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One day after a prosecutor called Sean Combs the “vicious” leader of a criminal enterprise, the music mogul’s lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, stood before a jury in lower Manhattan Friday and said his client was simply living a colorful “lifestyle” filled with swinger relationships with loving girlfriends, hotel threesomes, recreational drug use – and some regrettable domestic violence.
Pacing and speaking with animated hand gestures and sarcastic tones, Agnifilo blasted the government’s case as “fake” and “exaggerated.” He said it was an overreaching attempt to criminalize his client’s private sex life and claimed prosecutors were charging “personal use of drugs and threesomes as racketeering.”
A seasoned criminal defense lawyer known for representing other high-profile defendants such as Luigi Mangione and convicted Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere, Agnifilo said Combs was hardly a crime boss, rather someone who built “wonderful, sophisticated, real businesses that have stood the test of time.”
“Sean Combs has become something that is very, very hard to be. He is a self-made, successful, Black entrepreneur,” Agnifilo said. Maybe Combs’ former employees didn’t always like him, “but they loved him,” the lawyer argued.
With jurors sometimes laughing along with his lively performance, Agnifilo scoffed at the government’s focus on salacious details in the case. “Boxes of Astroglide, taken off the streets, whoo! I feel better already,” he said, referring to the Homeland Security agents who raided Combs’ homes last year. “Thank goodness for the special response team. They found the Astroglide! They found the baby oil! They found like five valium pills. Way to go fellas.”
He joked that America’s “streets are safe now,” and then turned to what he called the “real trial.” “This isn’t about a crime. This is about money,” Agnifilo argued, claiming Combs is the victim of shakedowns in civil court. He said jurors wouldn’t even be hearing the case if Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, hadn’t filed her bomshell sex trafficking and rape lawsuit against Combs in 2023. The case settled within 24 hours, and jurors later learned Ventura received a settlement.
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“She is sitting somewhere in the world with $30 million,” Agnifilo said of Ventura, referring to the $20 million settlement she received from Combs and the subsequent $10 million she received from the Los Angeles hotel where she was assaulted by Combs in 2016. (Jurors heard evidence during the trial that security guards at the hotel accepted a $100,000 cash “bribe” from Combs to cover up the hallway surveillance video showing the assault.)
“If you had to pick a winner in this whole thing, it’s hard not to pick Cassie,” Agnifilo said. He described Ventura as an “intense” and “unafraid” woman who made her own decisions and was enthusiastic about her unorthodox sex life with Combs. He even called her “gangster” for having a “burner phone” to hide some of her communications from Combs. “Cassie’s no joke, and that’s why he loved her,” the lawyer said. “She matched him. She was like him.”
Agnifilo called the couple’s relationship “a great modern love story,” getting choked up at one point while referencing texts they exchanged professing their love for one another. It was a stark statement given Ventura’s four days of gut-wrenching testimony about the many times Combs allegedly beat her during their decade-long relationship. On the witness stand, Ventura described Combs stomping on her face in the back of an Escalade in 2009 and kicking and punching her repeatedly over the years. She said he also threatened to release her intimate videos, harmed people she loved, and stifled her career to keep her under his control.
But Agnifilo didn’t shy away from Combs getting physical with Ventura. He said the defense fully “owned” the fact that Combs got violent at time. He said any aggression was fueled by jealousy and claims of infidelity – not Ventura trying to free herself from the drug-fueled threesomes with male escorts that the couple called “freak-offs.”
Turning to the now infamous video of Combs’ 2016 assault of Ventura inside the InterContinental Hotel, Agnifilo claimed it was a clear example of a domestic fight, not Ventura trying to escape a freak-off. He said the video showed Combs trying to retrieve a phone and that Combs was having a bad reaction to the drugs they ingested.
According to Agnifilo, messages leading up to the incident showed Ventura was actively engaged in planning the “freak-off” and wanted to be there. “She’s at a high level,” he argued, claiming she enjoyed threesomes too. “She’s not clutching her pearls.” He said the fact that Ventured returned to the suite afterward proved “this room was not a scary place.” (In her testimony, Ventura said only agreed to the freak-off at the InterContinental because Combs made it clear he wanted one, and she was worried that if she said no, he would cause problems for her just days before the March 2016 premiere of her movie, The Perfect Match.)
As Agnifilo worked Friday to dismantle the government’s case, he claimed prosecutors failed to prove Combs had anything to do with the Molotov cocktail planted in Kid Cudi’s Porsche in 2012 after Combs learned the fellow rapper was dating Ventura. Agnifilo admitted Combs had broken into Kid Cudi’s house to confront him face to face weeks earlier, saying that was more his “style.” He said Combs was a “fighter” who might engage in a “good old fashioned fist fight” but wouldn’t take the “cowardly” step of plotting a car bombing. “There is no evidence that he had anything to do with the Porsche,” Agnifilo said.
He also claimed there was no way Combs would have released any freak-off video to hurt anyone. He said the recordings weren’t degrading but showed “genuine intimacy” with everyone enjoying themselves. He said Combs was hardly “the only man in America making homemade porn.”
Turning to Combs’ relationship with Victim-2 in the government’s indictment, a model who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” Agnifilo said the single mom liked the “trappings” of Combs’ opulent lifestyle, including the luxury travel she could splash on her social media. He said Combs helped her financially after she got a “pretty bad deal” in terms of the child support paid by the father of her child.
“He’s picking up the ball for someone who seems to have dropped the ball with his own kid,” Agnifilo said, according to The Washington Post. The lawyer said the jury knew the identity of the child’s father, though that information was not made public to protect Jane’s identity.
