NEW YORK (AP) ā Julie Walker, AP radio correspondent: Weāre here to talk about three big cases in New York. charged with sex trafficking and racketeering by the Feds. He pled not guilty. Down the street in state court, Harvey Weinsteinās retrial by the Manhattan DA on rape and sex assault charges. He also pled not to guilty. And then thereās Luigi Mangione. Heās charged by both the state and the Feds with killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and has also pled not guilty. Joining me now, two of the Associated Press reporters covering the cases and the courts, Larry Neumeister and Mike Sisak. And Iām Julie Walker. All right, letās start with Sean "Diddy" Combs, whatās been going on with that trial?
Larry Neumeister, AP courts reporter: Theyāre fascinated by a celebrity on trial. And as part of that, Iāve been trying to figure out what was he really called around his office? Was he called Diddy? Was he call Puff Daddy? Was called he Puff? Was he, called you know, Sean Combs? A lot of the witnesses seem to have called him Puff every day at the office. So thatās my first takeaway from the trial. Mike, how about you?
Michael Sisak, AP law enforcement reporter: I think itās fascinating that you have Sean Combs on trial at the same time as retrial, because you have the arc of the #MeToo movement playing out in the entertainment industry and across different aspects of the entertainment industry. Harvey Weinstein's allegations in 2017 really kickstarted the #MeToo movement. He then had his trial in 2020. Now weāre sort of on the other side of that arc where itās Sean Combs opening a window into the hip-hop industry, into the music industry, certainly the most famous, most well-known person from that aspect of entertainment, on trial, and you see the media and public attention gravitating to the Combs trial, to the Diddy trial, much more so than the Weinstein retrial, in part because of the fascination with celebrity.
NEUMEISTER: And plus, I think with Weinstein, heās convicted out in LA. So, because heās already, you know, going to be in jail, even if he got exonerated at this second trial, heās still sentenced to a long time in prison.
SISAK: He has a form of cancer, he has heart issues, he has all of these things that have only gotten worse, his lawyers say, since that first trial. But to your point, Larry, yes, he is convicted in Los Angeles, and the retrial in New York was caused by an appeals court overturning that 2020 conviction.
WALKER: So, to sum it up for just one moment, two very different men, but at one point, very powerful, thought to be very untouchable. And I want to get back to both of them, but I want a pivot just for a minute and remind everyone that weāre also talking about .
SISAK: The fascinating thing about the Mangione case is that he could wind up in both courthouses. You have Diddy in the federal courthouse, you have Weinstein in the state courthouse, and Mangione faces murder charges in both the federal jurisdiction and the state jurisdiction. And initially, we thought and were told by prosecutors that the state case would proceed first. Now the state case, the maximum punishment would be life in prison. However, the Trump administration has gone ahead and filed paperwork indicating that they will seek the death penalty in the federal case, that case appears like it will now be the first one out. His next court date in the federal case is not until December.
NEUMEISTER: Seeking the death penalty right off the bat adds one year to everything, and probably two to three years in the long run, because everything will get appealed to the hilt, certainly if they found the death-penalty. But the last time I saw in Manhattan them, the prosecutors seeking a death penalty, was in 2001, and it was two guys charged in an attack on two African embassies that like over 100 people. I think itās hard to win a death penalty case in Manhattan.
WALKER: Now the other interesting thing is that Luigi Mangione and Sean "Diddy" Combs are in the same jail right now.
SISAK: Yeah, Mangione and Combs are both at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is a federal jail that has been in the headlines not only because of the celebrity guests there. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency scammer, was also detained there, but also because that jail has a lot of problems. Itās the only federal jail in New York City now. They closed the one in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide.
NEUMEISTER: And you know what, weāve had a lot of celebrities appear in the federal courts in Manhattan. I mean, over the years, we had Martha Stewart convicted here. We had, just in the last year or two, we had Robert De Niro in the Robert De Niro civil trial. Well, one thing thatās interesting about this Sean Combs trial that I donāt think Iāve ever seen is so many witnesses that are subpoenaed to appear in the trial. We must have had a good four or five witnesses who were subpoenaed to appear. A couple of them said they definitely didnāt want to testify. One of them would have pleaded the fifth, but was given immunity. So he testified. He said it was the last place he wanted to be. And what that enables is the defense to really kind of co-opt them as their witness.
WALKER: You're talking about the ex-assistant.
NEUMEISTER: Yes, George Kaplan, I believe is his name, and he appeared and said all these wonderful things about Sean Combs. He still sends him birthday greetings every year, although he did remark that he invited Combs to his wedding and Combs didnāt even respond. So, you know, I donāt know how that plays to the jury. But yeah, you know, thereās so many witnesses and the defense lawyers more than Iāve ever seen in I think any trial Iāve witnessed in 33 years covering the courts, the defense lawyers keep treating a lot of these witnesses as their friendly witness.
