Complex has been in the courtroom for the entirety of United States of America v. Sean Combs, the Bad Boy head’s federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial.
Both sides have now presented all of their witnesses and all of their evidence. The only thing that remains is for the government and Combs’ teams to tie everything together in their hours-long closing arguments, which are set to take place on Thursday and Friday.
Since testimony began on May 12, dozens of witnesses have shared their stories and been challenged—sometimes nicely, sometimes vehemently—by the other side. Now, as the case is just days away from being in a jury’s hands, here’s a look back.
This case may be making headlines for its rap star cameos and sex tape screenings, but it is a criminal case and is really about what the government is attempting to prove.
So we’ll take things charge by charge, through each of the five counts against Diddy. Combs denies all the charges, and believes they’re baseless enough that one of his lawyers asked the judge to dismiss them all for insufficient evidence before they even get to a jury. Judge Arun Subramanian has yet to rule on that request as of this writing.
1. Racketeering Conspiracy
The most complex and serious charge against Diddy is racketeering conspiracy. It has two parts. To start with, the government has to prove that he was the head of an “enterprise.” That means the people who were allegedly a part of it—assistants, security, household staff, high-ranking supervisors at his companies—all worked in concert to commit crimes for the purpose of enriching Diddy and increasing his power.
Proving the existence of the enterprise is only the first part of the charge. The second is that the government must prove that Diddy and the other members of the enterprise committed at least two crimes [called “predicates”] as a part of its operation.
Among those possible crimes are sex trafficking, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice, and a number of drug offenses.
So: was there a conspiracy?
Aspects of Combs’ business empire are alleged to be a part of the enterprise. But of course, those aren’t people. When it comes to specific human beings, the charges mention them by job title rather than name. No individual people other than Combs are named in the indictment.
What we do know is that certain Combs employees have been named during the trial, or have testified themselves. None of them have been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and none have been indicted.
- Security Staff: Security guards including Damian “D-Roc” Butler, Paul “Uncle Paulie” Offord, J9, and Roger Bonds have been named as key figures who were constantly around Combs, who allegedly provided him cash to pay for freak offs, and who witnessed many of his alleged misdeeds.
- Assistants: Several assistants testified over the course of the trial. Some of them like Brendan Paul were, according to their own testimony, involved in narcotics offenses. Others, like Capricorn Clark and the pseudonymous “Mia,” were allegedly the victims of crimes like forced labor and sexual assault.
- High-ranking supervisors: The main person who fits this description is Kristina Khorram, better known as “KK.” She has been brought up repeatedly in the courtroom, and conversations and recordings from some of her seized devices have been shared. Human resources head Vashta Dunlap has been mentioned during the trial as well (and was briefly brought up as a possible defense witness, though that never materialized), as has accountant Robin Greenhill.
2. The Alleged Crimes
Those are some of the people the government is claiming were part of the enterprise. But what crimes are at issue? Here’s a list of some of them that the government is alleging Diddy committed. And remember: a jury only has to be convinced of two of them—if they agree that an enterprise exists at all. Because sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution are also separate charges in addition to predicate acts, we’ll deal with them later.
- Forced labor: This charge applies to four witnesses: Capricorn Clark, Mia, Jane Doe, and Cassie Ventura.
- Capricorn, she testified, was forced to spend eight hours a day for five straight days taking a lie detector test while held against her will in an office building locked from the outside. She was also, she said, once physically assaulted by Combs. In addition, she testified that she worked in an environment rife with threats.
- Mia testified to working incredibly long hours, including one five day stretch when, she claimed, she worked around the clock and was not allowed to sleep. She also said she endured verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual assault at Combs’ hands.
- For Cassie and Jane, the forced labor is tied to their alleged sex trafficking. The government’s argument is that their non-consensual sex acts amount to forced labor.
- Obstruction of justice: This likely refers to two separate alleged incidents of attempted intimidation of people who were likely to be witnesses against Combs: Mia and Jane.
- Mia talked about a time in November 2023, shortly after Cassie filed her civil suit against Combs, when longtime Diddy security guard D-Roc reached out to her for the first time in a year or two. At first, the conversation seemed normal. But then, she said, her “radar went off” and she suspected D-Roc was calling on behalf of Combs, in order to get her to agree that there was nothing abnormal about the way Combs and Ventura fought. “It sounded to me like they wanted me to say something publicly,” Mia said. After that, Combs tried repeatedly to contact her, which she said made her feel “terrified.”
