This report includes descriptions of physical and sexual violence.
As the jury began deliberating in the high-profile federal criminal trial of Sean Combs on Monday, a clear narrative struggle came into focus, one that will decide whether or not those jurors at a lower Manhattan federal court will find Combs guilty.
The hip-hop mogul is charged with sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy. The trial centered on allegations involving two of his former girlfriends, the singer Casandra "Cassie" Ventura and a woman who testified on the stand under the pseudonym "Jane." He has pleaded not guilty.
Throughout the nearly two-month proceedings, the government painted Combs as violent, domineering and possessive, a tyrannical figure with vast resources who forced or coerced his partners into illegal sex acts across cities and using his businesses to orchestrate them. The defense did not dispute the domestic abuse that both women and other witnesses testified about; instead, it has countered that the sexual encounters Ventura and Jane had with male sex workers under Combs' direction, which he frequently filmed, were entirely consensual.
By contrast, both women testified that they were coerced into participating in those marathon sessions, which Combs often referred to as "freak-offs," "hotel nights" or "wild king nights."
Former federal prosecutor and co-founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers Neama Rahmani tells NPR that the three sets of charges against Combs are quite disparate in how easy or difficult they may be to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
"The easiest, of course, is the prostitution, of the Mann Act violation," Rahmani says. (The prosecution provided receipts of various escorts' travel across state lines as well as their hotel bookings.)
"Probably the most difficult is the sex trafficking," Rahmani continues, "not because of the elements, but because of the potential defense of consent in proving force, fraud or coercion. Racketeering, or RICO, is the broadest. And there are many potential RICO predicate acts such as bribery, extortion, prostitution, drug distribution and forced labor. So the jurors, with respect to racketeering, will have to find a criminal enterprise. They're going to have to find an unlawful agreement [between Combs and multiple former employees], and they'll have to find two or more racketeering acts. The fact that it's so broad may lead to the possibility of a consensus on one or more of the easier predicate acts."
"Racketeering conspiracy does have a lot of elements," he says. "The defense spent a lot of time saying that there was no enterprise and this was just Combs doing things on his own. These were all personal expenses. Then they attack the conspiracy, saying that there was no unlawful agreement. Obviously, the government put on six different executive or personal assistants of Diddy, and they were actively involved in setting up the hotels for the free coffees and procuring some of the legal and prescription drugs. Some of them were involved in the extortion and the bribery, even though they weren't called as witnesses."
In all, 34 witnesses testified against Combs over six weeks. The first witness to appear on the stand was Ventura, who took the stand pregnant. She alleged that Combs had repeatedly physically assaulted her, raped her, trafficked her and sought to control every aspect of her personal and professional life. (Ventura, who dated Combs on-and-off from 2007 to 2018, filed a civil suit against the mogul in November 2023 that was settled out of court a day later for $20 million, an amount she confirmed during her testimony in this trial.) She painted her relationship with Combs as coercive and abusive, and said that a hotel surveillance video from 2016, in which Combs can be seen violently attacking her in the hallway, shows her trying to escape a "freak-off."
Across six days of testimony that followed, "Jane" painted a similar picture. She alleged that her relationship with Combs, which began in 2021, oscillated between "love bombing" and "sexual exploitation" all the way up to his arrest and indictment in September 2024. Combs introduced her to "hotel nights" that could run anywhere from 12 and 30 hours. "Jane" said she became financially dependent on Combs, and that if she tried to resist a "hotel night" he would bring up those payments. "I couldn't say no to him," she told the court.
To build its case, the prosecution presented more than 30 other witnesses — including several former employees — and additional evidence in an attempt to show that Combs was manipulating these women into unlawful sex acts and also using his business empire to cover up related crimes that extend to bribery, obstruction of justice and drug distribution.
As the prosecution's case drew to a close on a week ago Monday, defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo told Judge Arun Subramanian that his team would not call any witnesses, and that it would present evidence that Ventura and "Jane" were willing partners and not victims.
Last Tuesday was a whirlwind day in court, as both the prosecution and defense rested their cases within hours of one another. The government's case, which lasted six weeks, sought to assemble its argument around trafficking. Prosecutors aimed to persuade the jury that Combs used his power and influence to move Ventura, "Jane" and sex workers across state lines to engage in "freak-offs" — and keep it clandestine through coercion.
Jurors were shown receipts, phone records and text messages referring to some of those interstate trips. They also heard testimony from agents of Homeland Security Investigations who raided Combs' properties in March 2024 and found guns, drugs and thousands of bottles of baby oil and lubricant. Multiple male sex workers were called to testify, as were employees who worked cleanup for "freak-offs." The jury was shown video clips and screengrabs of some "freak-offs," though this evidence was shielded from the rest of the courtroom, including the press.
After a lunch break on Tuesday, one attorney on the defense team, Alexandra Shapiro, moved for acquittal on all five charges Combs faces — two counts of sex trafficking, two counts of transportation for prostitution and one count of racketeering conspiracy — saying that the government failed to meet the burden of proof. During the exchange, Combs told Judge Subramanian that he was "doing an excellent job."
The defense — which revealed that Combs would not take the stand as part of its case that afternoon — then wrapped up in under 30 minutes. The evidence it presented to the jury seemed set on underscoring a narrative established during opening arguments and reinforced across several cross-examinations: that the artist and businessman may be an unsavory character, and even a criminal, but that he is not guilty of the things he is currently charged with. The defense argued that his sex life was "unconventional" and toxic, but that his relationships were consensual and not coercive. In its brief presentation, the defense shared text messages from Ventura to Combs saying she loved him and entered another document as evidence pointing out minor inconsistencies in the testimony of several government witnesses. "Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case," defense attorney Teny Geragos told the jury during opening arguments. "You are not here to judge him for his sexual preferences."
At the end of the week, both teams delivered closing arguments that tried to bolster their respective framings. In her remarks Thursday, prosecution attorney Christy Slavik outlined the government's case, painting Combs as a powerful figure who used violence and intimidation to get whatever he wanted. Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo did not dispute the violence, but also sought to reframe Combs and his partners; he called the relationship between Combs and Cassie "a great modern love story." While acknowledging Combs' "swinger's lifestyle" as unconventional, Agnifilo claimed none of the prosecution's witnesses were "part of an enterprise."
In a rebuttal from prosecutor Maurene Comey, the attorney alleged that Combs' pattern of violence amounted to a criminal conspiracy spanning two decades, that he believed himself to be above the law and that it is the court's responsibility to hold him accountable. "In his mind, he was untouchable, a god among men … and who would stand up to a god?" she said. After its six-week presentation, the government is now asking the jury to take that stand.
Jury deliberations are set to continue on Tuesday morning.
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