Sean Combs led ‘swinger’s life-style,’ not coercive : NPR

This report incorporates descriptions of bodily and sexual assault.

Sean Combs’ protection group used its closing arguments on Friday to reframe the prosecution’s narrative at his federal trial in Manhattan.

Talking for greater than 4 hours at a Southern District of New York courtroom, lawyer Marc Agnifilo alternated between sarcasm and solemnity in refuting the federal government’s allegations of intercourse trafficking and racketeering. Combs has pleaded not responsible to all expenses.

The prosecution used its closing arguments on Thursday to elucidate how practically six weeks of proof and testimony proved that Combs ran a prison enterprise that facilitated and hid intercourse crimes for many years. Prosecutor Christy Slavik mapped out a long-standing sample of abuse that started with one of many authorities’s key witnesses, Combs’ former girlfriend, the singer and mannequin Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. Slavik confirmed texts and testimony from Ventura telling Combs she did not need to take part in “freak-offs,” and stated that Combs used sexually specific movies to threaten her into following his calls for. “All of this was designed to do one factor — to make Cassie afraid to say no to him,” Slavik stated.

Throughout his remarks, Agnifilo known as the connection between the hip-hop mogul and Ventura, “an excellent fashionable love story.” He additionally acknowledged, nonetheless, that the jury has seen videotape of Combs kicking, shoving and dragging Ventura by her hair in a California resort hallway in 2016. Ventura additionally testified to a historical past of abuse, and several other different witnesses stated that they both noticed Combs bodily attacking Ventura or noticed her bruises, fats lips and different proof of abuse.

“We personal the home violence,” Agnifilo stated. Over the course of his remarks, he added that Combs leads a “swinger’s life-style” and that “he has a drug drawback, no query.”

However Agnifilo additionally sought to recast Ventura from an alleged abuse sufferer right into a conniving participant who deftly juggled romantic rivals and schemed for a giant payday from Combs, who settled a civil lawsuit together with her in Nov. 2023 for $20 million.

“Cassie is no one’s idiot,” Agnifilo asserted. “She’s sitting someplace on this planet as we speak with $30 million,” he stated, referring to each the settlement with Combs and a later settlement with the proprietor of the resort the place Combs attacked her in 2016. “He is in jail. It is like a slaughter.”

Agnifilo equally attacked the credibility of the prosecution’s different prime witness and alleged sufferer, Combs’ former girlfriend who testified beneath the pseudonym “Jane,” saying that Jane too was seeking to profit materially from her relationship with Combs, reminding the jurors that he’s nonetheless paying for Jane’s residence and her authorized prices.

He additionally sardonically thanked federal brokers for his or her raids on Combs’ properties: “The streets of America, protected from Astroglide!” he exclaimed, referring to the a whole bunch of bottles of lubricant and child oil that had been discovered at Combs’ houses.

Agniflo additionally tried to dismantle the credibility of different key witnesses, together with Combs’ former workers Capricorn Clark, who testified that Combs and his associates had kidnapped her twice, and the lady who testified on the stand as “Mia,” who stated that Combs had sexually assaulted her on a number of events. “This was not undesirable sexual contact,” the protection legal professional stated.

He repeatedly reframed the movies Combs manufactured from Ventura and Jane having intercourse with male escorts as “selfmade porn,” and argued that Combs had paid for the boys’s time, and never the intercourse itself. He additionally requested the jury to think about how Combs is on trial for racketeering — and but there are not any different individuals who had been indicted with him. “No witness stated they had been a part of an enterprise,” he added.

Agnifilo repeatedly looped again to among the protection’s key arguments from its opening assertion: that each one of Combs’ relationships had been consensual. “You’ll be able to name it swingers, you’ll be able to name it threesomes,” he stated. “No matter you need to name it, that is what it’s.”

As a part of his detailed breakdown of the predicate acts the federal government is accusing Combs and his associates of getting dedicated — which embrace arson, bribery, kidnapping and drug distribution — Agnifilo disputed that Combs may have had any involvement within the alleged arson assault on a automotive belonging to the musician Scott Mescudi, who data as Child Cudi, and was briefly romantically concerned with Ventura, or that Combs had allegedly gone to Mescudi’s home with a gun with the intent to confront him.

Agnifilo known as arson “cowardly” and never Combs’ “type,” and asserted that Combs, whom he in comparison with the actor John Wayne, would have gone to battle Mescudi in a “good, old school fistfight.”

Close to the tip of his remarks, Agnfilo accused the federal government of “concentrating on” Combs after Ventura filed her civil lawsuit. Prosecutors objected to his assertion, saying that such hypothesis mustn’t have been made to the jury. Decide Arun Subramanian agreed, later instructing the jurors that the decision-making of both prosecutors or a grand jury in whether or not or to not cost a defendant is “none of your concern.”

In her rebuttal to Agnifilo’s presentation, prosecutor Maurene Comey tried to refute what she stated had been the protection’s three essential arguments: that there was no fee by Combs for intercourse; that there was no prison enterprise; and that Ventura, Jane and Mia had all lied on the stand.

Talking of the male escorts, Comey stated: “They weren’t paid for his or her scintillating dialog. They had been paid to have intercourse.”

She additionally defined to the jury concerning the racketeering cost that Combs’ companies may serve each lawful and illegal functions concurrently, that a minimum of a few of his workers had been conscious of or participated in unlawful actions similar to prostitution and bribery.

In a very impassioned second, Comey described a violent episode with Jane that allegedly happened in June 2024, after Combs knew he was the topic of a federal prison investigation, saying that for “20 years, he had gotten away with crime after crime.”

Comey went again to testimony Jane gave on the stand, during which she stated that in that 2024 episode, Combs pressured her to present oral intercourse to a male intercourse employee, whereas she already had welts on her head and a blossoming black eye from Combs’ assault. On the stand, Jane stated that she repeatedly informed Combs she didn’t need to have oral intercourse with the person. Combs leaned in, she testified, and allegedly stated to her: “Is that this coercion?”

“The defendant absolutely understood what was occurring was coercion, was intercourse trafficking, and he made a acutely aware resolution to do it anyway,” Comey declared.

Comey added: “The defendant was brazen sufficient to suppose he may maintain getting away with crimes whereas he was beneath federal investigation. In his thoughts, he was untouchable, a god amongst males … and who would stand as much as a god?”

Decide Arun Subramanian stated that he would give the jury their directions on the regulation on Monday morning; deliberations are set to start instantly afterward.