Federal Investigators Convene Grand Jury in Diddy Case | TMZ Live
Diddy's legal troubles are getting even worse as a grand jury has reportedly been empaneled to hear evidence in his federal probe, indicating he could face a possible criminal indictment.
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00:00A grand jury will shortly convene in the Diddy investigation, and it could lead to really serious criminal charges against this disgraced mogul.
00:13Which would be the very first criminal charges that Diddy has faced in all of this that has been going on for the last few months.
00:20And it is looking like the feds are really... So you understand, they don't convene a grand jury until they've got their ducks in a row.
00:30So this means, if you're Diddy, this means that they at least have spoken to enough people that they believe they have enough evidence for an indictment.
00:38Now, we'll see whether they do.
00:40I should say that there is another scenario, and we're going to be talking to a guy who knows his stuff in this area.
00:47But there's another scenario. There's such a thing as an investigative grand jury.
00:51Where what they do is, they want to see what the evidence is, but they can't necessarily call all the witnesses they want because the witnesses don't have to cooperate with prosecutors.
01:01So what they do in an investigative grand jury is they subpoena them, and they're required to talk.
01:07And then the prosecutors can use the information to say, do we have a charge here or not? Or do we want to go forward?
01:13So that's the other way of looking at this.
01:15There was a report in CNN, though, that says that they have, they being the federal prosecutors, have interviewed several witnesses.
01:23They have interviewed several witnesses in preparation for this grand jury, which makes me feel like they are very far down the road in their investigation.
01:32I think this is probably why they're doing it.
01:35Now, they will bring in some of the accusers who have already come forward publicly.
01:44They may bring in others that haven't.
01:46But I would be stunned if Cassie is not among the witnesses who testify here.
01:52Right.
01:53I mean, she would seem to be a central figure in this grand jury probe.
01:58Yeah. Think about it. But there's Cassie, who you're right, would be a central figure.
02:03There are seven other lawsuits besides Cassie's where people have made allegations.
02:10Almost anyone in those lawsuits would be.
02:12They may call all of them.
02:13Would be. Yeah.
02:14They may call all of them.
02:15I mean, as you stated, Harvey, I mean, our law enforcement sources have confirmed that a grand jury has been convened in the case.
02:24Witnesses and accusers will be testifying for the grand jury and other evidence will be presented.
02:34Currently, according to our sources, Diddy is being investigated by the feds for sex trafficking, narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses.
02:48As you said, you know, this could all lead to a potential criminal indictment that, you know, could send Diddy to prison for a very long time.
02:58So these are potentially, potentially very serious charges that Diddy faces.
03:05Yeah. The question, where are the feds right now in the investigation?
03:09What are the chances that this grand jury will hand down an indictment?
03:14And what does it mean for Diddy?
03:16Someone who has been through this process as a former federal prosecutor, Andrew Cherkasky.
03:22He is joining us right now just to talk about what is going on at the Southern District of New York as they prepare for this grand jury.
03:31Andrew, welcome to TMZ Live.
03:33Thank you. And things couldn't be getting worse for Diddy here.
03:37I think this is a turn of events that is essentially a nightmare scenario for him.
03:41So a lot to unpack here.
03:43Why don't we start with why do you why did the prosecutors choose a grand jury rather than just outright charging him?
03:51Well, a grand jury has an important function in a federal criminal case in essentially a requirement to have this grand jury meet in order to vote to have a indictment on many of these charges.
04:06And so they are going to essentially take evidence and through that evidence, either decide to indict or return what's called a no bill, which essentially says that there wasn't enough evidence.
04:16I have almost never seen a federal prosecutor bring a case to a grand jury and that result in a no bill.
04:24So they say that it's as easy as anything that can be done in the law.
04:28And when federal prosecutors get themselves involved in a grand jury, the expectation overwhelmingly is that there will be an indictment.
04:37Diddy's team is not there. They don't have any say.
04:39They can't be there.
04:40They're not there. And the grand jurors are kept very secret.
04:45But once the indictment, if they go forward, as you say, they normally do get an indictment after that is done.
04:54What what's the next step for them? And do you anticipate in from your knowledge in putting together these cases?
05:02Cassie has to be someone that they want to bring in.
05:06If if not, what reason would they have to not have Cassie sit for the grand jury?