- Alleged obstruction involving Jane dates to this same November 2023 period. Jane received a phone call from Combs which he secretly recorded. In it, he told Jane, “I really need your friendship right now” and said, “You know you ain’t gotta worry about anything else.” Jane took that last statement to be an oblique way of saying that he was going to continue to pay her rent. You can see a transcript of the call below.
- Bribery: This refers to Diddy’s alleged payment of $100,000 to security guards at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles in exchange for what he believed was the only existing copy of video footage of his assault of Cassie. One of the guards involved, Eddy Garcia, testified about receiving the alleged bribe from Diddy personally.
- Narcotics offenses: There has been a great deal of testimony throughout the trial about Combs using drugs, buying drugs, and having employees buy him drugs.
In addition, two more predicate acts, kidnapping and arson, were part of the case until Wednesday morning, when the government withdrew them. Here’s how they broke down.
- Kidnapping: There are three alleged examples of kidnapping that came up during the trial. Two of them involve Capricorn Clark, and one involves Cassie.
- One of Capricorn’s alleged kidnappings is the lie detector incident mentioned above. The second is when an armed Diddy allegedly forced her out of her house and took her over to Kid Cudi’s.
- Cassie’s alleged kidnapping occurred in Los Angeles in January, 2009. She testified that she and Combs were in a car when he began beating her, ultimately stomping on her face with his foot. In the aftermath, she said, she looked very beat up, with extremely visible injuries. So, she said, Diddy told her “I had to… go to a hotel and just stay there.” She went on to claim that Diddy’s security brought her to the London Hotel. She wanted to leave, she said, but Diddy said “just absolutely not.” She ended up staying at the hotel, she testified, for about a week.
- Arson: This refers to Kid Cudi’s car being irreparably damaged by a Molotov cocktail in early 2012. Cassie said in an email in late 2011 that Diddy “will be having someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi [Kid Cudi] physically (he made a point that it wouldn’t be by his hands, he actually said he’d be out of the country when it happened).” Cudi, for his part, said he believed that Combs was lying when the mogul denied any connection to the car bombing.
The remaining charges against Diddy involve Cassie and Jane. He is accused of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion against both of them, for one count each. And he is accused of transportation to engage in prostitution, again involving both of them, for one count each. Let’s look at those.
3. Sex Trafficking
For a thorough background on the laws around sex trafficking and how they relate to this case, read our interview with Sinnamon Love. The basis of this charge is the allegation that Diddy used force, fraud, or coercion to get Cassie and Jane to participate in commercial sex acts—in this case, sex with escorts, called “freak offs,” “hotel nights,” or “wild king nights.” Diddy allegedly forced both women to participate in repeated freak offs — Cassie estimated it as “hundreds,” and a government chart listing possible freak offs involving Jane had over 40 entries.
In Cassie’s case, the government has pointed to instances of what it will undoubtedly say are both force and coercion. “Force” here references the many alleged physical assaults against Cassie that the jury has heard testimony about, seen photos of the aftermaths of, and even seen video of. The now-infamous Intercontinental Hotel video plays a particularly important role here, since the assault occurred while Cassie was leaving a freak off. The government will certainly argue that the video of that assault demonstrates what Ventura faced if she didn’t participate.
Jane’s testimony also connects to force. There was a time in the summer of 2024 when Diddy allegedly beat her, and in the aftermath, forced her to perform oral sex on an escort.
When it comes to coercion, for both Diddy and Jane, financial coercion is key. Diddy, they testified, held each of their lives in his hand. For Cassie, she testified that he had control at various points of where she lived, what she drove, what spending money she had, and what career opportunities she could avail herself of. According to her testimony, he had no problem taking any of that away when he was displeased.
As for Jane, she testified that Diddy signed a “love contract” to pay her rent for two years. In the aftermath of that, she said, he made frequent reference to the situation, and would refer to the place, in which he didn’t live, as “our” house. In all that talk, she said, was the threat that he would stop paying if he was displeased. In the immediate aftermath of Cassie’s lawsuit, when Combs largely stopped using hotels as venues for freak offs, Jane’s house became a prime location. Jane also said that Diddy’s constant demands that she be ready for a freak off at any moment meant that it was extremely difficult for her to work, so she had trouble finding independent ways of making money.
