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One day after a prosecutor calledSean Combsthe “vicious” leader of a criminal enterprise, the music mogul’s lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, stood before a jury in lower Manhattan Friday and said his client was simply living a colorful “lifestyle” filled with swinger relationships with loving girlfriends, hotel threesomes, recreational drug use – and some regrettable domestic violence.
Pacing and speaking with animated hand gestures and sarcastic tones, Agnifilo blasted the government’s case as “fake” and “badly exaggerated.” He said it was an overreaching attempt to criminalize his client’s private sex life and claimed prosecutors were charging “personal-use drugs and threesomes as racketeering.”
A seasoned criminal defense lawyer known for representing other high-profile defendants such as Luigi Mangione and convicted Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere, Agnifilo said Combs was hardly a crime boss, but rather someone who built “wonderful, sophisticated, real businesses that have stood the test of time.”
“Sean Combs has become something that is very hard to become, very hard to be. He is a self-made, successful, Black entrepreneur,” Agnifilo said. Maybe Combs’ former employees didn’t always like him, “but they loved him,” the lawyer argued.
With jurors sometimes laughing along with his lively performance, Agnifilo scoffed at the government’s focus on salacious details in the case. “Boxes of Astroglide, taken off the streets. Whew, I feel better already,” he said, referring to the Homeland Security agents who raided Combs’ homes last year. “Thank goodness for the special response team. They found the Astroglide! They found the baby oil! They found like, what, five valium pills. Way to go, fellas.”
He joked that America’s “streets of America are safe from the Astroglide” and then turned to what he called the “real trial.” “This isn’t about a crime. This is about money,” Agnifilo argued, claiming Combs is the victim of shakedowns in civil court. He said jurors wouldn’t even be hearing the case if Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, hadn’t filed her bombshell sex trafficking and rape lawsuit against Combs in November 2023. The case settled within 24 hours, and jurors later learned Ventura received a settlement.
“She is sitting somewhere in the world with $30 million,” Agnifilo said of Ventura, referring to the $20 million settlement she received from Combs and the subsequent $10 million she received from the Los Angeles hotel where she was assaulted by Combs in 2016. (Jurors heard evidence during the trial that security guards at the hotel accepted a $100,000 cash “bribe” from Combs to cover up the hallway surveillance video showing the assault.)
“If you had to pick a winner in this whole thing, it’s hard not to pick Cassie,” Agnifilo said. He described Ventura as an “intense” and “unafraid” woman who made her own decisions and was enthusiastic about her unorthodox sex life with Combs. He even called her “gangster” for having a “burner phone” to hide some of her communications from Combs. “Cassie’s no joke, and that’s why he loved her,” the lawyer said. “She matched him. She was like him.”
Agnifilo called the couple’s relationship “a great modern love story.” “They didn’t write love stories like this in the 1800s because they didn’t have a lot of these problems,” he said, calling Combs’ life juggling six kids and multiple women who depended on him “complicated.” He said despite Ventura’s four days of gut-wrenching testimony about the many times Combs allegedly beat her during their decade-long relationship, he believed they were “truly in love.” (On the witness stand, Ventura described Combs stomping on her face in the back of an Escalade in 2009 and kicking and punching her repeatedly over the years. She said he also threatened to release her intimate videos, harmed people she loved, and stifled her career to keep her under his control.)
He caid the couple’s love was so intense, it led to problems at times. He said the defense fully “owned” the fact that Combs could be violent. But he said any aggression was fueled by jealousy and claims of infidelity – not Ventura trying to free herself from the drug-fueled threesomes with male escorts that the couple called “freak-offs.”
Turning to the now-infamous video of Combs’ 2016 assault of Ventura inside L.A.’s now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel, Agnifilo claimed it was a clear example of a domestic fight, not a thwarted escape from a freak-off. He said the video showed Combs trying to retrieve a phone and that Combs was having a bad reaction to the drugs they ingested.
According to Agnifilo, messages leading up to the incident showed Ventura was actively engaged in planning the freak-off and wanted to be there. “She’s at a high level,” he argued, saying she had enviable “sexual confidence” and wasn’t “clutching her pearls.” He said the fact that Ventura returned to the suite afterward proved “this room was not a scary place for her.” (In her testimony, Ventura said she only agreed to the freak-off at the InterContinental because Combs made it clear he wanted one, and she was worried that if she said no, he would cause problems for her just days before the March 2016 premiere of her movie, The Perfect Match.)
