The Justice Department has indicted one of the most successful and well-known African-American music producers, Sean Combs, for using his music business to host parties in which women were coerced to engage in sex with male prostitutes and to use violence and threats of violence to maintain silence and compliance.
These salacious allegations have resulted in Combs facing decades in prison and being denied bond before trial.
I do not comment on the charges or the underlying facts except to say this:
Instead of treating Combs as a violent thug, the Justice Department is charging him with racketeering – the anti-mafia law.
Historically, organized crime would take over businesses in certain industries. The racketeering laws were enacted to go after the businesses and their owners and the wealth those businesses produced. The idea was to deter organized criminals from engaging in business — whose real purpose was unlawful. The Government would seize the assets of the businesses and take assets from the recipients of the money.
In the Combs indictment, the Justice Department acknowledges that Combs’ businesses were to promote music and his brand. But they claim another purpose of the business was to throw his sex parties and because they claim that is a purpose of the business, they have a forfeiture allegation. In other words, the Government is claiming the decades-old business empire is inherently criminal in nature, and the Government can seize its assets because Combs threw these sex parties.
What strikes me as problematic is the obvious fact that the primary purpose of the business was legitimate. Combs was not promoting a worldwide prostitution ring and trafficking with hundreds or thousands of women. His business primarily was to make and promote music, and he has had a profound cultural influence. He also was allegedly a really bad guy with women in his circle. He was rich, and he used his money to get his desires met in ways that hurt people.
Our freedom depends on private property not reverting to the Government when people are accused of crimes.
The Governments we oppose– Russia and China– seize the assets of businesses of criminals — who are often the political opponents of those in power.
Combs should face justice for his alleged crimes. But the Government has no right to strip the wealth of a citizen even if he has committed crimes when the primary purpose of the business is legitimate.
In medieval England, Kings would take the homes and land of their aristocratic opponents. The Magna Carta — a document written 560 years before our Constitution — placed limits on the King’s power to do that.
Let’s not go backward and empower the President and the lawyers who work for him to take legitimate businesses away from Americans– even those who commit crimes.