WALKER: I want to get back to the defense and his defense team, but letās talk about the jury for a minute, because a lot of people ask me about that since I have been in court with the two of you. And obviously, you know, the jury is anonymous. Eight men, four women, and then the six alternates, and itās like a slice of life from New York.
NEUMEISTER: Well, thereās many kinds of anonymous juries, and this is not a super anonymous jury like you have at a terrorism trial where by the end of the trial, all you know is they had numbers. It doesnāt seem to be the kind of anonymity that jurors sometimes get to protect their safety or things like that. So, itās more of a milder version of an anonymous jury. But one thing Iāve seen with this jury that Iāve hardly ever seen with a jury is incredible attention to every witness. They turn in their chairs, theyāre pointed toward the witness, theyāre scribbling notes like mad. Iāve never seen so much as a juror yawn, although I did see Kid Cudi, he was yawning several times.
SISAK: To your point, Larry, I think, you know, you talk about the anonymous jury, or at least the anonymity in that we donāt know their names. These high profile cases, more and more, youāre seeing judges take extra steps to protect the jury. And in the case of Sean Combs, you also had allegations of witness tampering, witness interference, leading to his arrest in September of 2024. So that could also explain why some of these witnesses are reluctant to come forward.
NEUMEISTER: Thatās the main reason he wasnāt given bail, is that they felt he was a threat to witnesses and had reached out to a couple of them.
WALKER: Now, in New York, court cases are not televised. We do have sketch artists who are allowed to be in the courtroom, and then we are able to show those sketches. And we see a very different looking Diddy. His hair is completely gray, his goatee gray. He is allowed to wear his own clothes, as is Harvey Weinstein. Letās talk a little bit about what weāre actually seeing that people arenāt privy to.
NEUMEISTER: Canāt have dye, right, Mike?
SISAK: What weāve learned from this trial is that Sean Combs, according to his assistant who testified, was using Just For Men to hide gray hair and he had jet black hair up until the time he was arrested and put in jail last year. And then we also learned that hair dye is not allowed in jail. So in court, he has had this gray salt and pepper hair, goatee. He has been allowed to wear for the trial, sweaters, button down shirts, khakis and the like. Itās a stark difference in look.
NEUMEISTER: Iāll tell you though, the guy is so involved with his defense, itās like off the charts, kind of amazing. I donāt think Iāve ever seen this to this degree before. There was a witness, it was Kid Cudi, where at the end of his testimony, the prosecutors got him to say he believed Sean Combs was lying when he said he didnāt know anything about his car when he brought it up. Kid Cudiās car was exploded in his driveway one day with a Molotov cocktail. And absolutely destroyed. And so he had a meeting with Sean Combs some weeks after that. And at the very end of the meeting, he said, brought up the car. And Sean Combs said, āoh, what are you talking about? I donāt know anything about that.ā And after, as soon as that, the prosecutor finished asking the questions, got that response, then two lawyers, one on each side of Combs looked to him Combs said no, and only then did the lawyers inform the judge that there would be no more questioning.
SISAK: I recall being in the courtroom earlier in the trial when some images were shown from some of the videotapes at issue here with these sex marathons that have become known in his parlance as "freak-offs." And there was a binder of some of these images, and Combs was sitting next to his lawyer and waved over, hey, I want to see those, and heās looking through them and heās holding the press, the public. We were not allowed to see these images. Their graphic images. The defendant, of course, was allowed to see them and he held them in a way that we could not see what he was looking at. And then he passed it back. And then other times heās hunched over a laptop computer looking at exhibits that are showing text messages and emails that were exchanged over the years with various people involved in the case. And then when there are breaks, we see him standing up, stretching, turning around, looking at his supporters in the gallery. His mother has been there. Some of his children have been there, some of his daughters have left the courtroom during the especially graphic testimony. But at other times, when his children are there, when his supporters are there, heās shaping his hands in the shape of a heart. Heās pointing at them. Heās saying, I love you. Heās whispering. There was a moment when another reporter and I were sitting in the courtroom during a break and Sean Combs turns around, thereās nobody in front of us and he asks us how weāre doing. We say hi back to him because youāre in such close proximity. Weāre only 10 feet apart or so. Iāll pivot quickly to the Harvey Weinstein case where thereās not as much of that because while Harvey Weinstein does have a contingent of supporters, itās mostly paid supporters, his publicist, his lawyers, his jury consultant. People that he will wave to and talk to and acknowledge as heās being wheeled into the courtroom. He uses a wheelchair to get in and out of court. One of the interesting things that ties the Sean Combs case and the Luigi Mangione case is one of the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, represents both of those men. Karen Friedman Agnifilo is the lead defense attorney for Luigi Mangione. She is married to Marc Agnifilo. They are partners in the same law firm and Marc Agnifilo is ostensibly the lead attorney for Sean Combs. He is also assisting on Luigi Mangioneās defense, both in the state and federal case.