As Agnifilo worked Friday to dismantle the government’s case, he called in “nonsense” that Combs was behind the Molotov cocktail in an Old English bottle that was planted in Kid Cudi’s Porsche in 2012 after Combs learned the fellow rapper was dating Ventura. Agnifilo said it was true Combs trespassed at Kid Cudi’s house to confront him face-to-face weeks earlier, and he claimed that was more his “style.” He said Combs was a “fighter” who might engage in a “good old-fashioned fistfight” but wouldn’t take the “cowardly” step of plotting a car bombing. “There is no evidence, I mean no evidence, that he had anything to do with the Porsche,” Agnifilo said.
He also claimed there was no way Combs would have released any freak-off video to hurt anyone. He said the recordings weren’t degrading but showed “genuine intimacy” with everyone enjoying themselves. He said Combs was hardly “the only man in America making homemade porn.”
Turning to Combs’ relationship with Victim-2 in the government’s indictment, a model who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” Agnifilo said the single mom liked the “trappings” of Combs’ opulent lifestyle, including the luxury travel she could splash on her social media. He said Combs helped her financially after she got a “pretty crappy” deal in terms of the child support paid by the father of her child.
“He is picking up the ball for someone who seems to have dropped the ball with his own kid, okay,” Agnifilo said. The lawyer said the jury knew the identity of the child’s father, though that information was not made public to protect Jane’s identity.
Agnifilo claimed that like Cassie, Jane enjoyed the threesomes with male escorts that Combs introduced into their relationship after they started dating in 2020. The lawyer accused Jane of “lying” when she testified that Combs choked, kicked and repeatedly punched her during a blowout fight in June 2024 that led into an allegedly forced freak-off. He suggested Jane may have initiated the fight, which involved Combs breaking down doors in her house, because she knew Combs was under federal investigation. “Is she looking to get a rise out of him?” he asked.
At one point Friday, when jurors were dismissed for a break, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey complained to the judge about what she called Agnifilo’s “deeply objectionable” and “wholly inappropriate” commentary. Comey took issue with Agnifilo characterizing the 2016 hotel incident as a “misdemeanor” assault and said Agnifilo was out-of-bounds when he urged jurors to question why the government was “charging” Combs with kidnapping. She said that was misleading considering arson is only one of the alleged predicate acts supporting the racketeering conspiracy charge.
“I think I’m allowed to be sarcastic,” Agnifilo responded. When jurors returned, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian told the panel it would be “improper” for them to consider prosecutors’ charging decisions. Agnifilo got in trouble again when he claimed the government “targeted” Combs. The judge said the comment crossed the line.
Combs, 55, was arrested last September and has pleaded not guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking, and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted as charged, he faces a minimum of 15 years and up to life in prison.
Before Agnifilo’s presentation started, Combs’ family members filed into the courtroom to lend support. Combs’ son Justin arrived wearing a shirt that said “Free Sean Combs,” a violation of courtroom rules. He quickly turned the shirt inside out to be present in the gallery for Agnifilo’s fiery address.
As he worked to undermine the credibility of many of the government’s key witnesses, Agnifilo showed jurors an upbeat photo of Combs gathered with dozens of smiling employees, security staff and friends. The photo had been posted on Instagram by a former assistant who testified at trial under the pseudonym “Mia.” While Mia claimed Combs forced himself on her multiple times during her employment, including once when he allegedly raped her in a staff bunk bed at his house, Agnifilo argued Friday that she was lying. He said the photo showed she was happy to be part of Combs’ “family.”
“This, this is your racketeering enterprise, folks,” Agnifilo said as he mockingly referenced the seemingly happy photo. He said the image conjured words like “joy,” “diversity” and “belonging,” not a brutal crime syndicate.
Agnifilo also claimed another former staffer, Capricorn Clark, lied when she testified that Combs kidnapped her at gunpoint the day he allegedly broke into Mescudi’s house. Agnifilo said Clark would have taken “a trip to the moon” to please her boss, so there was no reason Combs needed to brandish a gun.
