Cool! Diddy Still Doesn’t Think He Did Anything Wrong

Meanwhile, Deadline reports that President Trump is “seriously considering” extending a presidential pardon to Combs.

By Audra Heinrichs | July 31, 2025 | 3:29pm

Photo: Getty Images Latest News Politics

Cool! Diddy Still Doesn’t Think He Did Anything Wrong

Earlier this month, a jury acquitted Sean “Diddy” Combs of three counts of sex trafficking and racketeering, and found him guilty on the lesser charges—two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution—in a high-profile trial that lasted more than a month. Now, even after that bombshell decision, the besmirched rapper and entrepreneur is requesting an acquittal or a new trial altogether.

On Wednesday, Combs’ attorneys filed a motion asking the court to either overturn his conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution or present an opportunity for a second trial, according to legal documents obtained and published by USA Today. Concurrently, Combs’ team has also requested that he be released from prison on $50 million bond so he can wait for his October sentencing from his Miami mansion. Since his arrest in September 2024, Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Even before his trial began in May, he’d already been denied bail four times.

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Combs’ attorneys have hinged their argument for an acquittal or retrial on the courts’ application of the Mann Act, a statute that makes it illegal to transport people across state or international lines with the purpose of prostitution. They claim that because Combs wasn’t selling sex, having sex with the “prostitutes” himself, or arranging travel to commit sexual assault, sex trafficking, or crimes against minors, he is not guilty.

“Mr. Combs, at most, paid to engage in voyeurism as part of a ‘swingers’ lifestyle,” Combs’ team wrote in the filing. “That does not constitute ‘prostitution’ under a properly limited definition of the statutory term.”

Further, Combs’ defense asserted that his behavior wasn’t “prostitution” and that filming and directing “freak offs” is “protected First Amendment conduct.” That he was ultimately convicted under the Mann Act, they argue, is “discriminatory.”

“In the history of the statute, the Mann Act has never been applied to facts similar to these to prosecute or incarcerate any other person,” Combs’ lead counsel, Marc Agnifilo, wrote in the filing. “In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of john, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend, when he did not even have sex with the escort himself.”

Meanwhile, among the nearly three dozen witnesses—including a handful of victims, former staffers, and sex workers—who were called to testify in the trial, many described how Combs relied upon manipulation, threats of violence, and abuse to get what he wanted. The most damning testimony came from Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, Combs’ former partner of over a decade. Ventura, who was more than eight months pregnant at the time, testified that Combs threatened and blackmailed her into “freak offs,” in which Combs would instruct her to hire male sex workers and then watch them have sex with Ventura. The freak offs, she said, grew to be so frequent that they “became a job” and so long (sometimes spanning 36 or 48 hours) that they would require breaks due to dehydration and drug and alcohol use. On one occasion, a “freak off” even lasted four whole days. As a result, Ventura told the court that she regularly became ill with urinary tract infections and gastrointestinal issues. She also claimed she became addicted to opioids in order to dissociate and cope with Combs’ relentless demand when escaping the abuse seemed impossible.

Further, Ventura detailed the range of abuse Combs inflicted upon her, from his insistence that she refer to him by the same moniker she used for her grandfather, to multiple beatings, including one caught on CCTV in March 2016 and obtained and published by CNN in 2024. Her mother and former boyfriend, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, also took the stand and corroborated many of her claims—namely, that Combs was emotionally, mentally, and physically abusive and routinely deployed death threats and other coercive tactics to keep Ventura compliant with his whims.

Combs also faces more than 50 civil suits from a host of other women and men, who’ve accused him of sexual assault, rape, drugging, and physical violence. These incidents span decades, dating back to the 1990s.

That, after all this time, Combs still can’t comprehend the breadth of his harm (or the concept of consent) is grounds enough for him to be denied any further grace. However, even if his defense’s best efforts aren’t successful in court, it might not matter anyway.

On Wednesday, Deadline reported that President Trump is “seriously considering” extending a presidential pardon to Combs. According to the publication, his defense hasn’t been directly in touch with the White House. But a new Rolling Stone report claims his moneyed “allies” have. In 2012, Trump called Combs “a good friend” and said he’d “stick up for him” on the Celebrity Apprentice. There are also photos of a gleeful Trump posing alongside Combs in the early aughts. How ironic that as Trump refuses to claim one prolific sexual predator, he’s thinking about pardoning another…

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