Sean “Diddy” Combs has one main complaint about life in jail, his lawyer suggested outside a pre-trial hearing for the disgraced mogul on Thursday.
It’s not the indignity of sharing cramped, unsanitary quarters with Sam Bankman-Fried, nor the threat of a new wave of sex-abuse lawsuits from another 120 of his alleged victims, nor even the broader reality of his legal situation. According to defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, it’s the menu at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where Diddy is currently awaiting trial, that his client can’t stand.
“I think the food’s probably the roughest part of it,” Agnifilo informed reporters after the hearing, per People.
According to a previous report from the magazine, the MDC serves inmates a 6a.m. breakfast consisting of items such as cereal, fruit, and some sort of cake, with coffee as a special extra on weekends.
An 11 a.m. lunch might be hamburgers, tacos (beef), or baked fish, plus scrambled eggs and biscuits on weekends.
Dinner is served at 4 p.m., with chicken fajitas, roast beef, some sort of pasta, and “heart-healthy” tofu or legumes—lentils, baked beans—as possible offerings. There’s also a long list of commissary items available for purchase from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
For Diddy’s lawyers, one goal of Thursday’s hearing was to free him from the MDC, a Brooklyn correctional facility with notoriously grim conditions. The rapper has been held there since his arrest in mid-September, after a grand jury indicted him on charges of sex-trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Federal prosecutors say he “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others to fulfill his sexual desires,” forcing them to participate in drug-fueled “freak-offs” that sometimes lasted for days. The case blew up in May, after CNN published leaked security footage that showed Diddy viciously beating his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
This week, Diddy’s attorneys attempted to leverage that video as evidence that the Department of Homeland Security—the agency that executed raids on his homes and discovered his massive cache of lubricants—had orchestrated a smear campaign against their client, covertly passing the file to CNN and disseminating other damaging intel on the case. The defense claimed in a filing on Wednesday that such “underhanded tactics” amounted to government “misconduct.”
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, quickly labeled the theory absurd, and on Thursday, prosecutor Emily Johnson told the court she viewed the defense’s filing as an effort to “exclude a damning piece of evidence.”
The prosecution also raised the possibility of bringing even more charges against Diddy before his trial begins. They reportedly seized a total of 100 electronic devices from Diddy’s homes and, according to People, are still sifting through their contents. Once they’ve reviewed the “extraordinary” volume of data, they might expand the indictment.
“Our investigation is very much ongoing,” Johnson reportedly told the judge. For now, Subramanian said he would issue an order barring both sides from disclosing evidence that hasn’t yet been made public.
Diddy was not granted bail at the hearing, and will likely be eating jail food until his trial begins, the judge having set the date for May 5, 2025.