As he wrapped up his presentation, Agnifilo questioned why prosecutors never put any of Combs’ alleged co-conspirators on the witness stand, people like the mogul’s longtime chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, or members of his security staff. If the individuals had information helpful to prosecutors’ case, the government could have granted them immunity or extended deals for cooperation. “No one came into this courtroom and said, ‘I was a member of an enterprise, and let me tell you how it worked,’” Agnifilo argued.
He claimed it was absurd to cast Combs as a mob-style kingpin with menacing henchmen doing his bidding. He said Khorram was a good person, so it made sense Ventura called her for help one day when Combs was banging on her door.
“If, God forbid, John Gotti was at your door, would you call Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano to get rid of him?” he asked. “[Khorram] is a very nice person. That’s what the testimony has been.”
Agnifilo urged jurors to “do the right thing” and acquit. “I am asking you to summon that courage and to do what needs to be done,” Agnifilo said. “He sits there innocent. Return him to his family, who have been waiting for him.”
In a final rebuttal that gave prosecutors the last word in the case Friday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Comey said it was preposterous for Combs to suggest he paid the male escorts for their time, not sex.
“He flew escorts across the country. He had them have sex in front of him while he masturbated, and then he handed them wads of cash,” Comey said. Any claim the men performed sex acts for free “doesn’t even pass the laugh test,” she said. Comey called it plain “common sense” that the escorts were hired for sex, “not for their scintillating conversation.”
Taking a dig at one of Agnifilo’s lines, she said it might be true that Combs preferred “fist fights” when it came to his girlfriends, but the evidence showed he used guns when it came to confrontations with men. She said Combs had a gun when he allegedly kidnapped Clark on his way to Mescudi’s house, and she said Mescudi corroborated Clark’s testimony she was taken against her will.
Comey also pushed back on the defense claim that Combs was the victim of false accusations made by plaintiffs seeking money. She said Jane never sued and even had a financial incentive to stay quiet considering Combs is still paying her rent. Ventura already had her settlement money and a new family, so “why would she risk it all by perjuring herself at a federal trial?” Comey asked.
The prosecutor denounced the defense’s suggestion that jurors should separate the violence Ventura endured from the sex life she shared with Combs. She said the two things were inextricable. “That control did not just disappear when she walked into a hotel room,” Comey said. “If anything, that grip tightened when she was high, naked and vulnerable. No was never an option.”
She said there was one thing she agreed on with the defense – that Ventura is a strong woman. She had to be to “survive” her time with Combs and testify at trial, Comey said.
“This is not a woman out for vengeance or money,” Comey argued. “This is a woman standing up for what is right.”
In some of her final words to the panel, Comey described Combs as a “general” who used his loyal lieutenants to do his “dirty work.” She said he acted so brazenly because he constantly got the message he was “untouchable.” She noted the defense could have called Khorram to testify but didn’t. Pointing to the evidence delivered over seven weeks of a trial with 34 witnesses, she said it was clear Khorram used Combs’ phones, lived in his house and “knew every detail of his life,” including his $100,000 payment for the hotel video. She said Combs didn’t act alone, so jurors should find him guilty of racketeering conspiracy.
“The defendant never thought the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them,” she said. “He didn’t think that Cassie, Jane, or Mia or any of the other
women that you heard from at this trial would dare to face his wrath, and he certainly didn’t think men like Kid Cudi [and others] would take the stand and back those women up. But he was wrong.”
Comey said that while Combs came to believe he was “a God among men,” it was an illusion. “The defendant is not a god. He is a person,” she said. “It is time to hold him accountable. Find him guilty.”
Although Combs seemed to keep a confident composure throughout both sides’ closing arguments, he appeared nervous ahead of Comey’s rebuttal, taking a quiet moment to himself with his head bent and his hand covering his eyes. At the close —nearly an hour and a half lateras Comey urged the jury to find him guilty — Combs’ hands were trembling as he put his eyeglasses away. As the gallery shuffled out of the room, he thanked his attorneys and sat back down, letting out a deep sigh and covering his face again.
Jurors are expected to begin their deliberations Monday.
