Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their heated summations in the sex trafficking trial of the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday. After the lead defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, accused the government of “targeting” his client, the lead prosecutor, Maurene Comey, pushed back, saying the defense was blaming the government for the crimes Mr. Combs allegedly committed. The judge will give the jury its formal instructions on Monday morning.
“Tossing up excuse after excuse for his inexcusable behavior,” a visibly enraged assistant US attorney, Maurene Comey, the daughter of the former FBI director James Comey, fumed in her rebuttal argument on Friday afternoon, arguing that the defense was trying to shift the blame from the defendant onto the government.
Mr. Agnifilo had told the jury at the end of his four hour long summation that jurors should consider the “gaping” lack of evidence in the case against his client, and that the government had targeted Mr. Combs when they brought the charges, adding, “you can’t trust the government.”
The sprawling five count indictment was brought under the Biden administration in September 2024, less than a year after the rapper’s former girlfriend Cassandra Ventura filed an explosive lawsuit, allegeding years of physical and sexual abuse.
The lawsuit was settled within 24 hours and the explosive complaint withdrawn. Ms. Ventura testified that she was paid about $20 million. But, according to the defense, prosecutors had taken notice.
Mr. Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking and two counts of transportation for the purpose of prostitution. The rapper pleaded not guilty to all charges and faces life behind bars if convicted on all counts.
The key allegation at the heart of the case is sex trafficking. Prosecutors accuse Mr. Combs of coercing his two former girlfriends, Ms. Ventura, and a woman, who testified under pseudonym Jane, into having sex with male prostitutes during drug-fueled, hours and sometimes days-long sex sessions he called “Freak Offs,” while he filmed them and pleasured himself. Mr. Combs, prosecutors claim, used coercion tactics like violence, financial dependence, and blackmail to make the women perform for him.
But Mr. Agnifilo pointed out that there was no complainant in the criminal case, and that no one had called the police on Mr. Combs. The federal government, he said, began investigating his client only after Ms. Ventura had brought her lawsuit, suggesting that the civil allegations inspired the criminal charges.
Four months after the swift settlement of Ms. Ventura lawsuit, special agents, in March of 2024, raided Mr. Combs’ estates in Los Angeles and in Miami, seizing, among other things, several guns, rather small amounts of drugs, such as ketamine, over 1000 bottles of baby oil and hundreds of boxes of the lubricant Astroglide. Mr. Combs was arrested in the lobby of the luxury Park Hatt hotel in Manhattan and indicted last September. He’s been locked up in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn ever since.
At the beginning of his summation, Mr. Agnifilo mocked the findings of the raids saying that “the government executes these search warrants, hundreds of agents, special response team, and I guess it’s all worth it because they found the Astroglide. Whew, I feel better already. Artificial lubricant… The streets of America are safe from the Astroglide.”
“They found the baby oil. They got, like, what, five Valium pills. Way to go, fellas… They took Astroglide and they took baby oil, and that ends up being the evidence in this case.” The attorney walked up and down as he addressed the jury, often wandering away from the podium, while Mr. Combs observed the jurors attentively.
“They go into the man’s bedroom. They go into the man’s most private life. Where is the crime scene? The crime scene is your private sex life. That’s the crime scene. And keep in mind something else — nobody invited the government. Nobody went to the police,” Mr. Agnifilo said, arguing that instead of calling 911, the alleged victims called civil plaintiff’s lawyers, and that the case was essentially about money, love and jealousy.
Mr. Agnifilo called the tumultuous relationship between Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs, who dated each other from 2007 until 2018, and whom he was caught beating on video, a “great modern love story” plagued by infidelity by both partners.
The defense’s summation was humorous at times and jurors could be seen smiling, but it was also odd, such as when Mr. Agnifilo compared anal sex to strawberry lemonade, saying “some people like it, some people don’t.”
He argued that Ms. Ventura could not have possibly been coerced into having sex, because she “actually liked sex.”
“Good for her, she’s beautiful … She’s a 10,” the attorney said as some people in the courtroom cringed.
On Thursday, another assistant US attorney, Christy Salvik had argued in her summation that it did not matter if the women had consented to the sex sessions; what mattered were the incidents when they did not consent and when Mr. Combs forced them to do it anyway, effectively turning his girlfriends into sex workers.
