Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik summed up the government’s case against Sean “Diddy” Combs in his federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial on Thursday with a five-hour tour through two decades of his alleged crimes. The speech centered around a single theme: the powerful Bad Boy head was determined to get his way at all times, and he had a criminal enterprise at the ready to help him enforce his will.
“He doesn’t take no for an answer,” Slavik said of Combs early on, and it was a phrase she kept coming back to throughout her summary of the evidence against him that was presented during the seven-week trial.
Slavik began by drawing parallels between two alleged assaults by Combs, years apart: the infamous March 2016 assault on Cassie Ventura at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles, and an alleged attack on Jane Doe last summer at her home, during which, she testified, Combs beat her and then forced her to perform oral sex on an escort.
“These two incidents are separated by eight years, but they’re not separate stories,” Slavik said. Instead, they demonstrate a “methodical pattern of violence, coercion, and manipulation” that Diddy engaged in to feed his desires — a pattern made possible not only by Combs himself but by his “close inner circle and a small army of personal staff.”
Slavik broke down the meaning of racketeering to the jury.
“The concept is simple,” she said. “When someone commits a crime as part of a group, they’re more powerful and more dangerous.”
The “Combs enterprise,” as she named the criminal organization he’s accused of heading, consisted, she said, of an inner circle of loyal security guards and a chief of staff. Many of that crew’s orders were carried out, she continued, by “foot soldiers” — an army of assistants and other employees. Those foot soldiers may not have known the “full scope” of their boss’ criminality, Slavik continued, but they still played an important role.
“Over and over, the defendant and his inner circle agreed to commit crimes together,” she said.
Slavik spent a good part of the day walking through eight separate crimes Combs is accused of as part of the racketeering charge — some of them consisting of dozens or even hundreds of separate alleged acts. Those crimes were: drug distribution, kidnapping, arson, bribery, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for the purpose of prostitution, forced labor, and witness tampering and obstruction. The jury only needs to find that the mogul and his enterprise committed two individual acts in any of those categories in order to find him guilty of racketeering.
When speaking about drug distribution, Slavik connected it to the freak offs, the sexual encounters involving Combs, a girlfriend, and one or more male escorts that are at the heart of this case. She said that drugs were an essential part of every freak off, and that Diddy enlisted his enterprise to make sure that he had a steady supply of drugs (including cocaine, meth, Xanax, Ecstasy, Oxycodone, GHB, and tusi) for them. She pointed to text messages and testimony showing that Combs enlisted security guards and assistants to bring him drugs for freak offs, and then gave the drugs to Cassie and Jane.
“The quantity of drugs is not an element of this crime,” Slavik explained. “Distribution does not require a sale… Giving drugs to someone else is distribution, period.”
The prosecutor also brought up two times when Jane allegedly transported drugs for Diddy, allegations backed up not just by Jane’s testimony but by text messages between Jane and Diddy’s longtime chief of staff Kristina Khorram.
Slavik reminded the jury that many other witnesses testified that Combs gave them drugs; or, in the case of personal assistants, were ordered by him to buy drugs. She even brought up texts from Combs himself to an alleged drug dealer named “One Stop” in which the mogul spoke about security procuring drugs.
Slavik moved on to three separate alleged incidents of kidnapping (which we broke down on Wednesday) before speaking about arson. This referred to the firebombing of Kid Cudi‘s car. While there was no direct evidence of Combs being at the scene, Slavik didn’t pull any punches.
“The defendant was 100% behind Kid Cudi’s car blowing up,” she said.
Slavik reminded jurors that Cassie testified Combs told her about it in advance.
“[H]e mentioned that when we were out of the country, that Scott’s car would be blown up,” Cassie said on May 14. “He wanted his friends to be there to see it.” The AUSA also brought up an email Cassie sent to her mom several weeks before the incident where she wrote that Diddy “said he will be having someone hurt me and [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).”
In addition, Slavik reminded jurors of testimony that Combs saw Cudi’s Porsche several weeks before the firebombing, on the day the mogul allegedly broke into Cudi’s house — an invasion former assistant Capricorn Clark described in her testimony.
When it came to bribery, Slavik described Combs’ alleged $100,000 payment to Intercontinental Hotel security guard Eddy Garcia in return for what Diddy believed was the only copy of the video of him assaulting Cassie. Garcia described the exchange in testimony. Combs’ lawyers have, when discussing the payment, said that the Bad Boy head wanted the video not because he was worried about police (which is what is needed for a bribery charge), but simply because he was worried about bad publicity.
To Slavik, that didn’t stand up. She pointed out that in the aftermath of the incident, Diddy texted Cassie, “The cops are here” and “I’m being arrested.” While neither were true, she admitted, “it is clear [that] the defendant knew his criminal conduct could lead to police involvement.” She also pointed out that the police actually visited Cassie’s house in the aftermath of the event (in response to a noise complaint), though she refused to give them any details about the assault.
