THE FACTS

• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation for prostitution. He pleaded not guilty.
• Prosecutors allege Combs coerced victims, including Cassie Ventura, using drugs and threats during ‘freak-offs’.
• If convicted, he could face lifetime imprisonment.

Sean “Diddy” Combs used “power, violence and fear” to run a criminal enterprise, prosecutors said as they walked jurors through a “road map” of testimony and evidence during closing arguments in the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial.

Assistant US Attorney Christy Slavik led the start of the government’s five-hour presentation by outlining the charges against Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sex trafficking, one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

“He doesn’t take no for an answer,” Slavik said of Combs - a refrain she repeated often during her summation.

Combs, who has seemed quite at ease throughout much of his trial, appeared uncomfortable and nervous at the start of closing arguments today NZT. If convicted of the most serious charges, he could face life in prison.

The prosecution, which spent more than six weeks in Manhattan federal court presenting evidence of Combs’s alleged crimes, stressed to jurors that he did not need an army of co-conspirators to be found guilty of racketeering and that “one single” act of alleged coercion against an accuser would be enough to convict him of sex trafficking.

Combs’ defence, which will offer its closing remarks before the jury enters deliberations, has argued that the accusers had their own motives and were willing participants in his drug-addled sex parties known as “freak-offs”.

Here are the arguments the prosecution made for each criminal count Combs is facing.

Racketeering conspiracy

To find Combs guilty of racketeering conspiracy, prosecutors said jurors can have their pick of a host of crimes, which include drug distribution, arson, bribery, sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution, forced labour, witness tampering, and obstruction.

While the charge of racketeering conspiracy is often associated “with the mafia or organised crime”, Slavik said, it also firmly applies to the type of enforcement being carried out by Combs and his loyalists.

The panel needs to find there was an agreement between Combs and another member of the enterprise that “someone would commit two individual acts in any of these categories”, she said. For example, if jurors believe Combs and his staffers distributed drugs to his alleged victims at least two times, he could be found guilty of racketeering conspiracy.

Drug distribution is one of the more “straightforward” offences of Combs’ alleged criminal enterprise, the government said, as it ticked off a list of all the drugs used at freak-offs - including cocaine, meth, ketamine, oxycodone, tusi, Xanax, MDMA and GHB.

Slavik called these drugs “an essential ingredient” of the sex parties, and the means by which Combs kept his ex-girlfriends, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a woman identified by the court-approved alias, “Jane” - compliant and awake during these sexual encounters. Combs “fed them drugs for years”, Slavik said. “And you know he didn’t get those drugs on his own.”

Rapper Kid Cudi leaves court after testifying at the trial on May 22. Photo / Getty Images

Combs and his inner circle procured these drugs by enlisting his assistants and security staff, Slavik said. “Giving drugs to someone else is distribution,” she added. “Period.”

Prosecutors also consider Ventura, Jane, and two former employees to be victims of forced labour. Both Ventura and Jane were coerced or forced to participate in sleep-deprived, days-long freak-offs, even when they were in pain or just not feeling up to it, Slavik said. “This was work.”

She also pointed to allegations of kidnapping, recounting testimony from Combs’ former employee, Capricorn Clark, who said she was hauled into a room in New York in 2004, daily for a week where she was given a polygraph and threatened as Combs and his entourage tried to uncover who took valuable jewellery from him.

Clark had also testified about being forced to accompany a furious Combs to the home of rapper Scott Mescudi - known by his stage name Kid Cudi - who was having a relationship with Ventura.

An arson charge was also highlighted by the prosecution, stemming from a 2012 incident in which Mescudi’s car blew up in his driveway.

“The evidence and basic logic” should lead jurors to conclude that Combs was behind the arson, Slavik argued. “For starters, he literally said he was going to blow up Kid Cudi’s car,” she said, citing Ventura’s testimony during the trial.

And Combs committed bribery when he and his deputies paid a hotel security guard US$100,000 ($165,000) to bury a video depicting his assault of Ventura in 2016, Slavik said, waving off the defence team’s argument that the video purchase was an attempt to control public relations.

Sex trafficking of Cassie Ventura
“We’re not asking you to find that every instance, every freak-off, was an instance of sex trafficking,” Slavik said.