One of the incidents, the prosecution cited, was recorded on surveillance cameras in the now infamous hotel video from March 2016, which shows Mr. Combs running after Ms. Ventura in a towel and socks, as she attempts to get into an elevator and leave the hotel, the InterContinental in Los Angeles. Mr. Combs throws her to the ground and kicks her with his feet, before he starts dragging her back to the hotel room.
The jury had seen this video numerous times during the trial, and Ms. Slavik showed it again on Thursday, saying that Mr. Combs had beaten Ms. Ventura because she wanted to leave a Freak Off session with an escort called Jules, which the three were having in the hotel room.
Mr. Agnifilo, who also showed the video again on Friday, had a different interpretation of the footage, saying that the incident had not been about sex trafficking but about domestic violence, and the couple had fought over a phone. He showed the video and pointed out how Mr. Combs does in fact at a certain point take a cellphone from Ms. Ventura, which according to the defense was his.
The attorney also noted that the security guard, Israel Florez, who comes out of the elevator and walks out into the scene, is not “reacting like there’s any kind of physical injury” on Ms. Ventura’s face. He was seeking to disprove prosecutors’ claim that Mr. Combs had already hit her inside the room, and so she had “a black eye or the makings of a black eye.”
After the incident, Ms. Ventura did not call the police, despite her friend, Kerry Morgan, who also testified during the trial, telling her to do so.
Another incident that the attorney addressed took place in June 2024 and involved the other alleged victim, Jane, who dated Mr. Combs from 2021 to 2024. Jane testified that she fought with Mr. Combs one evening at her house, and as he tied his shoe, she slammed his head into a marble countertop. In response, Mr. Combs knocked down four doors in her house as she tried to escape his rage, eventually catching her in the garden, where he hit her in the face.
After the beating, Mr. Combs told Jane that he did not want to “ruin his night,” and according to prosecutors forced her to put make-up on her injuries, take a pill of ecstasy, and perform sex with a male escort he’d summoned. Jane said that she did not want to have sex, but was scared of Mr. Combs and obliged. Mr. Combs was also paying for her rent (he is still paying for her rent today). And Jane testified that she was worried he would stop the payments, if she didn’t fulfill his sexual desires.
Prosecutors allege that by paying her rent and threatening to take away the payments if she didn’t have sex with male escorts, Mr. Combs committed an act of sex trafficking. “That’s coercion,” Ms. Comey said later during her rebuttal.
But Mr. Agnifilo argued that the incident took place in June 2024, when the investigation against Mr. Combs was well underway, three months before his indictment and his arrest, and questioned if maybe Jane had not been truthful about her motivations and possibly instigated the fight with the intention to sue.
“So much about this (incident) makes no sense,” the attorney argued, listing various details, like the fact that Jane changed into a different dress before she ran out of the house and hid in the streets for two hours. She then came back to the house, and continued fighting with Mr. Combs, who brutally hit her in the garden.
The attorney also presented the jury with a photograph Mr. Combs had taken with his employees, showing a group of people smiling at the camera. He asked the jurors to “look at it and think of a word or phrase that comes to mind.”
“Joy? Family? Home? Belonging? Diversity?” The attorney asked. Racketeering enterprise? This — this — is your racketeering enterprise, folks.”
The racketeering conspiracy charge requires the prosecution to prove that there was “criminal enterprise” with a common purpose and members, who helped Mr. Combs commit the various criminal acts he is charged with.
Prosecutors have compared Mr. Combs’ alleged enterprise to a mafia organization, equating his chief-of-staff, Kristrina Khorram, to an underboss, his bodyguards to capos and his personal assistants to “foot soldiers.”
The jury saw flight records, bank statements, and text messages that showed that Ms. Khorram had booked flights for the escorts, which were expensed through Mr. Combs’ company. Several assistants testified that they had “lists” of things to bring to set up the hotel rooms before the Freak Off sessions, like baby oil and astroglide and drugs.
Furthermore, his bodyguards, according to witness testimony and more text messages, had done damage control after Ms. Ventura was badly beaten by Mr. Combs. One time, one guard, whose name is D Rock, took her to a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles to stitch a wound on her forehead, after Mr. Combs slammed her head into a bed frame.
The defense reminded the jury that Ms. Ventura had also referred to D Rock as her “brother” and close friend.
