ruining their entire potential career if they were somebody who thought that they could be in the music industry. We have to put it in a context where Sean Combs was an incredibly powerful and influential professional in the music industry. People felt compelled to participate in whatever he wanted so that they could have a shot.

So quite frankly, it seems like the freak off, certainly nothing I’ve ever heard in the law, something that he constructed and coined the term, and now that’s being repeated everywhere.

[Speaker 2]

That’s interesting. So what we have here are allegations spanning a number of years, and as you correctly summarized at the top of this conversation, the building of the case took time. So as you look forward, Lauren, how long could this stretch out?

Are we going to see this in the headlines and these legal proceedings take weeks, months, years, or what’s the typical timeline in a case like this?

[Speaker 1]

Well, on average, we see that federal cases sentencing occurs about two years after an indictment is brought. So I would say you’re going to see periods where you hear absolutely nothing, and then there’ll be some movement because there’ll be a court proceeding or some type of evidentiary hearing. Eventually, we’ll learn about whether there’s a trial.

When there is a trial, I’m sure that that will be top of the news.

[Speaker 2]

I was going to say, if there is a trial, Sean Diddy Combs has a number of celebrity associates, and could any of those celebrity associates be compelled to testify?

[Speaker 1]

Well, absolutely. So it does seem like there was an involvement of many music industry professionals, rappers, and artists who may be victims in the case, who may be witnesses in the case, or other collateral witnesses who may be brought in to support the government’s case. We can also see that potentially Combs could bring in defense witnesses.

That was his world. It was a world of celebrities and rappers and R&B artists. And so those are the people who are going to set the stage and the context for everything that occurred.

[Speaker 2]

Far from music mogul to an inmate.