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Sean Combs has been acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, with the hip-hop mogul dropping to his knees, praying, and thanking God after the jury shuffled out of the courtroom Wednesday morning.
The verdict, which cleared the 55-year-old Bad Boy Records founder of the most serious charges at his closely watched trial, went on to find him guilty of two lesser felony charges of transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs is now a convicted felon, but the jury delivered a resounding rejection of prosecutors’ claims he ran a criminal enterprise and coerced two ex-girlfriends into drug-fueled sex with male escorts.
“I’m going home,” Combs mouthed to his weeping family members before he was led away, still in custody.
Though Combs hoped to be released on bond pending his sentencing, the judge denied the request at a subsequent hearing Wednesday evening. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramania said Combs conceded during the trial that he committed “horrible” acts of domestic violence, so Combs failed to show he wasn’t a danger to the community. Nonetheless, Combs’ lawyers walked out of the courthouse and declared a decisive triumph, saying the verdict vindicated their client.
“Today is a great victory for Sean Combs. It’s a great victory for the jury system. You saw that the Southern District of New York prosecutors came at him with all that they had,” lead defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo told reporters. “Today is a win. Today is a victory of all victories for Sean Combs.” He said the jury got the verdict right, “or at least right enough,” and that the defense isn’t “nearly done fighting.” “We’re not going to stop until he walks out of prison a free man to his family,” Agnifilo vowed.
From the moment Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed her bombshell sex-trafficking lawsuit against him in November 2023, which led to his arrest on the same allegation last September, Combs has adamantly maintained his innocence. He and his high-powered defense team admitted his brutal and frequent violence toward Ventura, but they repeatedly argued that “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
Over four days of harrowing testimony, Ventura described how Combs’ “eyes went black” during one horrific attack inside an Escalade in January 2009, near the start of their relationship. Combs allegedly stomped on her face with his shoes on for 10 minutes. She said the physical abuse continued until they broke up for good in 2018. She claimed Combs also threatened to release her intimate videos if she didn’t meet his demands for drug-fueled sexual encounters with male escorts that he would watch and record. When it was time to cross-examine Ventura, the defense did not challenge the claims of domestic violence. “We own them,” Agnifilo said, arguing that Combs’ regrettable temper did not make him a racketeer. It proved to be a winning strategy.
Before the jury entered the courtroom to deliver the verdict, Combs appeared nervous, sitting at the defense table with his hand clasped, staring straight ahead. Facing the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the government’s racketeering conspiracy charge, Combs put his hand over his face and bowed his head with relief as the first “not guilty” count was read aloud. His family members, who have stood by his side throughout the trial, gasped aloud before breaking out into cheers. After the full verdict was read and the jury was dismissed, Combs clasped his hands again and, gesturing towards the jury, said, “Thank you, thank you.”
In their split verdict, the jurors rejected Combs’ claim he was simply paying male escorts for their time, not for having sex with his girlfriends while he watched. Prosecutors called that defense a “ridiculous argument.”
“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,” lead prosecutor Maurene Comey said in her closing argument. Any claim the men performed sex acts for free “doesn’t even pass the laugh test,” she argued. Comey called it plain “common sense” that the escorts were hired for sex, “not for their scintillating conversation.”
Each prostitution count carries up to 10 years in prison, meaning Combs technically is facing a maximum of 20 years if he’s ordered to serve his sentences consecutively. Legal experts say that’s highly unlikely, especially since Combs has no prior criminal record.
Before Subramanian’s denied Combs bail, prosecutors raised concerns that he would “flagrantly disregard orders from this court” if released. They cited evidence presented during the trial that Combs “continued to commit a litany of crimes” — such as alleged abuse and drug use — even after he knew he was under federal investigation.
“This is very, very serious conduct,” Comey, who also expressed concerns that Combs would “commit new crimes” and be a flight risk, said
Combs’ attorneys argued he would be a model citizen should be released Wednesday. “Mr. Combs has been given his life by this jury,” Agnifilo said, explaining his client would be “nothing short of a fool” to violate a court order. “He will not run afoul of anything this court imposes on him,” Agnifilo said. In a letter to the court, the defense proposed a bail package with a $1 million bond, restricted travel, and drug testing as ordered.
Judge Subramanian rejected the proposal, citing both the now-infamous video of Combs beating Ventura at the InterContinental hotel and evidence he turned violent in June 2024 with a more recent ex-girlfriend who testified under the pseudonym “Jane.” (In Combs’ indictment, Jane was identified as Victim-2. One of Combs’ sex-trafficking charges related to their turbulent relationship, which started soon after they met in 2020.)
“This type of violence, which happens behind closed doors in personal relationships, sparked by unpredictable bouts of anger, is impossible to police with conditions,” the judge said. He noted that even after the March 2024 searches of Combs’ homes, when he was “aware he was under investigation for sex trafficking,” he allegedly battered Jane at her home, leaving her with “visible evidence of bruises and injuries.” This was “at a time when he should have known that he needed to stay clean,” the judge said.
