Sean Combs, the rapper and multi-industry mogul, known as “Puff Daddy” then “Diddy,” who captured the hip hop zeitgeist in the mid-1990s and played a key role in mainstreaming the genre, was found guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution but was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, the most serious charge in the case and what federal prosecutors spent six weeks trying to prove to the jury to no avail.
On Wednesday, the foreman of the 12 person jury read their decisions on a verdict after deliberating for 12 hours and decided that the government’s argument that he was at the center of a criminal enterprise run through the company he founded and where he was CEO, Combs Global (now renamed Combs Enterprises) was not used for nefarious purposes that ultimately led to the trafficking of multiple women.
For six weeks at the federal courthouse on Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan, the all-women team of federal prosecutors presented dozens of witnesses and showed evidence that failed to convince the jury of New Yorkers that Combs’ was guilty of using his company as a criminal enterprise and conspiring with his associates and employees to traffic and abuse women; two of those women Combs dated while allegedly trapping them in a cycle of abuse and reward for years. Both R&B singer Casandra Ventura, who as an artist goes by Cassie, and a woman using the pseudonym “Jane,” took the witness stand to deliver marathons of testimony detailing the abuse they suffered at the hands of Combs.
On the racketeering charge, the jury was tasked with deciding if the wealthy mogul had conspired with at least one of his staffers or another individual to commit a crime with the rapper.
The list of crimes prosecutors alleged Combs committed and detailed at length over the past six week were as follows: Sex trafficking: the feds stated that he Combs and his associates lured women victims and coerced them into sex acts, sometimes with commercial sex workers; Forced labor: those women were allegedly subjected to forced labor within the enterprise as participants in days-long “freak-offs”; Kidnapping: Combs’ assistant, Capricorn Clark, testified she was taken from her home in the pre-dawn hours and driven to rapper Kid Cudi’s Hollywood Hills home, where Combs broke in amid a romantic rage; Arson: Following that break-in, Kid Cudi’s Porsche was bombed with a Molotov cocktail; Bribery: Personnel from an L.A. hotel said Combs, working with his Chief of Staff, paid $100,000 to gain security footage of him beating Ventura in a hallway; Obstruction of justice: Prosecutors claim the enterprise sought to obstruct justice to protect itself; Narcotics offenses: Drugs were allegedly procured by staffers and brought to Combs for his “freak-off” sex parties.
Combs’ crackerjack team of attorneys gave him a robust defense, cross-examining witnesses to the point of admonishment from the judge for alleged bullying. During his closing statements, Combs’ lead attorney Marc Agnifilo told jurors that the notion the defendant used his company as a racketeering enterprise is part of a “fake trial” and that the feds are distorting consensual, non-traditional sex like into criminal acts.
The defense opted not to call any witnesses after the prosecution rested its case on Wednesday of last week, stating that it would only submit new evidence. The same day, Combs told Judge Subramanian that he would not be taking the stand to testify in his defense.
Agnifilo framed the events on the 23rd floor of the federal courthouse on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan over the past six weeks of testimony as a “tale of two trials.” One involved the federal prosecutors twisting the nature of Combs’ non-traditional but consensual sex life into the endgame of multiple criminal acts, he said. At the “other” trial, the top attorney told the court, witnesses spoke of the “successful Black entrepreneur” who is a respected member of his community. Of the two trials he spoke of, there was “one from the mouths of prosecutors” and one that consisted of evidence, he told the jurors.
Sentencing for Combs, who could face up to life in prison, will take place on in the coming weeks.
Outside the Pearl Street courthouse, the sea of content creators, Diddy fans, rap world personalities and even some mainstream media types — many of whom have come to the courthouse every day of Combs’ trial — erupted when the verdict was learned.
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