Diddy Trial: Sean Combs Says He is Cassie’s Home Violence Sufferer

Sean “Diddy” Combs needs 12 New Yorkers to see him as a sufferer.

Central to the millionaire rap mogul’s protection at his legal sex-trafficking trial subsequent week would be the declare that R&B singer Cassie Ventura — the star witness within the case in opposition to him — abused him, too.

“We’re 100% going to boost that,” Combs’ protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo informed the trial decide in a last pre-trial listening to on Friday.

“We’re going to take the place that there was mutual violence on each side,” he informed US District Courtroom Justice Arun Subramanian, as Combs sat on the protection desk, nodding his head approvingly.

“There was hitting on each side,” Agnifilo informed the decide. “We’re in all probability going to consult with it as home violence.”

The decide on Friday barred the protection from alleging to jurors that Ventura, Combs’ ex-girlfriend of greater than a decade, was violent to somebody apart from Combs. Agnifilo had argued that jurors wanted to see that Ventura was a “robust” one that would not have been coerced into intercourse by Combs.

“Sturdy individuals could be coerced, similar to weak individuals,” the decide mentioned.

Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, declined to remark to Enterprise Insider at courtroom on Friday.

Redefining Combs, 55, as a battered man could also be robust work for his protection crew.

Prosecutors plan to point out jurors the notorious safety digital camera footage the place Combs is seen beating and dragging Ventura in a Los Angeles resort hallway — the “Cassie video,” as potential jurors known as it all through three days of jury choice this week.

Prosecutor Emily Anne Johnson informed the decide on Friday that jurors might even see 5 variations of the footage. These will embody variations recorded on a safety guard’s cellphone and others first obtained by CNN.

From Met Gala to MDC

The Combs that jurors will see on the protection desk throughout opening statements in Manhattan federal courtroom Monday will look nothing just like the star who graced the crimson carpet on the 2023 Met Gala, carrying a black Swarovski crystal-studded bike tuxedo with rapper Yung Miami at his aspect.

Lately, Combs — a one-time close to billionaire — is gray-haired and somberly dressed, carrying the identical obvious darkish slacks and sweater every day of jury choice.

If convicted on fees of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, Combs might spend the remainder of his life behind bars.

The high-profile trial is slated to run for about two months.

Combs was arrested and indicted final September. Since then, he is been locked up at a federal Brooklyn jail.

Prosecutors allege that, for 20 years, Combs led a “legal enterprise” that concerned the intercourse trafficking of two ladies, Ventura and an nameless Jane Doe. Combs is accused of coercing these ladies, plus two further ladies, into intercourse by means of a sample of threats, manipulation, and violence.

Ventura is ready to testify through the trial concerning the abuse she alleges she endured by the hands of Combs. A minimum of two of the opposite ladies are additionally anticipated to testify, one beneath her actual title and the opposite utilizing a pseudonym. A fifth girl who’s not within the indictment can be set to testify about alleged previous abuse utilizing her actual title.

Prosecutors say that Combs and his associates additionally dedicated different crimes, together with pressured labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, drug offenses, and obstruction of justice.

Violence and ‘freak offs’

Very similar to Combs’ lavish star-studded “white events” of the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, his trial is predicted to characteristic a variety of celebrities — not less than solely in title.

The jury choice course of revealed a listing of famed people who could also be talked about through the trial. They embody: Ye, the rapper previously referred to as Kanye West; rapper Child Cudi; actor Michael B. Jordan; choreographer Laurieann Gibson; and Yung Miami.

Combs’ legal case stems from a November 2023 civil lawsuit that Ventura filed in opposition to Combs, accusing him of rape and forcing to her to interact in intercourse periods that the music magnate known as “freak offs.” Combs settled the swimsuit shortly after it was filed.

On the heart of the legal indictment in opposition to Combs are accusations that he orchestrated the so-called “freak offs,” described by prosecutors in courtroom papers as elaborate, drug-fueled, and typically dayslong intercourse performances that Combs organized, directed, and infrequently electronically recorded.

Throughout the trial, jurors can be requested to look at hours of graphic intercourse movies, together with freak off footage, that Combs recorded over time. Prosecutors say some footage was taken with out his accusers’ consent. The movies are so specific and delicate that not even the general public within the courtroom can be permitted to view them.

Combs has adamantly denied the fees in opposition to him, in addition to all different allegations of intercourse abuse. He has been accused of sexual assault, rape, drugging, and different types of violence in additional than 50 civil lawsuits.

His protection attorneys have argued in his legal case that the intercourse acts Combs was concerned in had been absolutely consensual. The video of Combs beating Ventura, they are saying, got here following a private dispute about their relationship.

A high-powered authorized crew

For the sex-trafficking case, Combs parted together with his longtime lawyer Ben Brafman, who efficiently received an acquittal for the hip-hop artist on gun and bribery fees in 2001.

He is now represented by a protégé of Brafman, Marc Agnifilo, who beforehand defended NXIVM cult founder Keith Raniere and “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli.

Agnifilo and his spouse, Karen Agnifilo Friedman, are additionally representing Luigi Mangione, who prosecutors say killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk final yr.

Combs’s authorized crew is stacked with different outstanding attorneys, together with Alexandra Shapiro, who’s dealing with Sam Bankman-Fried’s enchantment; Brian Metal, who defended Younger Thug in his sophisticated Georgia RICO trial and has a Drake track named after him; and Teny Geragos, a regulation accomplice of Agnifolo’s and the daughter of Mark Geragos, a high-profile protection lawyer who’s advising on the case.

In a latest listening to, Combs confirmed to the decide he was supplied the possibility to plead responsible to fees that will have resulted in a lighter sentence — however selected to go to trial anyway.

The prosecution aspect, representing the US Legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York, consists solely of ladies. Among the many prosecutors is Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI chief James Comey, who efficiently prosecuted the sex-trafficking trial of Jeffrey Epstein affiliate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The trial is the primary main legal case to be overseen by Subramanian, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2023. Subramanian can be overseeing a posh antitrust lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and Reside Nation, in addition to a civil lawsuit from Jeffrey Epstein victims in opposition to US Rep. Stacey Paskett, who they allege helped facilitate the now-dead pedophile’s intercourse trafficking on the US Virgin Islands.

Whereas prosecutors have depicted Combs as a legal mastermind who exerted his huge assets to govern men and women for his sexual gratification, his attorneys have put ahead a extra gentle image.

They are saying Combs had a “swinger” way of life that concerned a number of sexual companions, and that prosecutors have distorted a private and complex relationship right into a false legal allegation.

Combs and Ventura “had been in love,” Agnifilo mentioned throughout one bail listening to final yr.

“That can be made abundantly clear by the best way they converse to one another, by the best way different witnesses described their time collectively, and by the circumstances of how they broke up,” Agnifolo mentioned.

“They had been in love, however Mr. Combs wasn’t all the time devoted,” he continued.