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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Takeaways From Prosecution’s Closing Argument

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    After seven weeks of testimony, the government detailed to jurors why it says the mogul is guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering.A federal prosecutor summed up the government’s case against the music mogul Sean Combs on Thursday, weaving strands of evidence from his seven-week trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges to portray him as the head of a criminal enterprise who “used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted.”The prosecutor, Christy Slavik, focused much of her closing argument on the methods Mr. Combs used to coerce two women he dated — Casandra Ventura (the singer Cassie) and a woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane” — to have sex with hired men while he watched in drug-fueled sessions known as “freak-offs,” “hotel nights” or “wild king nights.”Here are four takeaways from the prosecution’s closing argument:The prosecution said proving that women were coerced into one ‘freak-off’ was enough for a sex trafficking conviction.A key point of contention has been whether Mr. Combs coerced the two women at the heart of the case into having sex with hired men, or if they were willing participants. In cross-examinations during the trial, the defense highlighted text messages in which the women expressed enthusiasm or excitement for the sessions.Ms. Slavik clarified for jurors that the government is not arguing that all of the sex nights with male escorts constitute sex trafficking. She said the women had initially been willing to engage to please Mr. Combs, but later became unwilling participants who complied either because they feared he would hurt them physically or cut them off financially.Christy Slavik, one of the prosecutors, delivered the government’s closing argument in Mr. Combs’s federal trial.Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press“If there is one time — one single freak-off that jurors find were the product of force, threats of force, fraud or coercion, Mr. Combs should be found guilty of sex trafficking,” Ms. Slavik said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question for the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jurors: What Qualifies as Coercion?

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      When the jurors deliberate Sean Combs’s fate in the coming weeks, they will confront a vast trove of evidence from two women who say his treatment of them for years swung between tender affection and sexual subjugation.At the core of the panel’s review will be the question of whether the women — both put forward by prosecutors as sex-trafficking victims — were willing participants in sex marathons with male escorts that lie at the center of the federal case against Mr. Combs.The women have testified for days that while they were in romantic relationships with Mr. Combs, they complied with his requests for voyeuristic, drug-fueled sex nights because they feared the retaliation of a man who wielded immense power over them.Casandra Ventura said she was repeatedly beaten and feared he would make sex tapes of her public as he had threatened. “Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym, said she was repeatedly pressured to have sex with hired men — once after vomiting, another time on her birthday. She said she worried that, given his pattern of behavior, she would seriously displease him if she stopped, leading him to stop paying the $10,000-a-month rent on the home where she lives with her child.“It was many, many blurred lines of love and affection mixed with emotional pressure to perform these things that my lover really desired,” Jane said of her relationship on the stand last week, “and so I wanted to fulfill my duties as a good girlfriend.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Latest in the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Timeline and Testimony

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      The music mogul has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Here’s what has happened in court.Sean Combs, one of America’s most influential music moguls, is standing trial on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Prosecutors accuse him of leading a criminal enterprise that committed a series of crimes including kidnapping, arson and obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have said all the sex at issue in the case was consensual. Read the indictment here.The Latest:The Jury Sees ‘Freak-Off’ Videos and a Juror Is DismissedAs the trial enters its sixth week, the prosecution has highlighted key pieces of evidence to summarize its case. Among them were a trove of text messages from Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff, which prosecutors said showed that Ms. Khorram was closely involved in planning the intensive sex marathons that Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified as “Jane” said they endured. Over the course of the trial, those events have been called “freak-offs,” “hotel nights” and “wild king nights.”Prosecutors also showed jurors brief excerpts from videos of those events, which were taken from devices that Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, provided to the government. That evidence is sealed, and was not visible to the public or the news media. Jurors watched the videos on screens, and listened on headphones; one juror, frowning, snatched the headphones off after the first clip was played. During cross-examination, the defense chose segments of the same videos that lasted up to five minutes.The defense has called the footage “powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion.”On Monday, the judge dismissed a juror who gave inconsistent information about where he lives, raising concerns that he had been seeking a spot on the jury of the high-profile case. On Tuesday, the jury saw charts that detailed phone records and text messages related to Mr. Combs’s assault on Ms. Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, and illustrated how some of the expenses related to freak-offs were paid through Mr. Combs’s companies.Prosecutors are expected to rest this week, and the defense will then call its own witnesses, who are expected to include a former human resources manager for Mr. Combs’s company and a forensic psychiatrist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial, a Detailed Timeline of the Hotel Assault on Cassie

