Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
Lawyers: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seeks trial next April or May
NEW YORK | Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs wants to go to trial on sex trafficking charges next spring, lawyers for the jailed hip-hop mogul told a judge on Wednesday.
His preference for a trial in April or May was mentioned in a joint letter in which his lawyers and prosecutors advised a judge about what they expect to discuss at a hearing on Thursday in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors said they will be available for trial but did not specify when they want it to occur.
Combs, 54, has been locked up since his Sept. 16 arrest on charges alleging that he has physically and sexually abused women for years. He has pleaded not guilty.
The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women with the aid of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.
His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, has said prosecutors are seeking to criminalize consensual sex that his client has engaged in.
He has said Combs plans to clear his name at trial.
The letter submitted to Judge Arun Subramanian, who is expected to preside over the trial, contained no mention of continued detention without bail for Combs after two other judges in separate proceedings concluded that no bail conditions could ensure the community would be protected if Combs was released.
Late Tuesday, lawyers for Combs asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan in court papers to reverse the detention orders and permit his release pending trial.
Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr., who has since recused himself from the case, concluded after a lengthy bail hearing three weeks ago that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that Combs is a danger to the community because he might obstruct the ongoing investigation or tamper with witnesses.
Lawyers for Combs, though, argued in their appeals papers that Carter had rejected a proposed $50 million bail package that would include home detention for “purely speculative reasons.”
“Indeed, hardly a risk of flight, he is a 54-year-old father of seven, a U.S. citizen, an extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, and philanthropist, and one of the most recognizable people on earth,” the lawyers wrote.
They said Carter had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric and ordered Mr. Combs detained.”
In their joint letter submitted in advance of Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors said they have begun turning over to defense lawyers some of the “voluminous” evidence in the case, including portions of several terabytes of material that contains electronically stored information from Combs and others.
Among items already turned over are a complete set of search warrants in the case, along with a phone of Combs that was seized in March and reports on two of his iCloud accounts, they said. Prosecutors told the judge that the government has begun copying over 40 devices and five other iCloud accounts belonging to Combs.
CBS News: Trump campaign had ‘shifting explanations’ for ‘60 Minutes’ snub
NEW YORK | CBS News said the Trump campaign offered “shifting explanations” for why it backed out of a “60 Minutes” interview special with presidential candidates that aired without him.
The network’s Scott Pelley appeared on the air Monday night to explain why Republican Donald Trump did not appear on what has become a “60 Minutes” tradition: back-to-back interviews with presidential candidates in the last month of the campaign.
Kamala Harris was on the show, interviewed by Bill Whitaker. Where Trump was supposed to appear, “60 Minutes” instead aired a story about an Arizona official pushing false claims about election fraud.
Pelley said that the Trump campaign “complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story.”
The Trump team also demanded an apology for his interview during the 2020 campaign, where he claimed that correspondent Lesley Stahl said a laptop computer belonging to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter came from Russia. “She never said that,” Pelley said.
Pelley said that Trump’s team had agreed to an interview at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home, with an additional talk in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he returned to the scene of a July assassination attempt.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said “60 Minutes” “begged for an interview.” The campaign did have concerns about the show’s reporting on Hunter Biden and how it insisted upon editing Trump’s comments, he said.
“There was nothing scheduled or agreed upon,” Cheung said. “We had already long promised an exclusive in filming at Butler to another national outlet, which turned out the be Fox News.”
Trump’s interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham aired an hour before “60 Minutes” on Monday night. His absence from CBS was not mentioned in their exchange. Trump apparently, watched, however, posting on Truth Social that the Harris interview “is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST interview they have ever seen.”
Pelley poked at Trump, noting he had already turned down another opportunity to debate Harris, along with the “60 Minutes” interview, “which may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day.”
Moving “60 Minutes” out of its traditional Sunday time slot may have depressed the audience size, however. An estimated 5.4 million people watched on Monday, according to preliminary Nielsen company figures, compared with the 9.6 million who saw the newsmagazine on Sunday, Sept. 29.
No estimate for Trump’s audience on Ingraham’s show was immediately available. Her show averaged 2.7 million viewers a night last week, Nielsen said.
Las Vegas says goodbye to the Tropicana with a flashy casino implosion
LAS VEGAS | Sin City blew a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before first light Wednesday in an elaborate implosion that reduced to rubble the last true mob building on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Tropicana’s hotel towers tumbled in a celebration that included a fireworks display. It was the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that loves fresh starts and that has made casino implosions as much a part of its identity as gambling itself.
“What Las Vegas has done, in classic Las Vegas style, they’ve turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” said Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum.
Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas blows up casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the Dunes to make room for the Bellagio. Wynn thought not only to televise the event but created a fantastical story for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing at the Dunes.
From then on, Schumacher said, there was a sense in Las Vegas that destruction at that magnitude was worth witnessing.
The city hasn’t blown up a Strip casino since 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was leveled for a convention center expansion.
This time, the implosion cleared land for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland Athletics, part of the city’s latest rebrand into a sports hub.
That will leave only the Flamingo from the city’s mob era on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the Flamingo’s original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s.
The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed in April after welcoming guests for 67 years.
Once known as the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its opulence, it was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its past under the mob has long cemented its place in Las Vegas lore.
It opened in 1957 with three stories and 300 hotel rooms split into two wings.
As Las Vegas rapidly evolved in the following decades, including a building boom of Strip megaresorts in the 1990s, the Tropicana also underwent major changes. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the casino’s beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor.
The Tropicana’s original low-rise hotel wings survived the many renovations, however, making it the last true mob structure on the Strip.
Behind the scenes of the casino’s grand opening, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.
Costello was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana’s debut. He survived, but the investigation led police to a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana’s exact earnings figure, revealing the mob’s stake in the casino.
By the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen operatives with conspiring to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges connected to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions.
There were no public viewing areas for the event, but fans of the Tropicana did have a chance in April to bid farewell to the vintage Vegas relic.
“Old Vegas, it’s going,” Joe Zappulla, a teary-eyed New Jersey resident, said at the time as he exited the casino, shortly before the locks went on the doors.
—From AP reports