Agnifilo claimed that like Cassie, Jane enjoyed the threesomes with male escorts that Combs introduced into their relationship after they started dating in 2020. The lawyer accused Jane of “lying” when she testified that Combs choked, kicked and repeatedly punched her during a blowout fight in June 2024 that led into an allegedly forced freak-off. He suggested Jane actually initiated the fight, which involved Combs breaking down doors in her house, because she knew Combs was under federal investigation.
At one point Friday, when jurors were dismissed for a break, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey complained to the judge about what she called Agnifilo’s “deeply objectionable” and “wholly inappropriate” commentary. Comey took issue with Agnifilo characterizing some of Combs’ alleged behavior as “misdemeanor” and said Agnifilo was out-of-bounds when he urged jurors to question why the government was “charging” Combs with arson. She said that was misleading considering arson is only one of the alleged predicate acts supporting the racketeering conspiracy charge.
“I think I’m allowed to be sarcastic,” Agnifilo responded. When jurors returned, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian told the panel it would be “improper” for them to consider prosecutors’ charging decisions. Agnifilo got in trouble again when he claimed the government “targeted” Combs. The judge said the comment was improper.
Combs, 55, was arrested last September and has pleaded not guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking, and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted as charged, he faces a minimum of 15 years and up to life in prison.
Before Agnifilo’s presentation started, Combs’ family members filed into the courtroom to lend support. Combs’ son Justin arrived wearing a shirt that said “Free Sean Combs,” a violation of courtroom rules. He quickly turned the shirt inside-out to be present in the gallery for Agnifilo’s fiery address.
As he worked to undermine the credibility of many of the government’s key witnesses, Agnifilo showed jurors an upbeat photo of Combs gathered with dozens of smiling employees, security staff and friends. The photo had been posted on Instagram by a former assistant who testified at trial under the pseudonym “Mia.” While Mia claimed Combs forced himself on her multiple times during her employment, including once when he allegedly raped her in a staff bunk bed at his house, Agnifilo argued Friday that she was lying. He said the photo showed she was happy to be part of Combs’ “family.”
“This, this is your racketeering enterprise, folks,” Agnifilo said as he mockingly referenced the happy photo. He said the image conjured words like “joy,” “diversity” and “belonging,” not a brutal crime syndicate.
Agnifilo also claimed another former staffer, Capricorn Clark, lied when she testified that Combs kidnapped her at gunpoint the day he allegedly broke into Mescudi’s house. Agnifilo said Clark would have taken “a trip to the moon” to please her boss, so there was no reason Combs needed to brandish a gun.
As he wrapped up his presentation, Agnifilo questioned why prosecutors never put any of Combs’ alleged co-conspirators on the witness stand, people like the mogul’s longtime chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, or members of his security staff. If the individuals had information helpful to prosecutors’ case, the government could have granted them immunity or extended deals for cooperation. “Nobody came into this courtroom and said, ‘I was a member of an enterprise, and let me tell you how it worked,’” Agnifilo argued, according to The Washington Post.
He claimed it was absurd to cast Combs as a mob-style kingpin with menacing henchmen doing his bidding. He said Khorram was a good person, so it made sense Ventura called her for help one day when Combs was banging on her door.
“If John Gotti was at your door, would you call Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano?” he reportedly asked. “[Khorram] is a very nice person. That’s what the testimony has been.”
Agnifilo urged jurors to “do the right thing” and acquit. “I am asking you to summon that courage and to do what needs to be done,” Agnifilo said. “He sits there innocent. Return him to his family, who have been waiting for him.”
In a final rebuttal that gave prosecutors the last word in the case Friday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Comey said it was preposterous for Combs to suggest he paid the male escorts for their time, not sex.
“He flew escorts across the country, watched them have sex while he masturbated, and then he handed them cash,” Comey said, according to CNN. Any claim the men performed sex acts for free “doesn’t even pass the laugh test,” she said. Comey called it plain “common sense” that the escorts were hired for sex, “not for their scintillating conversation.”
Taking a dig at one of Agnifilo’s lines, she said it might be true that Combs preferred “fist fights” when it came to his girlfriends, but the evidence showed he used guns when it came to confrontations with men. She said Combs had a gun when he allegedly kidnapped Clark on his way to Mescudi’s house, and she said Mescudi corroborated Clark’s testimony she was taken against her will.
She also pushed back on the defense claim that Combs was the victim of false claims made by plaintiffs seeking money. She said Jane never sued and even had a financial incentive to stay quiet considering Combs is still paying her rent. Ventura had her settlement money and a new family, so “why would she risk it all by perjuring herself at a federal trial?” Comey reportedly asked.
She refuted the defense suggestion that jurors should separate the violence Ventura endured from the sex life she shared with Combs. She said the two things were inextricable. “That control did not just disappear when she walked into a hotel room,” the prosecutor said, according to The New York Times. “If anything, that grip tightened when she was high, naked and vulnerable.”
On one thing she agreed with the defense – that Ventura is a strong woman. She had to be to “survive” her time with Combs and testify at trial, Comey said.
“This is not a woman out for vengeance or money,” Comey argued. “This is a woman standing up for what is right.”
Comey said the evidence presented through videos, text communications, photos, documents and the testimony of the 34 witnesses who took the stand during the seven-week trial was more than enough to convict Combs.
Jurors are expected to begin their deliberations Monday.
From Rolling Stone US