“He knew that police involvement would ruin him,” Slavik said. “Sure, he didn’t want the public to see the video. But he also didn’t want police to see the video. It’s not either-or.”
The prosecutor spent a while discussing the sex trafficking charges involving both Cassie and Jane. With Jane, Slavik said, the charge was based on “[Diddy’s] years’ long pattern of fraud, coercion, and ultimately force to get Jane to do hotel nights [her name for freak offs] with escorts that the defendant paid for sex.”
Slavik laid out the entire arc of Jane and Diddy’s relationship, from the early “love bombing”; to the gradual introduction of sex with escorts; to the “love contract” where Diddy agreed to pay her rent for two years, allegedly using the deal as leverage to get her to continue doing the hotel nights; to their up-and-down relationship following Cassie’s November 2023 lawsuit.
Slavik pointed out that Jane told Combs repeatedly, both in person and in writing, that she didn’t want to do any more hotel nights. But, she continued, Diddy used a combination of carrots — false promises about quality time and trips together — and sticks — threats to stop paying her rent and, ultimately, physical violence — to get her to comply.
“He knew that threatening to take away her home could turn a no into a yes,” Slavik said. “That’s coercion. And it worked.”
In particular, she brought up one September 2023 incident where Jane agreed to travel to see Diddy in New York only after he made repeated promises of dinner, shopping, and quality time rather than a hotel night. But while he was making those promises, Slavik showed, he was simultaneously hiring an escort for a hotel night.
“That right there before the plane even lands, that is a completed act of sex trafficking,” the AUSA explained.
Slavik brought up one more aspect of Diddy’s relationship with Jane: their sex tapes. The jury watched excerpts of one of the hotel nights with Jane at the defense’s prompting. But Slavik pointed out that the particular videos the jury watched were atypical, in that they were from a night Jane was on a new drug, “liquid molly.”
“She was different in those videos because she was high on a different drug,” Slavik said.
The AUSA ended her section about Jane by pointing out that the defense, in their opening statement, had painted her as a woman freely choosing to participate in hotel nights. Slavik said that Diddy’s constant threats — to release her sex tapes, to stop paying her rent, and ultimately the threat of a violent outburst — meant her choices were far from free.
“This is not an adult woman making a free choice, as the defense has suggested,” she said. “It’s a woman who’s told the defendant that she doesn’t want to do hotel nights but has relented to avoid any number of bad things happening to her.”
Slavik also spoke at length about Diddy’s relationship with Cassie. She said that, contrary to the defense’s attempt to paint Combs’ physical abuse as domestic violence unrelated to sex trafficking, the assaults and the freak offs in fact worked in tandem.
“Just like the abuse lasted for the whole relationship, the defendant was having freak offs with Cassie during the whole relationship,” she said. “The freak offs happened before, after and sometimes during the defendant’s violent episodes. They were intertwined. The cloud of the defendant’s abuse was hanging over Cassie’s head, always hovering.”
Slavik also showed the jury the Intercontinental Hotel video yet again, pointing out that it graphically demonstrated one way in which Combs coerced Ventura into freak offs: the threat of violence if she didn’t participate.
“This is what happened when Cassie said no, this video,” Slavik told the jurors. “She was hit in the face, thrown to the ground, kicked and dragged back [to the hotel room].”
When it came to the transportation for prostitution charges, Slavik was contemptuous of an argument that Combs’ attorney Alexandra Shapiro had offered just the day before: that escorts were paid for their time, not for sex.
“I’m going to spend no more than ten seconds on this ridiculous argument, because you know why Daniel [Phillip] and all of the other escorts were paid,” Slavik said. “They were paid for sex.”
As with Jane, the AUSA attacked the idea that Cassie freely chose to participate in the freak offs.
“Through the entire context of the relationship, Cassie did not have the freedom to make voluntary adult choices the defense told you about,” Slavik said. “She told you in excruciating detail how her relationship with the defendant robbed her of her self-confidence and her self-worth and how the freak offs took her agency and her autonomy.”
Slavik also countered the notion, frequently floated by the defense, that Cassie’s graphic texts to Combs, including ones about freak offs, indicated that she was a willing participant.
“Sending explicit messages to her boyfriend, that doesn’t mean that Cassie wanted to have sex with escorts at freak offs, and it doesn’t mean that her boyfriend didn’t understand that she didn’t want to,” Slavik said, while pointing to a 2009 text from Diddy where he demanded that Cassie should be “seducing me all day.”
“So what did Cassie do?” Slavik asked. “She talked about the freak offs and the things she knew would turn on the defendant because she knew that when he was happy, she was safe.”
Slavik ended by thanking the jury, then moved to an overview of Combs’ years of committing “crime after crime.”
“Up until today, the defendant was able to get away with these crimes because of his money, his power, his influence. That stops now,” she said.
“It’s time to hold him accountable. It’s time for justice. It’s time to find the defendant guilty.”