Instead, she said the jury can convict Combs of sex trafficking if they believe he coerced one of his accusers even a single time.

Combs’s freak-offs “were as regular as his abuse of Cassie”, Slavik told jurors as she homed in on the defendant’s decade-long relationship with the singer, who is central to the government’s case.

Slavik said these sexual encounters with male escorts and girlfriends followed a “set playbook”. Ventura may have agreed to the first freak-off, the prosecutor said, but not the many subsequent ones.

She referenced Ventura’s testimony that Combs forced Ventura to have sex with men while she suffered from infections, and that he directed escorts to commit certain sexual acts against her will. “It was a turn-on for him,” Slavik said. “Humiliating for her.”

She then brought up a slide focusing on three examples of alleged sex trafficking. The first: a freak-off that took place at the InterContinental Hotel in March 2016, when Combs was caught on camera attacking Ventura as she tried to leave the hotel room.

Another clear example of Combs sex-trafficking Ventura was the time he made her perform a freak-off after he attacked her, according to the prosecution’s closing argument.

A male entertainer hired for that freak-off, Daniel Phillip, testified that he saw Combs throw a bottle at Ventura’s head and drag her by her hair into a bedroom, where he heard slapping sounds. Phillip said Combs then told Ventura to resume the freak-off.

“He was demanding that Cassie have sex with a paid escort,” Slavik said. “That’s sex- trafficking.”

Further, when Combs allegedly showed Ventura sex tapes of herself on a flight from Cannes, France, to New York City and threatened to release them to her family, he was coercing her into a freak-off, Slavik argued. When they landed, Combs and Ventura had a freak-off that very night.

Sex trafficking of ‘Jane’

The government also walked through Combs’ relationship with Jane, who dated the music producer from 2021 to 2024.

Slavik broke down their relationship into four stages for the jury: a period of “love bombing”, during which Combs showered Jane with attention, gifts and trips, followed by the introduction of “hotel nights”, or freak-offs.

Then, later in the relationship, came the period when Combs used the home he leased for her as “leverage”, Slavik argued. The final stage of their relationship was the aftermath of Ventura’s lawsuit, she said.

Hotel nights with Combs were never about Jane’s sexual desires, despite her attempts to exert some control over them, Slavik said, pointing to Jane’s testimony about why she accepted the drugs Combs gave her during these encounters: “I didn’t want it to feel too real,” Combs’ ex-girlfriend said. “It just made things easier.”

The prosecutor also pointed to a clip of a freak-off the jury had seen earlier in the trial, when Jane expressed her wish that a male entertainer wear a condom. “You heard it in the recording, ‘ain’t no condoms around here,’” Slavik said, quoting Combs.

Slavik said it was important that Combs was planning freak-offs without Jane’s knowledge, even as he was promising her romantic dinners and shopping sprees. Combs didn’t make good on those promises and never intended to, the prosecutor argued, thus coercing Jane’s participation by fraud.

Slavik also described Combs beating and choking Jane during a fight last summer, forcing her to flee her home shoeless and without a phone.

After she returned, bruised and in pain, Combs allegedly forced Jane to have sex with an escort. Combs told Jane she would not “ruin” his night and demanded she get dressed up, Slavik said.

Slavik said Combs knew he was again committing the very crime he was being investigated for and that he intended to continue trafficking Jane.

She acknowledged video evidence showing Jane enjoying herself during “freak-offs,” but she contended that “what those videos really show is that she was super, super high.”

And Slavik reminded jurors of Combs’ alleged effort to silence Jane as his reputation was crumbling in the wake of sexual assault allegations.

“I just needed to tell you that I need your friendship,” Combs said in a call he recorded in November 2023 with a tearful Jane, played during the prosecution’s closing arguments.

Transportation to engage in prostitution

Slavik also walked jurors through the federal indictment’s two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution: one for each alleged victim, Ventura and Jane.

The government has a trove of records supporting these charges - including bank statements showing Combs or his associates purchasing flights for alleged male escorts, airline records, hotel reservations and bank deposits, as well as communications with the men or escort services themselves.

It “doesn’t matter” that the men consented to these sex acts, or even that Ventura and Jane sometimes did, Slavik said. “It’s still a crime.”