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Sean Combs, who for the past seven weeks has faced five felony charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, was acquitted on the more serious charges, but found guilty on transportation to engage in prostitution.
From the moment Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed her bombshell sex trafficking lawsuit against the 55-year-old in November 2023, which led to his arrest on the same allegation last September, Combs has adamantly maintained his innocence. High-powered defense attorneys for the Bad Boy Records boss did not shy away from his brutal and frequent violence towards Ventura, but repeatedly emphasized that “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
When the “not guilty” verdict for racketeering conspiracy was read, Combs put his hand over his face and bowed his head with relief.
The verdict was read aloud to a packed courtroom after a group of eight men and four women took 13 hours to deliberate. The panel had largely made up their minds by Tuesday evening, telling Judge Arun Subramanian they had reached verdicts on the sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution charges related to Ventura and an ex-girlfriend who testified under the name “Jane.”
However, they said they were “unable” to agree on the racketeering conspiracy charge due to “unpersuadable opinions on both sides.” But after Subramanian instructed the jury to continue deliberating, they returned a final verdict the next day.
The three days of deliberation followed seven weeks of grueling and emotional testimony from 34 government witnesses. During closing arguments last week, lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo choked back tears and accused the government of unfairly targeting Combs in a broad overreach of power. Prosecutors, Agnifilo alleged, used Ventura’s lawsuit as springboard to pry into Combs’ private life and slap him with criminal statutes based on his untraditional sexual preferences.
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In what was described as the busy mogul’s “personal time” and “release,” Combs would film his girlfriends having days-long sexual encounters with male escorts. He allegedly treated the sessions as his personal adult film sets, filling hotel rooms with designer candles, choreographing the sequences of events, and giving instructions on what should happen next.
Prosecutors claim Combs kept Ventura and Jane high on a buffet of drugs, particularly ecstasy, and refused to hear “no” when they tried to avoid participating in the freak-offs. In a years-long pattern, Combs allegedly manipulated and forced the women to submit to his sexual desires through physical force, coercion, and/or threats of financial harm and to release the women’s explicit tapes.
Flipping between outrage and incredulity, Agnifilo made light of the so-called “freak-offs” that were the heart of the government’s case against Combs. “You want to call it swingers, you want to call it threesomes, whatever you want to call it, that’s what it is. That’s what the evidence shows,” Agnifilo said of Combs hiring male escorts to have sex with his girlfriends. “He wouldn’t think in a million years that there’s anything wrong with it.”
The jury seemed to agree, acquitting Combs of sex trafficking Ventura and Jane. He was also cleared of using a team of high-ranking staffers, security members and “young and eager” personal assistants that were more akin to foot soldiers as part of a racketeering conspiracy.
Combs appeared confident throughout the trial, so much so that his high-powered defense team did not put on any witnesses when presenting their defense. Instead, his attorneys read aloud a series of texts between Ventura and Combs, where the R&B singer seemingly expressed eagerness about the days-long, drug-fueled encounters. Within 25 minutes, they rested, confident the evidence — or lack thereof — was in their favor.
The government claimed that from 2004 up until his September 2024 arrest, Combs was the leader of a racketeering conspiracy that largely revolved around his sex life with his girlfriends. As part of the enterprise, Combs and his alleged co-conspirators were accused of carrying out crimes at their boss’ direction, including three separate instances of kidnapping; firebombing Kid Cudi’s car over the musician’s fling with Ventura; bribing a hotel employee with $100,000 to make damning footage of Combs attacking Ventura disappear; witness tampering and drug distribution, among others.
Throughout the alleged racketeering conspiracy, Combs was sex trafficking his girlfriends, prosecutors alleged, first with Ventura between 2009 and 2018, and then Jane between January 2021 and September 2024. He allegedly paid for male escorts to fly in from various cities to join him in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Turks and Caicos, paying them in cash after the men had sex with his girlfriends.
This is not the first time Combs has emerged victorious from a criminal trial where the weight of the law seemed stacked against him. The man who was known to wear a gold Lazarus chain was facing 15 years in prison over his alleged role in a 1999 nightclub shooting — his future ascent to running a billion-dollar empire hanging in the balance. But he walked free in March 2001, hugging his mother Janice outside a courthouse just a few blocks away from the federal courthouse where Combs is about to depart.
And although no criminal charges were ever filed, New York City officials were pointing fingers at a 22-year-old Combs for his part in promoting and overselling a charity basketball game at City College of New York in December 1991 where nine people died in a stampede. After issuing apologies and settling several civil lawsuits, the tragedy became a footnote in Combs’ legacy as he went on to found his iconic label Bad Boy Records in 1993 and discover The Notorious B.I.G.
Combs still faces more than 50 civil lawsuits. Ventura’s lawsuit, which was settled for $20 million within 24 hours, sparked a tidal wave of similar allegations from both men and women. The alleged sexual assaults were sprinkled throughout Combs’ three-decade career beginning in 1990 and as recently as July 2024, as models, music industry figures, and people who had one-off encounters claim Combs preyed on them.
Combs had vehemently denied all accusations of sexual assault. “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor,” his legal team has previously said in a statement.
From Rolling Stone US
