Sean “Diddy” Combs performs in 2023 at Howard College’s Yardfest in Washington, D.C.
Thaddaeus McAdams/WireImage/Getty Pictures
disguise caption
toggle caption
Thaddaeus McAdams/WireImage/Getty Pictures
This report mentions bodily and sexual violence.
After two months in a Manhattan courtroom, the federal trial of hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, also referred to as Diddy or Puff Daddy, has come to an uneasy shut. On Thursday, Combs obtained a combined verdict from the jury: not responsible on the extra critical prices, one depend of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of intercourse trafficking; responsible on two lesser counts, of transportation to have interaction in prostitution. With the trial over, it feels as if the almost two-year saga round Combs has reached a brief deadlock, as those that tuned in to its twists and turns surprise what comes subsequent.
Although the decision is in the end a win for the protection, Combs’ picture has been perpetually modified. The person who took rap company, routinely one of many prime earners in hip-hop, had already taken a success to his various enterprise pursuits from the snowballing civil lawsuits that preceded the federal trial — starting with a head-turning November 2023 swimsuit by Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, his former girlfriend and business protégé. Combs stepped down as chairman of the media firm Revolt TV that month, and bought his stake the next June. In December 2023, 18 manufacturers severed ties with Combs’ e-commerce enterprise, Empower International. That very same month, as a longstanding partnership with the liquor model Diageo was eroding, the corporate’s legal professionals wrote“Mr. Combs is well-aware that these lawsuits make it inconceivable for him to proceed to be the ‘face’ of something.”
There has additionally been important injury to his private model. A proposed Hulu actuality collection was scrapped. Howard College revoked his honorary diploma. He needed to return the important thing to the town of New York, simply months after receiving it. Combs’ properties have been raided by Homeland Safety officers in March 2024. That Could, a 2016 resort surveillance video of him and Ventura, exhibiting him hitting and kicking her and making an attempt to pull her down a hallway, leaked to the general public. In a since-deleted video apology, Combs stated, “I take full duty for my actions in that video. … I used to be disgusted then once I did it. I am disgusted now.” Extra lawsuits poured in after his arrest in September 2024. Earlier than Ventura’s swimsuit grew to become information, Combs had scored a Grammy nomination for an R&B album, was valued at over $1 billion, and was in the course of a transfer to undertake “Love” as his new stage title. That tried reinvention was nullified by descriptions of the allegations, and the fallout within the following months felt immeasurable.
Even with out responsible verdicts on the counts of racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking, the trial has furthered that injury. The extra salacious facets of “freak-offs” that made it into public view — the solicitation of male intercourse employees, occasions furnished with copious quantities of child oil and lubricant — will sadly stay the headline for a lot of onlookers, however past these particulars are patterns of violence too disturbing to be disregarded. The Ventura lawsuit that set the stage for this federal indictment alleged rape and bodily abuse, and the resort surveillance video corroborated the latter; these photographs stay within the public consciousness. Ventura has entered her story into public report, as have others like the previous Combs workers Capricorn Clark and a girl testifying as “Mia.” The image these witnesses painted of Combs gels with earlier depictions of the rap mogul as a hot-blooded, win-at-all-costs wheeler-dealer, which till now had lived principally within the realm of rumor. Throughout closing arguments, prosecutor Maurene Comey stated of Combs, “In his thoughts, he was untouchable, a god amongst males.”
Nonetheless, the case can be seen as a lesson within the public’s murky understanding of consent, and the ways in which the tales of alleged victims might be undermined. The prosecution constructed its case round two key witnesses, Ventura and a girl testifying below the pseudonym “Jane,” each ex-girlfriends of Combs. It argued that he coerced the ladies into touring throughout state strains to take part in unlawful intercourse acts with intercourse employees — the “freak-offs” that Combs additionally known as “resort nights” or “wild king nights,” marathon classes that would final 30 hours — and that he leveraged his enterprise pursuits to cowl up these crimes. Prosecutor Christy Slavik stated Combs used “violence, energy and worry to get what he wished.” However hinging all the case on two former companions could have opened the door for the protection to argue that these relationships, whereas poisonous, weren’t coercive.
In closing arguments, protection legal professional Marc Agnifilo painted Ventura and Jane because the true schemers. “Cassie is no person’s idiot,” he stated. “She’s sitting someplace on the planet right now with $30 million. He is in jail. It is like a slaughter.” Agnifilo was referencing Ventura’s lawsuit in opposition to Combs, which was settled in simply in the future for $20 million, and one other from the proprietor of the resort the place Combs was videotaped assaulting Ventura in 2016, for which she obtained one other $10 million. Agnifilo additionally attacked Jane’s credibility, saying she was seeking to profit materially from her relationship with Combs and that he was nonetheless paying for her house and authorized prices.
At no level did the protection dispute the home violence claims levied by the witnesses — in actual fact, it typically owned these accusations of abuse. As an alternative, its main technique was establishing Combs as not responsible of the precise main crimes for which he was on trial, arguing that the federal government had not met the burden of proof for establishing a legal enterprise. And whereas the proof for transportation to have interaction in prostitution — one depend for every key witness — was laid out slightly plainly, the prosecution’s failure to call different co-conspirators or alleged victims to bolster its claims of trafficking and conspiracy seems to have harm its case.
This judgement permits for a possible misreading of Combs’ culpability extra broadly going ahead. He has not been charged criminally for the whole lot he has been accused of (in lots of instances due to the statute of limitations.) As an alternative, the federal government argued that a number of situations of unprosecutable violence amounted to a bigger legal operation, a stance it struggled to show. Some will take the jury’s verdict as absolution for Combs’ overarching actions. Surely, the prosecution merely didn’t conclusively present he was a ringleader masterminding organized crime. The allegations within the many civil lawsuits in opposition to him weren’t on trial right here, and in consequence weren’t confirmed or disproven, however many will conflate the 2 and deal with this verdict as a vindication — particularly contemplating Ventura was on the middle of each the civil avalanche and the federal proceedings.
All of which leaves issues in a nebulous place, with the combined verdict missing in any sense of finality. That stated, the trial stays an unignorable blemish on one of many defining careers in hip-hop historical past, with Combs’ repute as a magnate and entertainer undeniably tainted. The legacy of “freak-offs” will definitely change the connotation of a Diddy Social gathering perpetually, and the holes within the case will possible be full of extra conspiratorial discourse on-line. Whereas Combs has settled with Ventura, dozens of civil lawsuits loom, and he nonetheless faces jail time for the 2 federal prices on which he was discovered responsible.
Nonetheless, in the midst of his lengthy profession, Sean Combs has proven a constant resilience to scandal, and a knack for strategic rebranding. It is too early to inform, however the not-guilty verdicts on conspiracy and trafficking could but go away the door open for a return.
