Sean 'Diddy' Combs Guilty Of 2 Counts, Acquitted Of Most Serious Charges In Sex Trafficking Trial

Sean “Diddy” Combs, the Bad Boy Records laminitis and euphony mogul who launched the careers of rap-R&B royalty successful the 1990s, has been recovered blameworthy connected 2 retired of 5 charges successful his sex-trafficking proceedings successful New York national court. He was acquitted of the astir superior charges: 1 number of racketeering conspiracy and 2 counts of enactment trafficking by force, fraud, oregon coercion.

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A Manhattan assemblage convicted Combs connected 2 counts of proscription to prosecute successful prostitution successful narration to his ex-partners, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and “Jane,” who some testified during the trial. Combs violated the national Mann Act by flying his ex-girlfriends and paid antheral enactment workers astir the state to prosecute successful intersexual acts. He faces up to 20 years successful prison.

New York Daily News / Richard Corkery

Combs rejected a plea deal anterior to the commencement of his proceedings and declined to testify. His defence attorneys did not telephone up immoderate witnesses to beryllium their case. They did, however, taxable two mistrial requests to the justice overseeing Combs’ proceedings implicit claims of “prosecutorial misconduct.”

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Over the people of the weeks-long trial, national prosecutors argued that Combs was the person of a transgression endeavor who utilized his “fame, wealth, and power” to perpetrate a fig of convulsive crimes, including kidnapping, arson, forced labor, and bribery. The endeavor successful question was not Combs’ company, Combs Enterprises, but alternatively his trusted interior ellipse that included immoderate of his employees.

At the bosom of the proceedings were grounds from 34 authorities witnesses, including former employees, instrumentality enforcement agents and ex-girlfriends. The astir memorable testimonies came from the prosecution’s prima witnesses: Ventura, Combs’ ex-partner and erstwhile artist, and an anonymous pistillate known successful tribunal by the pseudonym Jane, whom helium dated connected and disconnected from 2021 up until his September 2024 arrest.

The erstwhile girlfriends testified that Combs forced them to enactment successful enactment marathons with antheral prostitutes successful edifice rooms against their wishes, providing them drugs similar Ecstasy and MDMA to enactment awake for the encounters known arsenic “freak-offs,” immoderate of which he’d record. “The freak-offs became a occupation wherever determination was nary abstraction to bash thing other but to retrieve and conscionable effort to consciousness mean again,” Ventura said during her aggregate days of testimony.

Ventura’s mother, Regina Ventura, took the basal during the proceedings to attest that Combs erstwhile demanded $20,000 from her and threatened to merchandise explicit enactment tapes of her girl aft learning she was dating idiosyncratic else. Ventura’s November 2023 bombshell civilian suit against Combs aided an probe that yet led to a damning national indictment against the hip-hop maven past year. It was settled wrong a time for $20 million, per Ventura’s tribunal testimony.

“By coming guardant with her experience, Cassie has near an indelible people connected some the amusement manufacture and the combat for justice,” Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas H. Wigdor, said successful a connection aft the verdict was announced. “We indispensable repetition – with nary preservation – that we judge and enactment our lawsuit who showed exemplary courageousness passim this trial. She displayed unquestionable spot and brought attraction to the realities of almighty men successful our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion. This lawsuit proved that alteration is agelong overdue, and we volition proceed to combat connected behalf of survivors.”

During her clip connected the witnesser stand, Jane said that she told Combs she cried for 3 days aft speechmaking Ventura’s suit due to the fact that it felt similar she was “reading my ain intersexual trauma.” After the filing, she claimed Combs became little egotistical and acold and much apologetic, NBC News reported. But earlier then, Jane alleged that Combs was a convulsive abuser who would disregard her signs to halt during their “dark” and “sleazy” intersexual encounters. She testified that adjacent aft giving “subtle cues” to Combs — similar making faces and gestures, and saying she was bushed oregon bare — helium would inactive propulsion her to proceed having enactment with different men arsenic helium watched, telling her to “finish strong.” “I would truly combat to artifact retired however bittersweet I was after,” Jane said successful her testimony.

Others who offered witnesser grounds during Combs’ proceedings included Daniel Phillip, the enactment idiosyncratic who alleged helium was paid for intersexual encounters with Combs and Ventura, and Israel Florez, a erstwhile information defender astatine the InterContinental Hotel successful Los Angeles, wherever 2016 surveillance footage captured Combs’ brutal hallway battle connected Ventura.

A fewer notable celebrities were called to the basal during Combs’ trial. Dawn Richard, Combs’ erstwhile Dirty Money bandmate, testified that the euphony shaper physically assaulted aggregate women, including 1 2009 incidental wherever she claimed helium tried to onslaught Ventura successful his Los Angeles location with a skillet. Meanwhile, rapper Kid Cudi, who concisely dated Ventura successful 2011, testified to aggregate instances wherever Combs retaliated against him aft learning that helium and his ex were dating.

During the trial, defence attorneys for Combs acknowledged that helium was convulsive successful his home relationships, but said that his behaviour did not magnitude to enactment trafficking, arsenic prosecutors argued. Combs inactive faces dozens of civilian lawsuits related to intersexual battle and maltreatment allegations.

This nonfiction primitively appeared on HuffPost.

CORRECTION: This nonfiction was updated to close the maximum condemnation Sean “Diddy” Combs could face.