A lawyer for Sean “Diddy” Combs delivered his closing pitch within the rap mogul’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial in a lot the way in which the protection started over a month in the past: by telling jurors that Combs and his girlfriends had been “swingers” whose intercourse was at all times consensual.
Marc Agnifilo, one of many many protection attorneys representing Combs, urged a jury in New York federal courtroom to acquit the musician on Friday (June 27). Prosecutors had already given their closing argument the day prior to this, searching for a conviction primarily based on prices that Combs used violence, cash and blackmail to drive his girlfriends to have intercourse with escorts throughout dayslong resort events he known as “freak-offs.”
Agnifilo stated Combs’ freak-offs didn’t come wherever near intercourse trafficking, in line with CNN. As a substitute, he argued, the proof through the seven-week trial confirmed that each the singer Cassie Ventura and an nameless ex-girlfriend often called “Jane” wished to have intercourse with escorts.
“They’re swingers,” Agnifilo advised the jury. “They’re avowedly swingers. That is their way of life.”
The protection lawyer pointed to text messages launched all through the trial wherein Ventura and Jane conveyed enthusiasm for the freak-offs, in addition to movies from the occasions the place “the music’s good, the temper appears pleasant and easygoing, and everyone seems to be smiling,” he stated.
Whereas acknowledging that there was some home violence in Combs and Ventura’s relationship (a now-infamous resort surveillance video from 2016 makes it troublesome for the protection to flee that reality), Agnifilo stated the pair shared “an excellent fashionable love story.”
Agnifilo argued that Ventura and Jane are solely saying now that the freak-offs had been coerced for one easy cause: cash. He reminded the jury that Ventura first put the highlight on Combs by bringing a $30 million civil lawsuit in opposition to him in November 2023, which shortly settled for $20 million.
“Cassie Ventura sued Sean Combs for $30 million as a result of Sean Combs has $30 million,” Agnifilo stated. “This very investigation got here out of that civil case. No $30 million, no lawsuit, no legal case. That’s why we’re right here. We’re right here due to cash.”
Along with intercourse trafficking, Combs is charged with utilizing his music empire to function a legal syndicate as outlined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — the federal “RICO” statute usually deployed in opposition to mobsters and cartels.
To convict Combs underneath RICO, the jury should discover that the rapper and his underlings conspired to commit no less than two underlying crimes. Prosecutors have stated intercourse trafficking will be considered one of these crimes, as can drug-dealing, bribery and arson.
Nevertheless, Agnifilo stated bluntly on Friday that Combs is “not a racketeer.”
The protection lawyer stated Combs solely purchased narcotics for private use and didn’t promote them (“he clearly has a drug downside,” defined Agnifilo), and argued that it wasn’t bribery when the rapper purchased the notorious 2016 surveillance video as a result of he was simply making an attempt to guard his fame.
Concerning arson, Agnifilo denied the bombshell allegations that Combs deliberate to have a Molotov cocktail thrown into Kid Cudi’s Porsche as a result of jealousy over the guy rapper’s relationship with Ventura in 2012.
“There is no such thing as a proof that he had something to do with the Porsche,” Agnifilo stated.
Prosecutors obtained to have the final phrase with a rebuttal argument after Agnifilo’s closing wrapped on Friday. The jury will return Monday to listen to authorized directions after which start deliberating — a course of that may take wherever from an hour to every week, relying on how lengthy it takes the 12 New Yorkers to agree on a verdict.