Mr. Agnifilo argued that no one had been charged as a co-conspirator, and no one had testified that they consciously committed criminal acts. Instead the employees, who were called to the stand, mostly said that they enjoyed working for Mr. Combs, saying that his client “makes people’s worlds. It’s not just business. He gives people a home.”
Prosecutors did not raise objections during the defense’s summations, but after the attorney said they had targeted the defendant, Ms. Salvik asked for “curative instruction” to the jury.
During a short break, when the jury had left the courtroom, she called the defense’s argument “improper” and reminded the judge that the defense had filed pre-trial motions in regards to their claim of “selective prosecution,” which the judge had denied.
“I think I’m certainly permitted to attack the integrity of the investigation,” Mr. Agnifilo said in his own defense. “I mean one of the things I have the right to do is to say that they cut corners and that the jury should view the quality of the evidence in light of the corners that were cut. I think it’s appropriate to point out to the jury that they didn’t have a live complainant… I didn’t say selective prosecution… I stayed away from it.”
A long moment of silence followed as the district judge, Arun Subramanian, reviewed the transcript and deliberated. He decided to instruct the jury.
“The decision of the government to investigate an individual or the decision of a grand jury to indict an individual is none of your concern,” Judge Subramanian told the jurors. “The only concern this jury has is whether or not the government has or has not proven each element of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Then Ms. Comey walked up to the podium and attempted in her rebuttal to plug the holes Mr. Agnifilo had poked into her case. Her voice was agitated as she switched from reading her pre-written arguments to glancing at a stack of index cards, telling the jury that her team had embraced the burden of proof and “we have met it here.”
She said that the defense was trying to separate the domestic violence from the sex trafficking, but that the physical abuse was a key element of the coercion tactic.
“Being a domestic abuser is not a defense to sex trafficking,” Ms. Comey argued. “If part of the abuse is making your partner participate in a commercial sex act, you’re guilty of sex trafficking.”
“Make no mistake, this trial was about how, in Sean Combs’ world, ‘no’ was never an option,” Ms. Comey said
She said that Mr. Combs was trying to “wiggle out” of the transportation for the purpose of prostitution charges by arguing that he never paid any of the escorts for sex but for their time.
Mr. Agnifilo had argued that the elite male escort agency, which Mr. Combs used to find the escorts for his freak offs, Cowboys for Angels, was operating a business, which it couldn’t if the escorts were prostitutes. The defense also reminded the jury that the two male escorts who testified had said that they would also engage in conversations with Mr. Combs and his girlfriends during their visits.
“Common sense alone shows you that when the defendant flew those escorts out, it was not for their scintillating conversation. It was for sex,” Ms. Comey pushed back. “He flew escorts across the country, watched them have sex while he masturbated and then he handed them cash.” She said the defense’s argument “doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”
“For 20 years, the defendant got away with his crimes,” Ms. Comey concluded her summation. “That ends in this courtroom… The defendant is not a god. He is a person. And in this courtroom, he stands equal before the law. Overwhelming evidence proves his guilt. It is time to hold him accountable. Find him guilty.”
Sitting in the courtroom, behind their father and next Mr. Combs’ 85-year-old mother, Janice Combs, were six of the defendant’s children: his twin daughters, D’Lila and Jessie Combs, 18, Chance Combs, 18, and their brothers, Christian “King Combs,” 28, Justin Combs, 31, and their step brother, Quincy Brown, 34.
While his mother attended every day of the trial, since it began with jury selection on May 5, his children had skipped some days, especially during the sexually graphic parts of the testimony. But for closing arguments the entire family showed their support. On Thursday, when prosecutors held their summation, the Mirror reported that the twins left the federal courthouse, “wiping away tears.”
The rapper’s son “King Combs” released a new EP on Friday, “Never Stop,” featuring a song called “Diddy Free,” which opens with the line “n—as ain’t going to sleep till we see Diddy free.”
The EP is co-produced by Kanye West, one of the few celebrities who has shown public support for Mr. Combs, and even visited the trial earlier this month, as the Sun reported.
“He is innocent. He sits there innocent,” Mr. Agnifilo had said at the end of his summation about his client. “Return him to his family who have been waiting for him.”
The judge will instruct the jury on Monday morning. A verdict could come as soon as next week.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
