Atlanta, Georgia – August 26: Sean Combs on stage during the Invest Fest 2023 at the Georgia World Congress Center on August 26, 2023 in Atlanta, in Georgia.
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Prince Williams / Wireimage
This report contains physical and sexual aggression descriptions.
Sean Combs’ defense team used its closing arguments on Friday to crop the account of the accusation during its federal trial in Manhattan.
Speaking for more than four hours in a courtroom in the Southern District in New York, lawyer Marc Agnifilo alternated between sarcasm and solemnity to refute the allegations of the government of sex trafficking and racketeering. Combs pleaded not guilty to all accusations.
The accusation used its fence arguments Thursday, to explain how almost six weeks of evidence and testimonies have proven that Combs directed a criminal business that facilitated and concealed sexual crimes for decades. The prosecutor Christy Slavik has cartoated a long -standing model of abuse that began with one of the main witnesses of the government, the former girlfriend of Combs, the singer and mannequin Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. Slavik showed texts and testimonies of Ventura telling the combs that she did not want to participate in “freak-offs”, and said that Combs used sexually explicit videos to threaten her to follow her requests. “All of this was designed to do one thing – to scare Cassie to say no,” said Slavik.
During his remarks, Agnifilo described the relationship between the hip-hop and Ventura magnate, “a great modern love story”. He also admitted, however, that the jury had seen a video strip of combat kicks, push and drag Ventura by his hair in a corridor of the hotel in California in 2016. Ventura also testified for a history of abuseAnd several other witnesses said they had seen combs attacking Ventura physically or saw his bruises, his big lips and other abuse proofs.
“We have domestic violence,” said Agnifilo. During his remarks, he added that Combs directs an “exhaust life mode” and that he “has a drug problem, without question”.
But Agnifilo also sought to rediscover the Ventura of an alleged mistreatment victim to an accomplice player who skillfully juggled with romantic rivals and compressed for a big salary of Combs, who paid a civil lawsuit with her in November 2023 for $ 20 million.
“Cassie is person’s fool,” said Agnifilo. “It is sitting somewhere in the world today with $ 30 million,” he said, referring both to the colony with Combs and a subsequent settlement with the owner of the hotel where Combs attacked it in 2016. “He is in prison. It is like a massacre.”
Agnifilo also attacked the credibility of the other main witnesses of the accusation and alleged victim, former girlfriend of Combs who testified under the pseudonym “Jeanne“Saying that Jane was also looking to benefit materially from her relationship with Combs, reminding the jurors that he always pays for Jane’s house and her legal costs.
He also thanked the federal agents sardonly for their raids on the properties of combination: “The streets of America, sheltered from astroglides!” He exclaimed, referring to the hundreds of bottles of lubricant and baby oil that were found at Combs.
Agniflo has also tried to dismantle the credibility of other key witnesses, including former Combs employees Capricorn Clarkwho testified that Combs and his associates had kidnapped her twice, and the woman who testified on the stand “Mia“Who said that Combs had sexually assaulted her on several occasions.” It was not unwanted sexual contact, “said the defense lawyer.
He repeatedly reframed videos of Ventura and Jane combs with sex with male escorts like “homemade porn” and argued that Combs had paid the time of men, not sex itself. He also asked the jury to examine how Combs was tried for racketeering – and yet there are no other people who were charged with him. “No witness said they were part of a business,” he added.
Agnifilo has repeatedly presented some of the main arguments of the defense of his opening declaration: that all combination relations were consensual. “You can call him swingers, you can call him three,” he said. “Whatever you wanted to call it, that’s what it is.”
Within the framework of its detailed rupture of the acts of predicate, the government accuses the combs and its partners of having engaged – in particular a criminal fire, a corruption, a removal and a distribution of drugs – Agnifilo has challenged that the Combs could have had any involvement in the Presumed criminal fire attack On a car belonging to the musician Scott Mescudi, who records as a kid Cudi, and was briefly involved with Ventura, or that Combs would have gone to Mescudi with a firearm with the intention of confronting him.
Agnifilo called a “loose” fire fire and not the “style” of Combs, and said that Combs, which he compared to actor John Wayne, would have gone to fight Mescudi in a “good old fistfight”.
Towards the end of its remarks, Agnfilo accused the government of “targeting” the comb after Ventura has filed its civil lawsuit. Prosecutors opposed his declaration, saying that such speculation should not have been made to the jury. Judge Arun Subramanian agreed, later asking jurors that the decision -making of prosecutors or a large jury to accuse or not a defendant is “none of your concerns”.
In his refutation to the presentation of Agnifilo, the prosecutor Maurene Comey tried to refute what she said to be the three main arguments of the defense: that there was no payment by comb for sex; that there was no criminal enterprise; And that Ventura, Jane and Mia had all lied on the stand.
Speaking of male escorts, Comey said: “They were not paid for their sparkling conversation. They were paid to have sex.”
She also explained the jury concerning the accusation of racketeering according to which combat companies could be used simultaneously for legitimate and illegal purposes, that at least some of her employees were aware or participated in illegal activities such as prostitution and corruption.
In a particularly passionate moment, Comey described a Violent episode with Jane This would have taken place in June 2024, after Combs knew that he was the subject of a federal criminal investigation, saying that “20 years, he had moved away from crime after crime”.
Comey returned to the testimony that Jane gave on the stand, in which she said that during this episode of 2024, Combs forced her to give oral sex to a male sex, when she already had talents on her head and a flowery black eye of the combits attack. On the stand, Jane said that she said on Combs several times that she did not want to have oral sex with man. Combs leaned, she testified, and would have said to him, “Does this coercion?”
“The accused fully understood what was going on was coercion, was sexual traffic, and he made a conscious decision to do it anyway,” said Comey.
Comey added: “The accused was cheeky enough to think that he could continue to get away with crimes when he was under federal investigation. In his mind, he was untouchable, a god among men … and who would resist a God?”
Judge Arun Subramanian said he would give the jury their instructions on the law on Monday morning; Deliberations should start immediately afterwards.