WALKER: In the beginning of the Combs case, the jury was shown that explosive video that the public already saw in the L.A. hotel hallway of Combs dragging Cassie and kicking her when sheās on the ground and he made a public apology on his social media to her. And his lawyers have said that heās not a perfect person and he has anger issues, but heās not charged with domestic abuse.
SISAK: The refrain from the defense has been that, if anything, there could have been domestic violence charges brought against Sean Combs back in 2016. Those charges would have been brought in a California court by Los Angeles police. There has not been any real discussion of an investigation in 2016 of any effort to charge Sean Combs with domestic violence at that time. So, in some sense, while itās a thread that the defense is pulling, that heās actually charged with sex trafficking and racketeering in this federal case, it almost is a bit of apples and oranges in the sense that the violence that the defenses conceding to, prosecutors allege, was part of the mechanism of the racketeer of the sex trafficking. In other words, they allege that Sean Combs used violence to keep people quiet, to people compliant.
NEUMEISTER: And a lot of charges like domestic violence are all kind of things they could have brought against Sean Combs years ago. Well, thereās a statute of limitations that would rule out certain charges. And certain charges just, there is no federal domestic violence charge. So when the feds go after somebody, they look for what kind of charges are federal crimes. And in this case, sex trafficking, bringing people across state lines to do illegal sex acts, or racketeering, which can involve many different things, including that 2016 tape of Cassie being beat up by Sean Combs by the Elevator Bank in that Los Angeles hotel. That, actually, is a centerpiece of the evidence against Combs in this case.
WALKER: The point is that that hallway video of Diddy beating up Cassie is actually part of the case of racketeering because heās using violence to control people.
NEUMEISTER: Listen, thereās violence all through this, right Mike?
SISAK: The Kid Cudi arc in this narrative, which is in 2011, Cassie, whoās the longtime girlfriend of Sean Combs, starts dating Kid Cudi. Combs is upset about that, according to this witness, Capricorn Clark. Combs comes into her home holding a gun, kidnaps Capricorn Clark, takes her to Kid Cudiās home, where according to Clark, Combs was intent on killing Kid Codi. Now, Cudi was not there. He testified at this trial, so Combs is alleged wish of killing him did not come to fruition, it may be a bit of a crafty strategy by the defense in this case to own the things that they cannot otherwise explain away. They are owning the things the jury eventually is going to see. The video of the 2016 assault at the hotel in Los Angeles. A video, by the way, that was suppressed from public view until it aired last year on CNN.
NEUMEISTER: And that is part of the racketeering charge, itās alleged that he used all of his employees and his whole security staff to cover up these things. So, when that happened in 2016 at that L.A. hotel, they paid like $100,000 to try to get the copy of the security video so it would never become public.
WALKER: I think weāve covered so much that Iām not sure what we have left to cover, although there probably is more. But are there any big points or big arcs that you think are worth mentioning?
NEUMEISTER: In the beginning, the first week, it was all Cassieās testimony and there was so much evidence in everything and her testimony about sexual acts and such but last week it seems all about violence and threats and how he would have used his employees to cover up the crimes.
SISAK: Weāve heard from Cassie about the freak-offs. Weāve heard from some of the male sex workers that were involved. And then weāre seeing other pieces of evidence that prosecutors say show the depravity of these events and then also the network of people that Combs relied on to keep them secret, to keep going, but to keep them secret.
WALKER: Well, I think that that about sums it up. The judge in the beginning said he wanted to be done by July 4th.
SISAK: Weāve had people ask us, all three of us that have been in court at various times, what do you think of the prosecutionās case so far? And as reporters, we donāt have opinions on things, but I would urge caution whenever thereās a case, let the presentation play out, get to the end of the prosecution case, but also listen to the cross-examination, listen to what the defense puts on. Often defendants will not testify on their own behalf because it can be perilous, but there are cases where it might be advantageous.
NEUMEISTER: When thereās celebrities involved, itās a wild card, where you really canāt predict whatās going to happen and how thatās going to play into the jurorsā minds and everything else.
WALKER: And I think thatās a good place to leave it. Thank you both. Mike Sisak, Larry Neumeister. Iām Julie Walker. Thank you for listening.
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Julie Walker, Larry Neumeister And Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press
