The Sean Combs Criminal Trial: An Inside Look
Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lead lawyer, discussed the defense strategy, why they didn’t put Combs on the stand, a possible appeal, and sentencing.
On Wednesday, July 2, a Manhattan federal jury acquitted hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs of one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking. The jury did convict him of two counts of transportation of individuals to engage in prostitution, in violation of the Mann Act.
Combs remains behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has spent approximately 10 months in custody thus far, after Judge Arun Subramanian (S.D.N.Y.) denied his post-verdict motion for release on bail. Sentencing is currently scheduled for October 3.
Although the Combs verdict was split, it was widely viewed as a major victory for the defense (as noted by former federal prosecutors Mitch Epner and Ken White, among others). The racketeering and sex-trafficking counts were by far the most serious charges in the five-count indictment, and Combs could have faced life in prison had he been convicted of them.
Yesterday, I interviewed Combs’s lead lawyer, Marc Agnifilo of Agnifilo Intrater, for my Original Jurisdiction podcast—and we had a great conversation. The full episode will air on Wednesday, July 23. But because Marc made newsworthy comments about a case that attracted worldwide attention, I wanted to share highlights with you now.1
On the defense’s overall theory of the case:
This was all his personal life, and these were all his girlfriends. The heart of the case was his personal life. The government didn’t find that he did anything wrong with his businesses; they didn’t find anything wrong with the loans that he got or with the hundreds of millions of dollars that passed through his businesses. Had they found something wrong with that, that would’ve been in the indictment.
And so they charged into his bedroom and into his private hotel rooms, uninvited—because these are not women who went to the police. These are women who either did nothing or went to civil lawyers because, after the fact, they wanted a certain sum of money. That was the real theme—that this was his personal life. It was nobody’s business, and the government was making this into something that it was not. And so everything in the case revolved around that.
On the defense approach to handling the horrific video showing Combs beating his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura:
Now, we also had to admit, and we admitted right upfront, that there was domestic violence, and there was domestic violence with Cassie a number of times through the years. I realized, early on, we had to fully take account of that. The word I used was we have to “own” that; we have to take all the dispute out of that. The government’s not going to have to prove these things happened. We’ll admit it in the opening, and we won’t give a hard time to the witnesses who truthfully testify about these things.
So that was another part of it, because I thought what the government was going to try to do was to say that if you have this violence in the past, it’s a short walk from that to the force or coercion required for sex trafficking. So we had to separate the two, and we had to own one, because one was committed—and we had to fight the sex trafficking because we firmly believe, and the jury firmly believed, that that was not committed. So that’s the reason we did that.
On Sean Combs as a client:
He’s a fascinating person, he was a fascinating client, and let me tell you exactly why. By the time I met him, he was already under investigation, and we didn’t know what was going to happen. It just kept getting more and more real, and it looked more and more inevitable that there’d be an indictment. Then he was in jail, and we couldn’t get him out.
And he had a lot of time to reflect. He is a religious man, he grew up going to church, he went to a religious Catholic high school, and I think he started to realize that he has done things wrong. He’s an imperfect person, he’s done things wrong, and he gave us the green light, to his great credit, to tell the truth—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it was probably the key to success. [Ed. note: Combs is currently enrolled in various self-improvement programs available to him in jail, including ones aimed at addressing domestic violence and drug abuse.]
On how much consideration was given to having Combs testify:
We gave it a lot of thought, and we gave it a lot of thought deep into the trial. And it really wasn’t until the government put on a former CFO that we decided not to. The CFO was a great witness for us and gave us a lot of great background about Sean, about his companies, and about racial diversity back when nobody was doing that. So you look at all the issues that you would want your client to testify to, and you ask yourself, “Well, do we already have those?” And by the end of the government's case, we had already had a lot of them.
Now, we knew on some level that it’s Sean Combs; the jury is going to want to hear from Sean Combs. But I think (a) the jury also understood that they can’t hold it against him, and (b) my sense of the jury by the end of the government’s case is they had this look to them, like, “We understand the issues; we got it.” So I didn’t get the sense that they were sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for Combs to testify.
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On whether Combs is considering appealing his convictions on the prostitution-related counts:
I think we are—and I’ll tell you why. Because Combs has to intend prostitution, interstate travels for the purpose of prostitution—and why would he think it’s prostitution, when the Cowboys 4 Angels escort service is alive and well? We can have a “Cowboy” at our house in an hour. It’s an ongoing business, doing very well, operating in dozens and dozens of locations, with more locations every day.
How is he supposed to know that it’s illegal, when it’s a thriving business? How is he supposed to know it’s illegal to make your own pornography, when you could go on YouTube, YouPorn, whatever, and there are entire categories of homemade porn? If someone traveled from one state to another to do that, why isn’t that a violation of the Mann Act—if they were paid something, or their travel was paid, or there was some compensation? Why would he think that making homemade porn is illegal or that using Cowboys from Cowboys 4 Angels is illegal?
He was convicted of that. And I think the jury must have reached a conclusion: “It was just too much—there were too many Cowboys, and too many porn stars, for us to acquit you of this.” But if you look at the trial evidence, the government called two of these men, and they both said very clearly, on the record, “I am not a prostitute.” They both very clearly said, “I do not have sex for money.” So if we’re looking at the trial evidence, I don't know where the trial evidence shows prostitution.
