The federal government and Sean Combs’s defense team presented their closing arguments this week after extensive testimony in which the music mogul’s ex-girlfriends said they were pressured to have sex with male escorts in drug-dazed marathon sessions.
Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution, and has pleaded not guilty, saying the sexual encounters were consensual. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Monday, which will mark the eighth week of the trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Here are some key observations from the closing arguments:
The Charges
Sex Trafficking
The federal prosecutor who delivered the government’s closing argument on Thursday, Christy Slavik, emphasized to jurors that convicting Mr. Combs of sex trafficking required only one example of him coercing his girlfriends into sex with prostitutes.
For examples of such coercion, Ms. Slavik pointed to Mr. Combs’s 2016 assault on Casandra Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel that was captured on surveillance video, and a fight between “Jane” and Mr. Combs in 2024 before he directed her to have sex with another man.
Jane, who was identified by a pseudonym, testified that she repeatedly said “I don’t want to” before Mr. Combs asked, “Is this coercion?”
The next day, the defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo argued that Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, was a willing participant in the frequent sex sessions that Mr. Combs called “freak-offs.”
“No one’s forcing her to do this,” Mr. Agnifilo said. “She’s a woman who actually likes sex — good for her.”
Mr. Agnifilo also sought to persuade the jury that Jane’s encounters with Mr. Combs and escorts were romantic, even soothing events. At those events, Mr. Agnifilo said, the couple enjoyed fine food and listened to music by artists such as Usher and Bryson Tiller.
“That was the escape as much as the physical intimacy,” the lawyer said.
Racketeering Conspiracy
To prove that Mr. Combs was engaged in a racketeering conspiracy, the government must show that he agreed with people in his organization to carry out crimes. Prosecutors have said that in this case, those crimes are drug distribution, kidnapping, arson, bribery, sex trafficking, witness tampering and obstruction, interstate transportation for prostitution and forced labor.
Many of those specific allegations came up in closing arguments, when jurors for the first time heard details of allegations that Mr. Combs had committed witness tampering.
Shortly after Mr. Combs settled the lawsuit with Ms. Ventura, Ms. Slavik said, he called Jane twice, telling her, “I really need your friendship right now,” and assured her that if she “needed” him too, she “ain’t got worry about nothing else.” Around that same time, he texted an employee to ensure that Jane’s rent was being paid.
According to Ms. Slavik, Mr. Combs also tampered with “Mia,” one of his former assistants who also testified under a pseudonym. Mia testified that after Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, a bodyguard known as D-Roc called her and began to discuss Ms. Ventura’s relationship with Mr. Combs. Later, as Mr. Combs’s legal troubles were deepening, D-Roc texted her, “let me know how I can send you something.” She declined.
Ms. Slavik also told jurors that D-Roc and a former chief of staff named Kristina Khorram were involved in bribing a hotel security officer to obtain incriminating security camera footage that showed Mr. Combs assaulting Ms. Ventura.
But Mr. Agnifilo challenged the assertion that the $100,000 payment was a bribe, saying the law requires a bribe to be offered to a witness or an individual about to be called as a witness. The police were not called to the hotel after the assault, Mr. Agnifilo argued, and there was no criminal investigation into the beating at the time. He asserted that the payment for the footage was simply an effort to avoid bad publicity.
Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs had told her he would blow up the car of the rapper Kid Cudi, which is the basis for the underlying arson charge in the case. Mr. Agnifilo said it was not Mr. Combs’s “style” to destroy another man’s Porsche by using a Molotov cocktail in a malt liquor bottle.
Key Figures
Marc Agnifilo
After a measured, detailed summation on Thursday in which Ms. Slavik walked jurors through the government’s case, Mr. Agnifilo took an animated, at times humorous approach on Friday.
At one point, Mr. Agnifilo — a seasoned defense lawyer who has represented high-profile clients like Martin Shkreli and Keith Raniere — suggested that the investigation into his client had been a farce. He took jabs at how the government said it had recovered more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and Astroglide lubricant during searches at Mr. Combs’s homes in Florida and California.
“Thank God for the Special Response Team,” Mr. Agnifilo said of the federal agents who raided the homes. “They found the Astroglide, they found the baby oil!”
Mr. Agnifilo broadly mocked the testimony of Capricorn Clark, who the government said was kidnapped twice at Mr. Combs’s direction. Once, she testified, she was subjected to five days of lie-detector tests, with one of Mr. Combs’s bodyguards picking her up and dropping her off at her home in Queens each day.
“A door-to-door kidnapping!” Mr. Agnifilo remarked.
Sean Combs
Mr. Combs entered the courtroom on Thursday wearing a baby-blue sweater and a smile, waving to family and friends. As Ms. Slavik spoke for nearly five hours, presenting Mr. Combs as a violent, abusive man who was used to getting his way and deployed aides to help him secure it, he was an attentive defendant, shaking his head at one point, and often passing notes to his lawyers.
He did not have time to focus much attention on a book he had brought into the courtroom with him: “The Happiness Advantage,” by Shawn Anchor, described as “an engaging, deeply researched guide to flourishing in a world of increasing stress and negativity.”
In a defiant rebuttal on Friday afternoon, the lead prosecutor, Maurene Comey, urged jurors to find Mr. Combs guilty, saying that “the defendant never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.”
As he packed up before leaving the courtroom, Mr. Combs’s hands were shaking.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
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