Wednesday’s verdict was read aloud to the packed courtroom after the panel of eight men and four women took 13 hours to deliberate. The jury had largely made up their minds by Tuesday evening, telling Subramanian they had reached verdicts on the sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution charges related to Ventura and Jane.
In a note to the court late Tuesday, the jurors said they were “unable” to agree on the racketeering-conspiracy charge due to “unpersuadable opinions on both sides.” But after Subramanian instructed the jury to continue deliberating, they returned their final verdict the next morning.
“Although the jury did not find Combs guilty of sex-trafficking Cassie beyond a reasonable doubt, she paved the way for a jury to find him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution,” Ventura’s lawyer, Doug Wigdor, said in a statement. “By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice.” Wigdor added that Ventura “brought attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion.”
The three days of deliberation followed 28 days of grueling and emotional testimony from 34 government witnesses. During closing arguments last week, Agnifilo choked back tears and accused the government of unfairly targeting Combs in a broad overreach of power. Prosecutors, Agnifilo alleged, used Ventura’s lawsuit as a springboard to pry into Combs’ private life and slap him with criminal statutes based on his untraditional sexual preferences.
In what was described as the busy mogul’s “personal time” and “release,” Combs would film his girlfriends having dayslong sexual encounters with male escorts. He allegedly treated the sessions as his personal adult-film sets, filling hotel rooms with designer candles, choreographing the sequences of events, and giving instructions on what should happen next.
Prosecutors claimed Combs kept Ventura and Jane high on a buffet of drugs, particularly Ecstasy, and refused to hear “no” when they tried to avoid participating in the threesomes with male escorts known as “freak-offs” and “hotel nights.” They said maybe the women agreed to some of the activity to please the man they loved, but they argued there were clear instances when Combs used some combination of physical force, threats, and manipulation to coerce the women into commercial sex acts.
Flipping between outrage and incredulity, Agnifilo downplayed the so-called “freak-offs” that were the heart of the government’s case against Combs. He called them “beautiful” gatherings filled with nice music, good food, and “vulnerable” intimacy. “You want to call it swingers, you want to call it threesomes, whatever you want to call it, that’s what it is. That’s what the evidence shows,” Agnifilo said of Combs hiring male escorts to have sex with his girlfriends. “He wouldn’t think in a million years that there’s anything wrong with it.”
The jury seemed to agree, acquitting Combs of sex-trafficking both Ventura and Jane. He was also cleared of using a team of high-ranking staffers, security members, and “young and eager” personal assistants that were more akin to foot soldiers as part of a racketeering conspiracy.
Combs appeared confident throughout the trial, so much so that his high-powered defense team did not put on any witnesses when presenting their defense. Instead, his attorneys read aloud a series of texts between Ventura and Combs, where the R&B singer seemingly expressed eagerness about the dayslong, drug-fueled encounters. Within 25 minutes, they rested, confident the evidence — or lack thereof — was in their favor.
The government claimed that from 2004 up until his September 2024 arrest, Combs was the leader of a racketeering conspiracy that largely revolved around his sex life with his girlfriends. As part of the enterprise, Combs and his alleged co-conspirators were accused of carrying out crimes at their boss’ direction, including three separate instances of kidnapping; firebombing Kid Cudi’s car over the musician’s fling with Ventura; bribing a hotel employee with $100,000 to make damning footage of Combs attacking Ventura disappear; witness tampering and drug distribution, among others.
Throughout the alleged racketeering conspiracy, Combs was sex-trafficking his girlfriends, prosecutors alleged, first with Ventura between 2009 and 2018, and then with Jane between January 2021 and September 2024. He allegedly paid for male escorts to fly in from various cities to join him in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Turks and Caicos, paying them in cash after the men had sex with his girlfriends.
This is not the first time Combs has emerged largely unscathed from a criminal trial where the weight of the law seemed stacked against him. The man who was known to wear a gold Lazarus chain was facing 15 years in prison over his alleged role in a 1999 nightclub shooting — his future ascent to running a billion-dollar empire hanging in the balance. But he walked free in March 2001, hugging his mother Janice outside a courthouse just a few blocks away from the federal courthouse where Combs could soon depart.
And although no criminal charges were ever filed, New York City officials were pointing fingers at a 22-year-old Combs for his part in promoting and overselling a charity basketball game at City College of New York in December 1991, where nine people died in a stampede. After issuing apologies and settling several civil lawsuits, the tragedy became a footnote in Combs’ legacy as he went on to found his iconic label Bad Boy Records in 1993 and discover the Notorious B.I.G.
Combs still faces more than 50 civil lawsuits. Ventura’s lawsuit, which was settled for $20 million within 24 hours, sparked a tidal wave of similar allegations from both men and women. The alleged sexual assaults were sprinkled throughout Combs’ three-decade career beginning in 1990, and as recently as July 2024, as models, music-industry figures, and people who had one-off encounters claim Combs preyed on them.
Combs had vehemently denied all accusations of sexual assault. “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex-trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor,” his legal team has previously said in a statement.
