Beating RICO Charges Doesn’t Make Diddy a Hero

Sean “Diddy” Combs was found guilty of two prostitution-related counts in federal court on Wednesday, but not guilty of the far more severe racketeering and two sex-trafficking charges. His lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, told Judge Arun Subramanian that “Combs has been given his life by the jury” in a post-verdict statement. If convicted on the racketeering and sex-trafficking charges, he faced a potential life sentence. Combs seemed to think the same, cheering on his way out of the courtroom after the verdict. 

His mood was likely dampened when his bail was denied, with Subramanian deciding that “even if the defendant was solely required to show that he is not a danger to the community, he could not meet that burden. Prior to trial, the court denied bail, and sees no reason to reverse that now. The defense conceded the defendant’s violence.” Combs will remain incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting sentencing at a later date. 

When Combs was first indicted on RICO charges, and news broke that federal agents had seized videotapes from his homes in raids, onlookers forecast a massive reckoning for the entertainment industry. There was a sense that other powerful figures would be implicated and held accountable. But there’s been no such referendum. There are conversations happening about violence at the hands of powerful men in the entertainment industry, but too many people still don’t take women’s abuse seriously. Survivors like Casandra “Cassie” Ventura were reminded that they could spill their darkest trauma, yet still face endless public scrutiny and skepticism.  

Yesterday, content creators stood outside the courthouse pouring baby oil on each other and wearing shirts that say, “A freako is not RICO.” Much of the skepticism surrounding the Combs trial hinges on the prosecution’s claim that he helmed a criminal racketeering organization. Onlookers have repeatedly echoed Boosie’s X post that “I don’t see no crimes committed in this case,” or singer Tiny’s Instagram summation that “ppl wanna charge you for being freaky.” Commentator Bill Maher told TMZ that he felt Combs should be incarcerated, but that he didn’t think the accusations “constituted” a RICO case. He also questioned why Ventura didn’t leave him earlier. Some members of the Joe Budden Podcast were skeptical that the prosecution had proved their racketeering charges. 

It’s true that prosecutors all over the country have been hastily crafting RICO charges against entertainers and even teachers. Before the verdict, criminal-law experts, including court reporter Meghann Cuniff, posted on X that framing Combs’ actions as a racketeering operation was “the weakest charge” against him. But the RICO acquittal doesn’t make him a victim of injustice or a political prisoner. Just because their racketeering charge faltered under the minutiae of predicates and statutes doesn’t mean we didn’t hear how he systematically pushed his girlfriends into coercive threesomes with sex workers for days on end, keeping them within his web with violence. Both women stated that he plied them with drugs to keep them inebriated during his threesomes.  

Ventura testified that she was in an abusive, coercive relationship with Combs that started when she was 19 and he was 36, and that he raped her in 2018. She added that she felt her music career came second to being with him and sex workers whom he, as her boyfriend and Bad Boy boss, hired. “Jane” testified about having a “harrowing resemblance” to Ventura’s experience. Ventura’s friend Bryana “Bana” Bongolan testified that he threatened to kill her while holding her over a balcony, and also told her he was “the devil” during another intense interaction. Any one of those accusations should be enough to stop anyone from celebrating his potential release. But instead, people are harping on the racketeering charge and treating Combs as the aggrieved party. Wednesday’s verdict didn’t prove his innocence; it affirmed how the justice system fails survivors. 

Courtrooms exist to prosecute and warehouse people. Those are two different objectives, pursued with two disparate approaches. Various junctures of the Combs trial reflect the justice system’s inconsideration of survivors and ignorance of how abuse muddles consent. 

In these cases, defense attorneys are tasked with manipulating the idea of consent. Criminal trials ask survivors to recount their worst memories to jurors and a lawyer vying to pick apart their stories. Despite mental-health professionals noting that women can experience dissociative amnesia after traumatic incidents, they’re expected to have foolproof stories or be seen as less credible. Transformative-justice advocates argue that the best resolution for physical harm is for the violator to take accountability for their actions and address the root cause. In this case, that could have looked like Combs publicly admitting his abuse, genuinely apologizing to his victims, and seeking professional help to address the drug abuse and other factors that compel him to violence. But the American justice system doesn’t encourage violators like Combs to reflect and atone for how they treated women. Instead, it allows you to pay lawyers to manipulate the truth about their conduct. That environment in itself is trauma-inducing for survivors.

Toward the end of the trial, the prosecution and defense found themselves arguing whether, after Combs had assaulted Ventura on camera in 2016, he was dragging her back to their hotel room for sex or to simply get her out of the hallway, as if intent mattered more than his violence. The prosecution pinpointed the Combs employees who facilitated his sexcapades, but couldn’t establish whether they were co-conspirators under the requirements of racketeering conspiracy. He was found guilty of prostitution, but not sex trafficking. Combs’ defense argued that Ventura and Jane weren’t “sex slaves,” but consenting girlfriends, using their sexual texts to him as their evidence. That tactic ignored the abusive nature of their relationships. During the trial, forensic psychologist Dawn Hughes testified that survivors “stay in the relationship because it’s not just about hitting. It’s about a lot of abusive behaviors that make a victim feel trapped.” Both women admitted to sexually gratifying him to evade his wrath. 

As a journalist who’s seen way too many assault accusations play out in the public eye, it’s unclear what, if anything, could happen for more people to be more discerning about the way they perceive gender-based violence, if not women in general. This is bigger than Diddy. No matter the individuals involved or specific accusation, it seems like women’s accounts will always be taken in bad faith by the masses. These traumatic cases will too often be witnessed as binary competitions and “trial-tainment” instead of serious accusations. If there’s a sliver of doubt or faulty prosecutorial strategy, it will be perceived as an agenda to railroad a Black man. Media personalities, from journalists to hack YouTubers, will find a way to sensationalize trauma, while wannabe comedians will always find something funny. We’ve been around this board with Bill Cosby, Tory Lanez, R. Kelly, and now Combs. And it may never change because, to many, responding to heavy accusations like children is easier than adult conversations on patriarchal violence.