Feds Say ‘Freak-Offs’ Were Not Adult Movie Shoots

Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to reject Sean “Diddy” Combs’ bid to overturn his prostitution convictions – including his “meritless” claims that “freak-offs” were just porn movies protected by the First Amendment.

In a filing Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors say Diddy’s recent motion asking the judge to acquit him or order a new trial must be denied, arguing there was clearly enough evidence to support a jury’s guilty verdict on two counts of interstate prostitution.

The feds are also unimpressed with Diddy’s creative alternative argument: that he was merely exercising his constitutional right to free speech by “producing amateur pornography.” They say that argument is baseless and an after-the-fact effort to avoid justice.

“The defendant twists the record beyond recognition in order to claim that his [prostitution] convictions run afoul of the First Amendment,” the feds write. “The defendant was anything but a producer of adult films entitled to First Amendment protection — rather, he was a voracious consumer of commercial sex, paying male commercial sex workers on hundreds of occasions to have sex with his girlfriends for his own sexual arousal.”

Combs was arrested and charged last year with racketeering (RICO) and sex trafficking violations over accusations that he ran a sprawling criminal operation aimed at facilitating the freak-offs — elaborate events which he allegedly forced his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and other women to have sex with male escorts while he watched and masturbated.

Following a blockbuster trial this spring, jurors cleared Combs on the RICO and sex trafficking charges, but he was found guilty on two other counts for transporting Ventura and others across state lines for the purposes of prostitution. When he’s sentenced on those counts in October, he could still get between two and five years in prison.

In seeking to overturn those convictions, Combs has argued that his verdict was “unprecedented.” They argued that he himself was not having sex with the prostitutes, but rather that he had paid men to have consensual sex with his girlfriends: “That is not prostitution.” And if anything, they say he was merely a “john” – a customer of prostitution – who should not be subject to harsh federal prosecution.

In Wednesday’s response, prosecutors spend 58 pages rejecting those arguments in detail – including the claim that Diddy was just a customer.

“By the defendant’s own argument, he is not a typical ‘john’ who pays an escort to have sex with him,” prosecutors write. “He is in many respects more akin to a pimp than a john in that the defendant (the pimp) provides Ventura and Jane (the victims) to other men to have sex for his own personal benefit.”

A judge will rule on Diddy’s motion at some point in the weeks before his October sentencing hearing.