Jury selection for Sean Combs’s federal criminal trial began this week, and opening statements from prosecutors and Mr. Combs’s lawyers are slated for Monday.
The trial is being held at the Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan and is expected to last eight weeks. Here’s a primer on the charges and what’s at stake for the music mogul.
Who is Sean Combs?
Mr. Combs, 55, is one of the most successful producers and entrepreneurs in the history of hip-hop, who helped make artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into household names. Under the name Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his own in 1997 with “I’ll Be Missing You,” a tribute to B.I.G. that sampled the 1980s band the Police. He dated Jennifer Lopez, threw glittery parties in the Hamptons and was a gossip-column fixture for decades.
Music was just one part of what became a multifaceted empire for Mr. Combs. He entered the fashion business in 1998 with his Sean John line, which remained hugely popular for years. His MTV reality show “Making the Band” made him a regular TV presence in the 2000s. Later, he founded a media company, Revolt, and promoted the popular vodka brand Ciroq through a deal with the spirits giant Diageo. At one point, his net worth was estimated as high as $1 billion.
Mr. Combs has long been accused of violence or serious misconduct, but largely avoided serious consequences as his career ascended. Among those incidents: a charity basketball game in 1991, where nine young people were crushed to death in a stampede (Mr. Combs paid about $750,000 in private settlements). The beating of a rival music executive in his office in 1999 (Mr. Combs attended a one-day anger management course). The threatening of a choreographer on “Making the Band” in 2007 (the two reconciled, and no criminal charges were brought).
What are the charges against him?
Mr. Combs was arrested in September on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The government has accused Mr. Combs of sex trafficking three women, and exercising control over their lives through violence, with financial payments and by supplying them with drugs. Some of these incidents, prosecutors say, were what Mr. Combs called “freak-offs”: elaborate, drug-fueled sex marathons that could last for days.
The government says that Mr. Combs maintained a “criminal enterprise” in which various employees — security guards, personal assistants, household staff and higher-ranking supervisors — helped enable the alleged sex trafficking, and cover it up. In court papers, prosecutors have outlined a pattern of crimes dating back to 2004 that include arson, kidnapping, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice and drug violations. In one instance, the government said, Mr. Combs dangled a woman over the balcony of a building.
If Mr. Combs is convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Separately from the criminal case, Mr. Combs has been accused of sexual assault in more than 50 civil lawsuits that have been filed since late 2023. He has vehemently denied sexually assaulting anyone.
What is his defense?
Since his arrest, Mr. Combs’s lawyers have consistently argued that the events highlighted by the government were consensual encounters between Mr. Combs and various girlfriends. “This was their private sex life, defined by consent, not coercion,” the mogul’s legal team said in a recent statement in response to the indictment that laid out the charges against him.
A key dispute at trial is expected to be the events in 2016 at a Los Angeles hotel, where Mr. Combs can be seen in surveillance footage brutally beating and dragging Casandra Ventura — better known as Cassie, Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend and a singer formerly signed to his label, Bad Boy. Prosecutors have argued that this is powerful evidence of sex trafficking, saying that a freak-off had recently taken place at the hotel. Mr. Combs’s lawyers have not denied the violence — and Mr. Combs apologized for it last year, after excerpts from the footage were broadcast by CNN — but said it was part of their troubled relationship, and is not evidence of sex trafficking.
In court papers, Mr. Combs’s lawyers have also signaled that they intend to challenge Cassie — who is expected to be the government’s star witness — as motivated by a desire for financial gain. In late 2023, she sued Mr. Combs over what she alleged were years of violence and sexual abuse, including at “freak-offs.” That case was settled in one day with what Mr. Combs’s lawyers have said was an eight-figure payment to her. Before that suit, according to court papers, she had told Mr. Combs she was writing a book, but offered to sell him the rights for $30 million, in what Mr. Combs’s legal team has called an attempt at “extortion.”
What witnesses are expected to testify?
In court documents filed in preparation for the trial, the government has said it expects to call three women whom it alleges Mr. Combs coerced into sex.
One of those is Cassie, who is expected to testify under her own name. Another woman, known in court papers as Victim-2, is expected to testify anonymously about the “financial losses, dependency, and social isolation she experienced during her relationship” with Mr. Combs, from about 2021 to 2024, “all of which made her more vulnerable to his coercion,” prosecutors have said in court papers.
Another woman, Victim-3, has been referenced as a victim of alleged sex trafficking. Prosecutors have said they intend to call her as a witness, but during jury selection, they indicated that her participation is uncertain. Other witnesses include a fourth alleged victim, whom the government describes as a longtime employee of Mr. Combs that he coerced into having sex with him.
At least one former employee of Mr. Combs is expected to take the stand against him, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors have said they intend to introduce “statements” from what they described as a range of former employees, and the jury is expected to see text messages and voice recordings that prosecutors will argue help prove a criminal conspiracy.
Additional reporting by Olivia Bensimon.