That’s force and coercion. Fraud applies to Jane. The government argues that Diddy made repeated false promises to her: that he would take her on trips, that he would spend quality time with her—in short, that he would treat her in a manner comparable to his other girlfriends. Instead, they argue, he would consistently break his promises and subject her to freak offs.
Jane has several detailed notes to herself—addressed to Combs—where she describes her feelings about this.
“You lied straight in my face,” she wrote in one. “U didn’t care what I would see or how it would hurt me. All you wanted was another hotel night and use me before your trip. Like you’ve been doing to be for 2 years… You lied bc you wanted to use me for the night… You tried to trick me…”
You can see that note below.
4. Transportation to Engage in Prostitution
This one, as far as charges go, is straightforward. It’s alleged that Diddy, in connection with both Cassie and Jane, “knowingly transported individuals in interstate and foreign commerce with intent that the individuals engage in prostitution.”
It is clear—and undisputed—that Combs paid for flights and other transportation for men who had sex with Jane and Cassie. What is disputed are two things: whether the money Combs paid was paid as part of a criminal enterprise (remember, these are both separate charges and also part of the racketeering charge); and whether what the men were doing was in fact prostitution. Let’s look at each of those.
- The money: Invoices show that at least some flights to transport men to freak offs were initially paid for by an account tied to Combs’ businesses. However, Combs’ attorneys argued earlier this week, Combs quickly reimbursed that account with his own personal money.
- Is it prostitution? The government clearly believes it is, and it elicited testimony from several of the men involved who they were paid for the freak offs, and from Cassie about handing escorts the money (which she said she got from Diddy). It also has billing records of payments to the men directly, and to Cowboys 4 Angels, the agency many of them worked for. But Combs’ attorney Alexandra Shapiro claimed on Tuesday that the men were paid for their time, not for sex. To back this up, she pointed out that the two escorts who testified, Daniel Phillip and Sharay “The Punisher” Hayes, both denied that they were prostitutes. “I wouldn’t have thought twice to think that that was prostitution,” Phillip said when describing his first sexual encounter with Cassie. “You don’t do prostitution, correct?” Hayes was asked. “I do not,” he answered.
5. What Does the Defense Say?
Diddy’s lawyers, as you might expect, have detailed arguments against each and every aspect of the charges, including all the predicate acts. Alexandra Shapiro laid them all out on Tuesday as part of her effort to have the charges dismissed before they even get put in front of a jury.
She vehemently argued that the case against Diddy did not come close to proving that he was the head of a criminal enterprise. She said, in essence, that the criminal conspiracy was just another name for Diddy—which isn’t a conspiracy at all.
“The only common link here is Mr. Combs himself, and alleged crimes that the government claims were committed by him related to his personal life and his girlfriend’s, their sexual activity and other alleged crimes related to their relationships,” she said.
The main thrust of Diddy’s defense can be seen even in the extremely brief case his team presented on Tuesday.
At root, they argue, this is not a case about criminality. Instead, it’s about one man’s private sexual life. Yes, they admit, he was occasionally physically abusive towards Cassie—but he didn’t use the resources of his business or his employees to conduct or cover up the violence. Jane, for her part, may regret her hotel nights now, but that’s different than having been defrauded or tricked into them. In fact, both Cassie and Jane agreed to the encounters voluntarily in order to please their lover, and even liked aspects of the freak offs, especially the times they and Combs would spend together in the aftermath.
There are plenty of text messages from both of them expressing sexual desire for Combs throughout the duration of their respective relationships. There are also texts from both where they appear to talk about their enjoyment of freak offs, and even at times appear to initiate them. In addition, the jurors watched excerpts of videos of the freak offs. While members of the public and press couldn’t see them, Diddy’s attorney Teny Geragos described in her opening statements what she believes they demonstrate.
“These videos, we believe, are powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion,” she said.
Both sides will tell their stories at length in closing arguments on Thursday and Friday. The jury is expected to begin deliberating on Monday.