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      Jurors were also shown how expenses related to the sexual encounters were paid for by the mogul’s companies, as well as text and phone records surrounding a 2016 assault.Just after noon on Tuesday, the courtroom where Sean Combs is standing trial went silent.For a second time in Mr. Combs’s federal trial for sex trafficking and racketeering, jurors were shown explicit videos of “freak-offs,” the extended sexual encounters that are central to the case — this time, in excerpts chosen by the defense.On Monday, during questioning of a federal agent by prosecutors, jurors had viewed a series of short clips from the videos, each about 30 seconds in length. On Tuesday, during cross-examination, the defense chose segments that lasted up to five minutes.Jurors, wearing headphones, kept their eyes trained on screens in front of them. But, following an order from the judge supervising the case, Arun Subramanian, the videos were not displayed to reporters and members of the public in the gallery. The footage was taken from devices that Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend for about 11 years, turned over to the government during its investigation.For about 20 minutes, as the videos were played, the courtroom was largely hushed while jurors watched. Mr. Combs, sitting in his chair, leaned back and tapped his fingers rhythmically against his right thigh. His lawyers eyed the jurors closely.On Monday, some jurors had seemed visibly uncomfortable when viewing the clips. But on Tuesday, they showed little reaction. When the videos ended, one juror rubbed his face and eyes.Teny Geragos, the defense lawyer cross-examining the agent, DeLeassa Penland of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, said nothing about the videos, only giving the time codes for when the segments would stop and start; in some cases, she indicated that they were resuming where Monday’s clips had ended.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question for the Sean Combs Jurors: What Qualifies as Coercion?

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      When the jurors deliberate Sean Combs’s fate in the coming weeks, they will confront a vast trove of evidence from two women who say his treatment of them for years swung between tender affection and sexual subjugation.At the core of the panel’s review will be the question of whether the women — both put forward by prosecutors as sex-trafficking victims — were willing participants in sex marathons with male escorts that lie at the center of the federal case against Mr. Combs.The women have testified for days that while they were in romantic relationships with Mr. Combs, they complied with his requests for voyeuristic, drug-fueled sex nights because they feared the retaliation of a man who wielded immense power over them.Casandra Ventura said she was repeatedly beaten and feared he would make sex tapes of her public as he had threatened. “Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym, said she was repeatedly pressured to have sex with hired men — once after vomiting, another time on her birthday. She said she worried that, given his pattern of behavior, she would seriously displease him if she stopped, leading him to stop paying the $10,000-a-month rent on the home where she lives with her child.“It was many, many blurred lines of love and affection mixed with emotional pressure to perform these things that my lover really desired,” Jane said of her relationship on the stand last week, “and so I wanted to fulfill my duties as a good girlfriend.”Mr. Combs has vehemently denied the sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against him. The heart of his defense is consent. His lawyers spent hours asking the women to review messages in which they expressed love for Mr. Combs and, at times, interest in the sex sessions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defense to Question Woman About ‘Hotel Nights’ With Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

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      One of the music mogul’s ex-girlfriends, who is going by the pseudonym Jane, has spent days testifying that he pressured her to have sex with other men.For more than 13 hours over three days, jurors in the federal trial of Sean Combs have heard gripping testimony from one of his former girlfriends, a witness for the prosecution called Jane. Now it is time for her cross-examination.Mr. Combs, the producer and impresario also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The government has accused the music mogul of running a “criminal enterprise” whose objectives included coercing women into sex and covering it up; after Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who testified over four days last month, Jane is the second woman put forward by prosecutors as a victim of sex trafficking.Mr. Combs, who faces life in prison if he is convicted, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and has strongly denied that any of his sexual relations were not consensual.Appearing under a pseudonym to protect her privacy, Jane first took the stand on Thursday afternoon and will continue on Tuesday. She has recounted vivid details of a troubled relationship with Mr. Combs, which began in 2021 and lasted until shortly before his arrest in September 2024.Jane said she was pressured to have sex with a succession of male escorts without condoms, and developed painful infections as a result. She once threw up in the bathroom of a luxury hotel after having sex with two men, she testified; after Mr. Combs told her “let’s go” because a third man was waiting to have sex with her, she complied.Jane was also part of Mr. Combs’s life during the critical period after Ms. Ventura filed her bombshell lawsuit in November 2023, in which she described being coerced into drug-fueled sex marathons she called “freak-offs.” Recognizing a similar pattern to what she called “hotel nights” or “debauchery,” Jane texted Mr. Combs three days after that suit was filed: “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma. It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Trial Will Focus on Footage of Hotel Assault on Cassie

