A lawyer for Sean “Diddy” Combs delivered his final pitch in the rap mogul’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial in much the way the defense began over a month ago: by telling jurors that Combs and his girlfriends were “swingers” whose sex was always consensual.
Marc Agnifilo, one of the many defense attorneys representing Combs, urged a jury in New York federal court to acquit the musician on Friday (June 27). Prosecutors had already given their closing argument the previous day, seeking a conviction based on charges that Combs used violence, money and blackmail to force his girlfriends to have sex with escorts during dayslong hotel parties he called “freak-offs.”
Agnifilo said Combs’ freak-offs didn’t come anywhere close to sex trafficking, according to CNN. Instead, he argued, the evidence during the seven-week trial showed that both the singer Cassie Ventura and an anonymous ex-girlfriend known as “Jane” wanted to have sex with escorts.
“They are swingers,” Agnifilo told the jury. “They are avowedly swingers. This is their lifestyle.”
The defense lawyer pointed to text messages introduced throughout the trial in which Ventura and Jane conveyed enthusiasm for the freak-offs, as well as videos from the events where “the music’s nice, the mood seems friendly and easygoing, and everyone is smiling,” he said.
While acknowledging that there was some domestic violence in Combs and Ventura’s relationship (a now-infamous hotel surveillance video from 2016 makes it difficult for the defense to escape that fact), Agnifilo said the pair shared “a great modern love story.”
Agnifilo argued that Ventura and Jane are only saying now that the freak-offs were coerced for one simple reason: money. He reminded the jury that Ventura first put the spotlight on Combs by bringing a $30 million civil lawsuit against him in November 2023, which quickly settled for $20 million.
“Cassie Ventura sued Sean Combs for $30 million because Sean Combs has $30 million,” Agnifilo said. “This very investigation came out of that civil case. No $30 million, no lawsuit, no criminal case. That’s why we’re here. We’re here because of money.”
In addition to sex trafficking, Combs is charged with using his music empire to operate a criminal syndicate as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — the federal “RICO” statute often deployed against mobsters and cartels.
To convict Combs under RICO, the jury must find that the rapper and his underlings conspired to commit at least two underlying crimes. Prosecutors have said sex trafficking can be one of these crimes, as can drug-dealing, bribery and arson.
However, Agnifilo said bluntly on Friday that Combs is “not a racketeer.”
The defense lawyer said Combs only bought narcotics for personal use and didn’t sell them (“he obviously has a drug problem,” explained Agnifilo), and argued that it wasn’t bribery when the rapper bought the infamous 2016 surveillance video because he was just trying to protect his reputation.
Regarding arson, Agnifilo denied the bombshell allegations that Combs planned to have a Molotov cocktail thrown into Kid Cudi’s Porsche due to jealousy over the fellow rapper’s relationship with Ventura in 2012.
“There is no evidence that he had anything to do with the Porsche,” Agnifilo said.
Prosecutors got to have the last word with a rebuttal argument after Agnifilo’s closing wrapped on Friday. The jury will return Monday to hear legal instructions and then begin deliberating — a process that can take anywhere from an hour to a week, depending on how long it takes the 12 New Yorkers to agree on a verdict.
