Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ attorneys make ultimate arguments to jurors

The intercourse trafficking and racketeering case towards hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was “badly, badly exaggerated”, his lawyer informed a panel of 12 New York jurors on Friday.

In his closing, Marc Agnifilo argued for 4 hours that the federal government was criminalising Combs and his girlfriends’ “swingers life-style” in what amounted to a “pretend trial”.

His 55-year-old shopper pleaded not responsible to expenses of intercourse trafficking, racketeering and transportation to interact in prostitution.

“The federal government focused Sean Combs,” Mr Agnifilo informed the court docket, resulting in an objection – later sustained – from prosecutors.

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Lawyer Christy Slavik spoke to jurors for five-and-a-half hours within the prosecution’s closing arguments on Thursday, telling them that Combs abused his energy and enterprise empire to intercourse visitors girls and commit different crimes.

The prosecution claimed Combs plied his ex girlfriends with medicine, and used violence and different means to coerce them into so-called “freak-offs” – Combs’ identify for occasions the place he watched and filmed whereas that they had intercourse with male escorts.

Whereas Ms Slavik was calm and methodical throughout a guided digital presentation, Mr Agnifilo was animated – pacing forwards and backwards, and ceaselessly cracking jokes.

He started by attacking the credibility of Combs’ ex-girlfriends who testified towards him, Casandra Ventura and nameless witness “Jane”.

He known as Combs’ 11-year-relationship with Ms Ventura – through which she alleges he beat her repeatedly – “one of many nice trendy love tales”. She was a keen participant of their intercourse lives, he mentioned.

“She’s a girl who truly likes intercourse – good for her,” Mr Agnifilo mentioned. “She’s lovely, she ought to.”

He argued Ms Ventura was no sufferer, as Combs was now in jail and she or he settled a civil lawsuit towards him for bodily abuse and sexual coercion for hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.

“When you needed to decide a winner on this complete factor, it is laborious to not decide Cassie,” he mentioned.

The issues of their relationship amounted to home violence – and never intercourse trafficking, Mr Agnifilo mentioned. He tried to forged doubt on prosecutors’ argument that the rapper used violence to coerce Ms Ventura into taking part in freak-offs.

The federal government has centered on a 2016 surveillance video of Combs beating Ms Ventura within the hallway of a Los Angeles lodge, allegedly after she tried to go away a freak-off.

Taking part in the video for jurors once more, Mr Agnifilo argued it couldn’t have been an occasion of intercourse trafficking as a result of Ms Ventura appeared to gesture Combs again to their room when a safety guard arrived on the scene.

There was “nothing scary within the room”, he mentioned, including that freak-offs have been “lovely evenings” with good music and well-decorated rooms.

Mr Agnifilo additionally tried to chip away at Jane’s testimony, citing one evening the place she alleges the rapper was violent together with her earlier than a freak-off.

“Her story actually is mindless,” he mentioned.

Combs’ lawyer attacked the federal government’s racketeering case, the allegation that Combs relied on his loyal workers to assist him commit intercourse trafficking and different crimes, then cowl them up.

There was a “gaping lack of proof” that Combs and his workers ran some kind of legal enterprise, and that there have been any co-conspirators, he mentioned.

Combs’ former chief-of-staff, Kristina Khorram, whom prosecutors have pointed to as a co-conspirator, is a “useful” lady who everybody cherished, Agnifilo informed the jury.

An actual co-conspirator, he claimed, would have helped kick the door down when Combs is alleged to have tried to interrupt into his ex-girlfriend’s dwelling.

In response to the transportation to interact in prostitution cost, Mr Agnifilo argued that male escorts the hip-hop mogul and his girlfriends employed have been paid “for his or her time” with the couple, and never for intercourse.

On the finish of his arguments, Combs, sporting an off-white sweater, hugged his legal professional. His household, together with his twin daughters and mom, have been seated behind him for the second day in a row.

In a rebuttal to the defence’s closing on Friday, prosecutor Maurene Comey took a extra aggressive tone than Ms Slavik’s, slamming Combs’ attorneys for suggesting his ex-girlfriends have been mendacity and that they needed to interact in freak-offs after being overwhelmed.

“There isn’t a separating the violence from the intercourse,” Ms Comey mentioned. “They have been trapped emotionally, bodily and financially.”

She famous Ms Ventura’s lawsuit settlement, asking, “why threat all of it by perjuring herself at a federal trial?”

Jurors will reconvene on Monday for the decide’s directions on learn how to weigh the case towards the hip-hop mogul. Deliberations are anticipated to start quickly after.

Combs is going through life in jail over essentially the most severe expenses of racketeering and intercourse trafficking.

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