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      The music mogul has been accused of using a brown bag filled with $100,000 cash to buy hotel security video of him beating up Casandra Ventura.It has been a year since 2016 footage of Sean Combs brutally assaulting his longtime girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, in a Los Angeles hotel was broadcast on CNN. Now those images, which became a potent demonstration of the music mogul’s violence, are a centerpiece of his federal trial.The video of Mr. Combs striking and kicking Ms. Ventura has already been shown to jurors multiple times. On Tuesday, prosecutors are expected to delve into the events that followed the assault, which they have said involved Mr. Combs delivering $100,000 in a brown paper bag to purchase hotel security footage of the beating.Mr. Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which involves accusations that the mogul engaged an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees to help him commit a series of crimes over two decades.At least two of those criminal allegations — bribery and obstruction of justice — relate to the aftermath of the assault at an InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers have said that he and his employees were involved in legitimate business operations, not a criminal conspiracy, and that the sex at issue in the government’s case was entirely consensual.On Tuesday morning, Eddy Garcia, a hotel security supervisor who was on duty shortly after the 2016 assault, is expected to take the stand. He will be testifying under an immunity order after telling the government that he intended to assert his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mia’ to Continue Her Testimony as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Trial Nears Midpoint

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      The former assistant will be questioned by Mr. Combs’s lawyers, who say her account of sex abuse and violence is at odds with the warmth she showed him on social media.The federal trial of Sean Combs is entering its fourth week, the midpoint of what is expected to be an eight-week trial, with prosecutors still filling out the particulars of a case that charges the music mogul with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.Jurors have heard from 21 witnesses in support of the government’s case that Mr. Combs was a violent and abusive man who controlled, intimidated and sexually violated women, and that he directed employees to commit arson, bribery, forced labor, obstruction of justice and other crimes on his behalf as part of a “criminal enterprise.”Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, and his lawyers have strongly denied that any of his sexual arrangements were nonconsensual, arguing that the women who are part of the government’s case willingly consented to sex with Mr. Combs. If convicted of all charges, Mr. Combs, 55, could face life in prison.The witnesses in the case so far have included Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who said she had been coerced intro drug-fueled sex marathons, and a former assistant, testifying under the pseudonym “Mia,” who said that her boss sexually assaulted her and subjected her to sleep deprivation and violence.Another witness, Deonte Nash, a stylist, described witnessing Mr. Combs’s violent attacks on Ms. Ventura, and said she told him that Mr. Combs had threatened to release explicit videos of her with other men in “freak-offs,” the sexual encounters that are at the heart of the government’s case. Ms. Ventura had called those videos “blackmail materials.”At a news conference at the White House on Friday, President Trump said that, if asked, he was open to reviewing a possible pardon for Mr. Combs — whom he crossed paths with decades ago on the celebrity scene in New York — if he was convicted.“I would certainly look at the facts,” Mr. Trump said.Mia, who testified on Thursday and Friday last week, will return to the stand on Monday for what should be the conclusion of her testimony. Under cross-examination on Friday, Brian Steel, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, showed Mia dozens of social media posts in which she repeatedly expressed affection and admiration for the music mogul. Mr. Steel asked how she could write such things if he had also abused her in the way she said.“I was young and manipulated and just eager to survive,” Mia said.The next witnesses suggest the government will further examine the circumstances of freak-offs. One witness, Eddy Garcia, was a supervisor at an InterContinential Hotel in Los Angeles, where a security camera recorded Mr. Combs attacking Ms. Ventura in 2016. Another expected witness, Frank Piazza, is a forensic video expert who examined that hotel footage. Other expected witnesses include Sylvia Okun, a hotel custodian, and a man named Enrique Santos. More

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      Trump Says He’d ‘Look at the Facts’ of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Case: Latest Trial Takeaways

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      President Trump discussed if he would consider a pardon for Sean Combs, while in court, an ex-assistant testified about sexual abuse. Mr. Combs denies sexually assaulting anyone.As the third week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial came to a close on Friday, the second woman to testify that she was sexually abused by him came under close questioning by the music mogul’s lawyers. The woman, who took the stand under the pseudonym Mia, spoke about eight grueling years working for Mr. Combs in an environment characterized by sleep deprivation and violent outbursts.In the afternoon, President Trump commented on the trial, saying that although no one had asked about a potential pardon, he would be open to looking “at the facts” of the case.The music mogul has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. His lawyers have acknowledged their client has a history of violence and a “bad temper,” but assert he is not a racketeer or sex trafficker.Here are some takeaways from the day in court.Mia faced her former boss’s lawyers.Mia testified that Mr. Combs threatened her, threw objects at her and sexually assaulted her during her years working for him. Prosecutors have accused him of subjecting her to forced labor — including sexual activity — through violence and threats of serious harm.During cross-examination, Brian Steel, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, sought to show the jury another side of Mia’s time working for the famous record producer. The defense displayed dozens of posts from her Instagram account, many of which showed her posing beside or celebrating Mr. Combs, whom she called a “mentor” and an “inspiration,” as well as marveling at her good fortune to be working for him — years after she says he first sexually assaulted her.“Why would you promote the person who has stolen your happiness in life?” Mr. Steel asked.“Those are the only people I was around, so that was my life,” Mia replied, describing her time working for Mr. Combs as a “confusing cycle of ups and downs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More