Prosecutors have spent the final month attempting to convict Sean “Diddy” Combs underneath an organized crime legislation normally deployed to go after mobsters and cartels. Making an attempt to stay the touchdown throughout closing arguments, a authorities lawyer used the gangland language of “kingdoms” and “foot troopers” as she zeroed in on Combs’ alleged racketeering enterprise.
Assistant U.S. Legal professional Christy Slavik delivered the closing argument on Thursday (June 26) for the prosecution’s case towards Combs, who’s accused of utilizing violence, bribery and blackmail to coerce ladies into collaborating in marathon intercourse exhibits dubbed “freak-offs.” Combs says his intercourse events have been solely consensual.
Combs is charged underneath the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, generally generally known as “RICO,” a strong instrument that enables prosecutors to tie collectively numerous prison acts right into a single “enterprise.” The statute is historically used to convict mobsters and cartels, but it surely’s additionally been wielded in recent years towards alleged sexual predators like R. Kelly and Nxivm founder Keith Raniere.
Slavik centered closely on Combs’ supposed prison enterprise as she tried to persuade the jury to convict the music mogul of RICO violations on Thursday. She argued that Combs sat atop a big, organized syndicate and described his staff as “loyal lieutenants” and “foot troopers” — phrases usually related to mafia capos who report back to gang bosses.
“The defendant was on the high of this enterprise,” Slavik stated, in line with CNN. “Bear in mind, it’s his kingdom. Everybody was there to serve him.”
To convict Combs underneath RICO, the jury must discover that the rapper and his associates dedicated at the very least two underlying crimes collectively. Slavik argued that there’s proof of Combs’ enterprise partaking in an entire host of unlawful acts, together with distributing medicine for freak-offs, bribing a hotel security guard with $100,000 for surveillance footage of Combs assaulting his then-girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, and setting Kid Cudi’s car on fire.
Maybe most significantly, Slavik stated Combs and his staff dedicated the underlying crime of intercourse trafficking — which he’s charged individually with — by forcing Ventura and one other nameless ex-girlfriend generally known as “Jane” to take part within the freak-offs.
Slavik informed the jury that whereas each Ventura and Jane might have agreed to among the freak-offs — dayslong resort room events the place Combs would masturbate whereas watching the ladies have intercourse with male escorts — many of those occasions have been clearly coerced.
The prosecutor stated Combs blackmailed each ladies into collaborating in freak-offs by threatening to launch their intercourse tapes. Slavik argued the rapper additionally plied the ladies with medicine to make them compliant and manipulated them with cash — by paying Jane’s lease and threatening to cease until she complied, and by controlling Ventura’s music profession.
Combs moreover used violence, Slavik stated, to site visitors the ladies by making them suppose they needed to take part in freak-offs in the event that they didn’t wish to get harm. The prosecutor pointed to Jane’s testimony that she gave oral intercourse to an escort in 2024 after Combs dragged her by her hair and choked her, and claims from Ventura and quite a few corroborating witnesses that Combs regularly beat her all through the last decade they dated.
“All of it comes right down to this — what selection did Cassie have ultimately?” Slavik stated. “Considered by way of all the context of their relationship, Cassie didn’t have the liberty to make voluntary grownup decisions.”
Combs’ protection attorneys will get the possibility to make their very own closing argument to the jury on Friday (June 27), once they’ll seemingly say Ventura and Jane participated within the freak-offs willingly.
Prosecutors will get a ultimate probability to handle the jury with a rebuttal argument after Combs’ attorneys end on Friday; the choose will then learn out prolonged authorized directions. The jury might start deliberating late on Friday, or once they return from the weekend on Monday (June 30).