Reuters
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ attorney tried to turn the hip-hop mogul’s indictment inside out in daylong closings Friday — arguing that his client’s violence and drug use do not make him guilty and that the real “winner” of his trial is accuser Cassie Ventura.
“Cassie is nobody’s fool. She is sitting somewhere in the world with $30 million,” Combs’ lead defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo told the jury in Combs’ Manhattan federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.
Agnifilo was referring to the $20 million Combs paid his ex Ventura to settle her 2023 lawsuit against Combs and the $10 million she testified that she was set to get from the Los Angeles hotel where Combs was caught on security footage beating her.
“So if you had to pick a winner in this whole thing, it’s hard not to pick Cassie. Cassie, at a certain point, just flat won,” Agnifilo said. “And he’s in jail.”
Like Agnifilo’s co-counsel did in opening statements, he leaned into Combs’ violent side, arguing that domestic violence is not sex trafficking.
Agnifilo added, “Anyone who tells me, ‘Yeah, Cassie, she’s a victim, Cassie, she’s naive, Cassie, she couldn’t see what’s coming,’ let’s look at the facts.”
Prosecutors have alleged that Combs coerced Ventura and another ex, who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” into sex performances with male escorts. Combs would direct, masturbate to, and often record these marathons — called “freak offs,” “hotel nights” or “wild king nights,” prosecutors alleged.
A third woman, a former Combs personal assistant who testified as “Mia,” told the jury that he sexually abused her at least four times, including a rape she said happened when he crawled into her bed as she slept in the staff bedroom of his Los Angeles mansion.
All three women accusing him of abuse — Ventura, Jane, and Mia — were actually describing consensual sex and domestic violence, Agnifilo argued Friday.
“She loves him — you can’t fake that,” Agnifilo said of Mia, appearing to get choked up as he read a letter she once gave Combs, along with a scrapbook of photos and news clips from the 1990s.
“I hope it reminds you of when this world made your eyes light up,” Agnifilo read aloud, his voice breaking.
Agnifilo pointed out that Combs is still paying the $10,000-per-month rent on Jane’s Los Angeles home.
“He has a beautiful house for her child, who I’m sure loves and deserves the beautiful house,” Agnifilo said. “I don’t know what she’s doing today — I hope she’s having a nice day,” the lawyer added of Jane. “But you know where she’s doing it, and it’s in a house he’s paying for — and I hope they’re having a nice Friday.”
Agnifilo spent much of the morning attacking Ventura, the prosecution’s star witness. Ventura spent four days on the stand in May, detailing for the jury what she said were years of assault and sexual abuse at Combs’ hands during their decadelong relationship.
“She’s a woman who actually likes sex. Good for her. She should. She’s beautiful. She’s unafraid,” Agnifilo said of Ventura.
“She wants to do it. She likes it. She’s talking a lot of dirty talk. In this case, there’s probably more dirty talk than your average federal case by a long shot,” Agnifilo said, referring to sexually explicit text messages between Ventura and Combs.
Agnifilo, who referred to Ventura as a “beautiful, sexy woman,” also said that she has “sexual confidence.”
At one point, the defense attorney read aloud an explicit text from Ventura to Combs. He prefaced the recitation by joking, “My mother is so happy that I became a lawyer.”
After reading the text, Agnifilo told the jury, “So I submit to you, she’s not clutching her pearls.”
Agnifilo downplayed freak offs as “threesomes” and a “swinger” lifestyle.
It was a description that bore little resemblance to the trial testimony of Ventura, Jane, and two of the 30 male sex workers who prosecutors said were paid by Combs to engage in the marathon sex sessions over the years.
The two women described sometimes painful encounters that left hotel suites covered in baby oil, blood, candle wax, and urine.
Jane and Ventura told the jury that the events could last three days. Both said they took drugs, including Molly and ecstasy, in order to stay awake and dissociate. One sex worker said he had twice witnessed Combs beating Ventura during a freak off.
“They are swingers. They are validly swingers. This is their lifestyle. He wouldn’t think in a million years that there’s anything wrong with it,” Agnifilo said during closing arguments.
“If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn’t all be here having a trial, because he would have pled guilty, because he did that,” Agnifilo said Friday.
Meanwhile, “He didn’t commit racketeering conspiracy with sex trafficking. He didn’t kidnap anybody. He didn’t obstruct justice, he didn’t bribe anyone,” Agnifilo told the jury.
“He did what he did. But he’ll fight to the death to defend himself on what he didn’t do, and that’s what this trial is about.”
US District Judge Arun Subramanian has told the eight-man, four-woman jury to expect closing arguments to end late Friday.
Deliberations were set to begin first thing Monday morning. If convicted on the top charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, the 55-year-old Bad Boy Records founder could face up to life behind bars.
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