Sean “Diddy” Combs wants 12 New Yorkers to see him as a victim.
At the center of the defense of the Millionaire rap magnate during her criminal trial on sex traffic next week will be the assertion that the R&B singer Cassie Ventura – the star witness of the case against him – also abused him.
“We are going to increase 100% that,” said the trial judge on Friday at a final hearing in the final forecast.
“We are going to take the position that there was mutual violence on both sides,” he told the district court of Arun Subramanian, while Combs was sitting at the defense table, nodding with approval.
“There were two sides,” said Agnifilo to the judge. “We will probably call it domestic violence.”
On Friday, the judge forbidden the defense to allege the jurors that Ventura, the ex-girlfriend of Combs over a decade, was violent to someone other than Combs. Agnifilo had argued that the jurors should see that Ventura was a “strong” person who would not have been forced by sex by combs.
“Strong people can be forced, as are weak people,” said the judge.
Ventura lawyer Douglas Wigdor refused to comment on Friday in Business Insider in the court.
Redefine Combs, 55, as a battered man can be difficult work for his defense team.
The prosecutors plan to show the jurors the sadly famous images of the security camera where Combs is seen beating and dragging Ventura in a corridor of the Los Angeles hotel – the “Cassie video”, while the future jurors called him throughout three days of selection of the jury this week.
Friday, prosecutor Emily Anne Johnson told the judge that the jurors could see five versions of the images. These will include versions recorded on the mobile phone of a security guard and others obtained for the first time by CNN.
In 2023, Sean “Diddy” Combs was at Met Gala. Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic
From Met Gala to MDC
The combs that jurors will see at the Defense table during the opening declarations of the Manhattan Federal Court on Monday will not be like the star who honored the red carpet during the Met 2023 gala, carrying a tumbled motorbike tumbled in black crystal by his side.
These days, Combs – a close billionaire – is with gray hair and darkly dressed, wearing the same apparent dark pants and sweater every day of selection of the jury.
If he is found guilty of accusations of sex trafficking and racketeering, Combs could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The high -level test should take place for about two months.
Combs was arrested and charged last September. Since then, he has been locked in a Federal Brooklyn prison.
Prosecutors allege that, for two decades, Combs led a “criminal enterprise” which involved the sexual traffic of two women, Ventura and an anonymous Jane. Combs is accused of constraining these women, plus two additional women, in sex through a model of threats, manipulation and violence.
Ventura should testify during the trial on the abuses she alleys that she endured in the hands of Combs. It is also expected that two of the other women bear witness to this, one under its real name and the other using a pseudonym. A fifth woman who is not in the indictment should also testify on the alleged abuse past using his real name.
Prosecutors say that Combs and its partners have also committed other crimes, including forced labor, kidnapping, criminal fire, corruption, drug offenses and the obstruction of justice.
Violence and “Freak offs”
Like the sumptuous “white parts” of Combs, the late 1990s and the early 2000s, its trial should present a certain number of celebrities – at least only in the name.
The jury selection process has revealed a list of famous people who can be mentioned during the trial. They understand: you, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West; Rapper Kid Cudi; actor Michael B. Jordan; The choreographer Laurieann Gibson; and Yung Miami.
The Crénale de Combs case stems from a civilian trial of November 2023 that Ventura filed against Combs, accusing it of rape and forcing it to engage in sexual sessions that the music magnate called “Freak Offs”. Combs settled the pursuit shortly after its deposit.
At the center of the criminal accusation act against the combs, there are accusations that he orchestrated the so-called “monsters”, described by prosecutors in elaborate legal documents, powered by drugs and sometimes long-standing sexual performance that the combs have arranged, directed and often registered electronically.
During the test, the jurors will be invited to watch hours of graphic sex videos, including Freak Off images, which the Combs have recorded over the years. Prosecutors say that images have been taken without the consent of its accusers. The videos are so explicit and sensitive that even the public in the courtroom will not be allowed to see them.
Combs categorically denied the accusations brought against him, as well as all other allegations of sexual abuse. He was accused of sexual assault, rape, drugs and other forms of violence in more than 50 civil proceedings.
His defense lawyers argued in his criminal affair that the sexual acts in which Combs were involved were fully consensual. The Ventura Combs video, they say, came following a personal dispute over their relationship.
Cassie Ventura should be the star witness of the SEAN “Diddy” criminal trial. Images Jason Laveris / FilmMagic / Getty
A high -power legal team
For the sex trafficking case, Combs separated from his longtime lawyer Ben Brafman, who had a acquittal for the hip-hop artist on accusations of firearms and corruption in 2001.
He is now represented by a protégé by Brafman, Marc Agnifilo, who previously defended the founder of the cult of Nxivm, Keith Raniere and “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli.
Agnifilo and his wife, Karen Agnifilo Friedman, also represent Luigi Mangione, who said that the CEO of Unitedhealthcare killed Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last year.
The Combs legal team is stacked by other eminent lawyers, including Alexandra Shapiro, who manages the call of Sam Bankman Fried; Brian Steel, who defended the young thug in his complicated essay by Georgia Rico and has a Drake song named after him; And Teny Geragos, a legal partner of Agnifolo and the daughter of Mark Geragos, a high -level defense lawyer who advises the case.
During a recent hearing, Combs confirmed to the judge that he had been offered the possibility of pleading guilty to accusations which would have led to a lighter sentence – but still chose to go in judgment.
The accusation team, representing the American prosecutor’s office for the South New York district, is entirely made up of women. Among the prosecutors, Maurene Comey, the daughter of the former FBI chief, James Comey, who managed to continue the sexual traffic trial of the partner of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Trial is the First Major Criminal Case to Be Overseen by Subramanian, who was overlooked to the Federal Bench by President Joe Biden in 2023. Subramanian is also Overseing a Complex Antitrust Lawsuit Against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, as well as a civil Lawsuit from Jeffrey Victims Against Us Rep. Stacey Paskett, Who They Allege Helped Facilitate The Now-Dead Pedophile’s Sex Trafficking on the Us Virgin islands.
While the prosecutors represented bands like a criminal brain which exercised its vast resources to manipulate women and men for their sexual satisfaction, his lawyers have proposed a softer image.
They say that Combs had a “swinger” lifestyle that involved several sexual partners, and that the prosecutors distorted a personal and complicated relationship in a false criminal allegation.
Combs and Ventura “were in love,” said Agnifilo during a release hearing on bond last year.
“This will clearly be specified by the way they talk to each other, by the way other witnesses have described their time together, and by the circumstances of the way they broke up,” said Agnifolo.
“They were in love, but Mr. Combs was not always faithful,” he continued.
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