I think that there’s this innate notion: “Well, it must be, right?” But that’s not what the trial evidence showed. So we’ll have to see what happens. We’ll have to see what the sentence is. We’ll have to see a lot of things. But Sean is considering appealing.
On what it felt like, to Combs and his lawyers, for Combs to have to return to jail, after a verdict that was widely viewed as a big win for the defense:
So what Sean said, and it’s as good a way to put it as any, is that we just won the championship, and they stole our trophy. And that’s kind of what it felt like. We win the championship, and now I’m ready to hoist up the Stanley Cup, and someone drives away with the Stanley Cup, and I never get to touch it.
But on a more substantive note, it’s a tricky situation because as the court rightly observed, the entirety of the Mann Act is a violent crime. But why would being a john be a violent crime? [Ed. note: The government argued that Combs was convicted of two violations of the Mann Act, which are automatically “crimes of violence” for bail purposes—so detention is mandatory, unless a defendant can show “exceptional circumstances.”]
If it’s a violent crime, you have to show “exceptional circumstances.” And I think we are going to go back to the court with a bail application, probably in the next several days, and try to argue that the exceptional circumstance is that a john is being prosecuted under the Mann Act. The purpose of the Mann Act was to prosecute people who make money from the business of prostitution, which Sean Combs did not do—so that’s the exceptional circumstance, we’re going to argue.
On what he can say about sentencing, currently scheduled for October:
One thing I can say, because it’s public on the docket, is that the court asked the parties for something that I think is really important and useful. The court wants to know all of the Mann Act cases, anywhere in the country, where the defendant’s Criminal History Category is I, and the court wants to know what the sentences were in those cases. [Ed. note: under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, defendants are assigned to one of six criminal-history categories; Criminal History Category I is the lowest, including many first-time offenders.]
And the court was very clear: the court wants a joint letter, if possible, on that subject. He doesn’t want argument; he wants to know the data. So what is a survey of the Mann Act, what does that look like? A nationwide survey of sentences under the Mann Act, for people who do not have a criminal history? And so I think the court is going to see that as a fundamental data point, and we’ll all be arguing off of that.
Our judge is a remarkably fair judge, a thoughtful, hardworking, very fair judge—and not because everything went our way, not everything did go our way, because not everything should have gone our way. But Judge Subramanian is really just a credit to everything that a federal judge should be. And what I told Sean is, “I don’t know what the sentence is going to be—but it’s going to be fair, because he’s just a fair man.”
On whether the Combs verdict should be viewed, as some critics of it have claimed, as a setback for the #MeToo movement:
So someone older than I very wisely said that trials are very poor vehicles for social change and social referenda. Trials turn on individual pieces of evidence, on individual arguments of lawyers, and are not really to be held out as how society feels about anything—and the same is true here.
This case is a moment in time; it rises and falls on the specific evidence, and I don’t think it says anything about the #MeToo movement one way or the other. I think the #MeToo movement is a very important, wonderful movement. I’m all supportive of it, and I hope it continues. And I don’t think that any one trial affects that one way or the other. Trials rise and fall on their individual facts, and this one did as well.
Thanks to Marc, a longtime friend and former colleague from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, for taking the time to speak with me. And be sure to check back here next Wednesday—or subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcasting platform of choice—for our full (and fascinating) conversation.
I’ve made a handful of minor edits to these interview excerpts for clarity, and I’ve added a few editor’s notes. Of course, you can listen to the original audio next week.
Also, in case it might be of interest, I previously interviewed another member of the Combs defense team, Alexandra Shapiro of Shapiro Arato Bach, for the podcast. But that was in November 2024, and the Combs case was still in its early stages at the time.
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Good interview, Mr. Lat. Mr. Agnifilo spins a good story, and does his very best job of both commending the jury for not convicting on the more serious charges and attacking them for convicting on the lesser charges. They're unfair, except when they're fair, and they follow the evidence when it leads to an acquittal, but ignore it when it leads to a conviction.
He has to embrace this schizoid position to continue his representation — AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR READERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND that that's what he's doing in this interview: Representing a client still in custody and in jeopardy. It would be sadly naive to expect him to stop acting like an advocate and to act instead like a thoughtful, honest, and open source of disinterested facts.
The real reason they didn't put his client on the stand was that they thought the jury would think worse of him, and better of the prosecution's case. He can talk about the other witness who made his client's testimony unnecessary, but that is utter bullsh!t, and I guarantee you that no one on the jury would agree with Agnifilo now that the defendant was an irrelevant witness. He was a defending hiding behind his Fifth Amendment privilege, and while the jury can't draw negative inferences from that (unless they violate their sworn duty to follow court instructions), we observers outside the courtroom are under no such compulsion.
The prosecutors probably aren't doing interviews with the press, but it would be interesting to see a qualified proxy steel-man their counterarguments to everything Mr. Agnifilo said. Here, in this format, Mr. Agnifilo had the great privilege of being sure no one on the spot could reply to and rebut anything he claimed; in court, where he did less well (multiple felony convictions aren't winning the Stanley Cup! What horsesh!t!), he didn't have that privilege.
PS: The "how was he to know it was illegal, when he sees prostitution rings operating without interference?"-argument is particularly offensive, and misrepresents the kind of intention required to meet the charged crimes' specific intent requirement. But he couldn't resist making it here because he doesn't have anything better.