At a May news conference in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked coy as he mused about whether he would hypothetically pardon Sean “Diddy” Combs.
“Nobody’s asked,” he told reporters, “but I know people are thinking about it.”
Trump said he would look at the facts, and that while he was aware of Combs speaking out against him in the time since he entered politics, it wouldn’t affect his thinking. He reminded the press that he and Combs go back some time, recalling, “He used to really like me a lot.”
In the end, it is a decision he will likely not have to make. After a two-month trial and about 13 hours of deliberations, on Wednesday a Manhattan jury found Combs not guilty on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges, the most severe counts he faced. Jurors found Combs guilty of two counts of prostitution, comparatively minor charges.
The verdict represents a major victory for Combs. According to reporters in the courthouse, he pumped his fist as the verdict was read. On X, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani described the case as “the most expensive prostitution trial in American history.”
In rising from record-label intern to the highest rungs of American celebrity, Combs played an era-defining role in the development of hip-hop music and the cultural and business mechanisms surrounding it—fashion, marketing, television, and gossip. He and Trump were a natural pair in the New York ’90s, and they both played the relationship up as a marker of their shared appetites for conquest.
The verdict caps a near-total revision of Combs’s image. In October 2023, his former longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, sued him for physical and sexual abuse in a civil complaint so gruesome that it began with a trigger warning. The suit also introduced the term “freak off”—an elaborate sexual performance orchestrated by Combs—as a byword for the mogul’s long-studied personal life.
While Combs and Ventura quickly settled, with Combs admitting no wrongdoing at the time, the broader turmoil was already underway. Combs has also denied wrongdoing in a wave of civil suits filed against him, but offered a halting video apology when surveillance footage surfaced of him beating Ventura in a hotel hallway. Ventura was the star witness in the criminal case that federal prosecutors brought against Combs, and the assault figured prominently in their claim that Combs’s freak-offs, portrayed by defense lawyers as a lifestyle choice, were at root a product of violent coercion.
As he paced in front of the jury during his closing remarks on Friday, Combs’s attorney Marc Agnifilo conceded that his client had physically abused Ventura. “We own the domestic violence,” he said.
But Combs “did not do the things he’s charged with,” Agnifilo went on. “He didn’t kidnap anybody, he didn’t obstruct justice, he didn’t bribe anybody.”
In large part, Agnifilo mocked the investigation into Combs’s sex life, his voice often rising to an indignant squeal. Even by the standards of celebrity sex trials, interest in the proceedings against Combs sometimes took on a decidedly frivolous quality, contrasting the grave tenor that has accompanied the high-profile sexual misconduct cases brought against powerful men in recent years. Outside the courthouse, among the throngs of livestreamers documenting each glimpse into Combs’s sex life, some onlookers wore T-shirts reading, “A FREAKO IS NOT A R.I.C.O.”
In her rebuttal, Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey sought to refocus the stakes. She said that Combs thought of himself, as he rose in fame and success, as “untouchable.”
“The defendant never thought,” Comey said, “that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob
-
Everyone Wants a Piece of Pedro Pascal
-
Lupita Nyong’o, Sandra Oh, and More Present Twelfth Night
-
Inside a Valentino Legend’s Sprawling Roman Palazzo
-
Meghan Markle Is in a Jam Jam
-
Debbie Harry Gets Candid
-
These New Shows Will Dominate the 2025 Emmy Nominations
-
The Triumph and Tragedy of Jayne Mansfield
-
The Outrageous Mitford Sisters: The 20th Century’s Most Fascinating Family
-
The 11 Best Movies of 2025, So Far
-
From the Archive: The Idaho Murders
The post Sean “Diddy” Combs Found Not Guilty of Racketeering and Sex Trafficking appeared first on Vanity Fair.
