Meet the lawyers who defended Diddy

Sean “Diddy” Combs was mostly victorious in the mixed jury verdict at his criminal trial — with much thanks to his stacked legal team.

“Dream team! Dream team!” Combs’ supporters and family chanted in the courtroom Wednesday after the jury acquitted him of racketeering and sex trafficking, the most severe charges.

They were up against a formidable government team. The US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York is considered one of the most elite federal prosecutors’ offices in America. And the team prosecuting Combs had Maurene Comey, one of the prosecutors who put Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell behind bars.

Combs, though, has an eye for star lawyers.

His previous defense team also won him an acquittal in 2001, when the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office accused him of being involved in a nightclub shooting.

At that time, Combs’ team was led by his longtime attorney Ben Brafman. For this year’s trial, Brafman’s protégé Marc Agnifilo was in the driver’s seat.

Here’s the “dream team” that defended Diddy:

Marc Agnifilo

The founding partner of Agnifilo Intrater LLP spent about two decades in the US Attorney’s office in New Jersey before moving to private practice.

Before the Combs trial, he had a crushing jury verdict against his client, Keith Raniere, the founder of the NXIVM sex cult, who in 2020 was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

But Agnifilo has had high-profile victories, including representing former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had sexual assault charges against him dropped.

Together with his wife, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Agnifilo is also representing Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

In one of the final hearings in the Combs case before the trial, Agnifilo raced to another federal courthouse across the street in lower Manhattan for a hearing in the Mangione case.

Teny Geragos

The 34-year-old Geragos, a partner at Agnifilo’s firm, handled some of the trial’s biggest moments, including the defense team’s opening statement and multiple cross-examinations of important witnesses.

Before the trial, she vocally defended Combs on social media. And, years earlier, she represented Raniere along with Agnifilo.

Geragos has also represented Roger Ng, the ex-Goldman Sachs banker convicted in 2023 of siphoning billions of dollars from 1MDB, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Her father is celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, who represents Combs’ mother and consulted with the trial defense team.

Alexandra Shapiro

A former clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shapiro is well-known in the New York bar for her appeals and white collar litigation.

In Combs’ case, Shapiro raised multiple legal issues during the trial that could form the basis for an appeal. She also took the lead in bail arguments, unsuccessfully trying to keep Combs out of jail ahead of the trial and between the verdict and his sentencing hearing.

Shapiro is representing Sam Bankman-Fried, Combs’s onetime jailhouse roommate, in the appeal of his conviction and 25-year sentence, which remains pending.

She’s also the author of the 2022 legal thriller “Presumed Guilty” and is an avid nature photographer.

Jason Driscoll

An associate at Shapiro’s firm, Shapiro Arato Bach, Driscoll crafted legal arguments about the scope of what witnesses were permitted to testify about at the trial and which exhibits should have been permitted to go into evidence.

He’s previously worked at the Big Law firm Paul Weiss and has clerked for two federal judges in Manhattan.

Anna Estevao

Estevao had one of the most difficult jobs in the trial, cross-examining Cassie Ventura, Combs’ longtime partner, who prosecutors had designated as his primary victim and who was visibly pregnant while she was on the witness stand. (Ventura gave birth after her testimony, while the trial was ongoing.)

Estevao joined Combs’ legal team while a partner at Sher Tremonte, a firm also representing him in many of the civil lawsuits against him and his companies. She joined the firm Harris Trzaskoma the same month the criminal trial began — a move that a source familiar with the matter said was in the works long before the trial.

Xavier Donaldson

An experienced New York City attorney, Donaldson also joined the Combs criminal case shortly before the trial began.

At the trial, Donaldson cross-examined Daniel Phillip, a male dancer who participated in freak offs with Ventura, and Deonte Nash, a friend of Ventura’s.

Donaldson has also previously represented the “Chelsea bomber”, Ahmed Rahimi.

Brian Steel

Fresh off a favorable plea deal for the rapper Young Thug in Atlanta, Steel joined Combs’ legal team shortly before the trial.

He handled the cross-examination of one of Combs’ assistants, as well as security officers at the InterContinental Hotel, where Combs beat Cassie Ventura in a hallway in a notorious incident caught on video.

Nicole Westmoreland

Another Atlanta-based lawyer involved in Young Thug’s trial, Westmoreland officially joined the Combs legal team shortly before opening statements.

Westmoreland cross-examined Combs’ accuser Dawn Richard and two friends of Ventura who corroborated some of her testimony.

The post Meet the lawyers who defended Diddy appeared first on Business Insider.