Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team has claimed that the US law is racist and the reason he is being “singled out” in what they call a “clear case of selective prosecution.”
Combs faces a minimum of 15 years in prison after being charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and fraud. He is currently locked up without bail as he awaits trial.
In documents obtained by The Post, the music mogul’s lawyers filed a motion on Tuesday to dismiss his transportation to engage in prostitution charge, arguing that “no white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution.”
The “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper’s legal team is seeking to have the charge thrown out on the basis that The Mann Act of 1910 has historically been used to “target black men.”
The Act has a “long and troubling history as a statute with racist origins, used to target black men and supposedly protect white women from them,” Combs’ lawyers added in the filing.
“The government has concocted a criminal case based primarily on allegations that Mr Combs and two of his longtime girlfriends sometimes brought a third party — a male escort — into their sexual relationship,” they add.
They argue that “the use of escorts, male or female, is common and indeed widely accepted in American culture today.”
The scandal-scarred rapper’s team also adds that he has been “singled out because he is a powerful black man, and he is being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished.”
The Mann Act was introduced in 1910 under the name White-Slave Traffic Act. At the time, there had been ongoing concerns about young girls being lured into brothel work.
The Act makes it illegal to transport people across state or international lines for prostitution — charges Combs was accused of in a federal indictment unsealed last year.
“What was racist and its inception has often been racist in its operation,” the filing adds.
The Post has reached out to Combs’ legal team and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York for comment.
Combs is currently being held without bail in a Brooklyn lockup after pleading not guilty to federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a bombshell indictment accusing him of a decades-long alleged reign of sexual terror.
Prosecutors have dubbed the music honcho a “serial abuser” for allegedly forcing women into days-long drugged-up sexual performances, which he called “freak-offs.”
He’s also accused of several assaults — including punching and kicking his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a violent attack caught on camera — and dangling one of his alleged victims over an apartment balcony.