05:10Well, see, so the grand jury itself is technically non-adversarial, although it's highly biased because, like you said, Diddy and his team are not allowed to be there.
05:19Now, he is invited generally to make a statement, although that almost never happens.
05:24You you take your right to remain silent and you keep quiet at the at the at the grand jury phase.
05:30I would think that anybody who's going to be looked at as a true victim, a named victim in this case will testify or provide some sort of statement to the grand jury.
05:40The one outlying kind of consideration here is that the feds have to bring charges that are federally outlawed as opposed to state offenses.
05:50And so in order to do that, they're going to have to draw some sort of connection to an interstate commerce,
05:55some sort of human trafficking that went from state to state, some sort of financial crime that crossed state borders or some sort of gun or drug offense that crossed state borders.
06:05So that could limit the the victim pool, so to say, to a more narrow group of folks.
06:12But I think that's the biggest hurdle the feds are going to have to get over here is is making it a federal case as opposed to things like a state case like what we saw in that domestic violence video.
06:21Well, that's what I want to get into right now, because the domestic violence video, the statute of limitations is run on that.
06:27But that is squarely a state case, a state of California. That's not going to happen because of the statute.
06:34However, what I'm wondering is this. Do you think prosecutors are going to try and show that to grand jurors because it is so incendiary that it it would almost make it impossible not to indict him, even though it's a state case?
06:56Do you think they're going to try to squeeze that in? Because that is something that's hard to look past.
07:02Well, I think they'll absolutely try to use it both in a grand jury and if this moves forward to a trial in some sort of way.
07:08Now, you guys know that a evidence that is not charged, other wrongs, crimes or acts are typically not admissible in order to prove the propensity or the penchant for somebody to commit bad or past acts.
07:22Exactly. But you can use those uncharged acts to prove some sort of larger motive, a modus operandi or a general intent, a general demeanor in terms of how he may have behaved around certain individuals.
07:36So I think that they're going to make strenuous arguments for that to be considered at just about every stage in this case, assuming they have a loop to bring Cassie into this case, remembering, of course, that it has to be a federally based offense as opposed to the potential that Cassie is excluded from this case because perhaps it was only state based offenses.
07:56That's kind of the big unknown that I have at this point.
07:59Andrew, I don't know if this is too tentative a connection. In that video, she's leaving the hotel.
08:05And what we don't know yet, because she didn't even explain this in her lawsuit, why she was fleeing the hotel.
08:11She just described the fact that he went after her, but she did say that one of these freak off sex parties had gone on the night before.
08:19Now, that would be something I think the feds would be interested in.
08:22If there were people that went across state lines.
08:24Right. If there were people that went across state lines, is that a way that they could get that video relevant to the case that they're presenting?
08:31The closer that video and the actions that we see in that video are connected to a charged crime, the more likely that's coming in.
08:39And so if you take kind of the word that the night before, within hours of that event, there was one of these freak offs.
08:46We've heard other information that these freak offs involved prostitutes or involved drugs, potentially even guns being present.
08:54Now we start to see that they might be able to draw a connection to a federal crime there.
08:59So if he had paid somebody, perhaps flown them in.
09:02And that's what we're seeing in some of these other allegations, is that he was flying people from one location to the next in order to commit future acts such as sexual assault or other types of crimes.
09:13So they have to draw that video as close as they can to other crimes that are actually charged to give them the greatest possibility to be able to use that.
09:22What if Cassie is if there is an indictment and Cassie is listed as a unindicted co-conspirator because she may have participated.
09:35She was with Diddy for many, many years.
09:39She may have participated in some of these alleged crimes and, you know, she she might have an immunity deal.
09:48I'll let you speak to that.
09:50Yeah, I think that's an interesting point to make the idea that she was around a lot of this over many years.
09:56Now, reading into her past lawsuits and understanding her case, as we do at this point, I think that she would have a strong defense to say that she was essentially compelled to be in that position.
10:06So less involved as a co-conspirator or as an accomplice to these other crimes.
10:11That could be something the defense makes a big deal of.
10:14But I have no doubt she'll have her lawyers protect her as best as possible.
10:18Yeah. Interesting. Okay. All right.
10:20To be continued. Andrew, thank you. Really appreciate the time.
10:22Thank you, guys.