coercion

WASHINGTON — President Trump prides himself on being a dealmaker, but his negotiating style is more ultimatum than compromise.

In the last week, Trump has slapped trading partners with tariffs rather than slog through prolonged talks to reach agreements. He ratcheted up the pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. And his administration launched a new investigation into higher education as he tries to reshape universities.

For Trump, a deal isn’t necessarily agreement in which two sides compromise — it’s an opportunity to bend others to his will. While Trump occasionally backs down from his threats, the past week is a reminder that they are a permanent feature of his presidency.

As Trump tightens his grip on independent institutions, there are fewer checks on his power. Republicans in Congress fear primary challenges backed by the president, and the Supreme Court is stocked with appointees from his first term.

Trump recently summed up his approach when talking to reporters about trade talks with other countries. “They don’t set the deal,” he said. “I set the deal.”

Trump’s allies believe his aggression is required in a political ecosystem where he’s under siege from Democrats, the court system and the media. In their view, the president is simply trying to fulfill the agenda that he was elected to achieve.

But critics fear he’s eroding the country’s democratic foundations with an authoritarian style. They say the president’s focus on negotiations is a facade for attempts to dominate his opponents and expand his power.

“Pluralism and a diversity of institutions operating with autonomy — companies, the judiciary, nonprofit institutions that are important elements of society — are much of what defines real democracy,” said Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard University. “That is threatened by heavy handed, extortionist approaches.”

Seeking control of higher education

Harvard has been a top target for Trump, starting in April when he demanded changes to the university’s governance and new faculty members to counteract liberal bias.

As Harvard resisted, administration officials terminated $2.2 billion in federal grants. The money is the lifeblood of the university’s sprawling research operation, which includes studies on cancer, Parkinson’s disease, space travel and pandemic preparedness.

Trump has also attempted to block Harvard from hosting roughly 7,000 foreign students, and he’s threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status. His administration recently sent subpoenas asking for student data.

“They’ll absolutely reach a deal,” Trump said Wednesday.

Administration officials also pulled $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania in March over a dispute around women’s sports. They restored it when school officials agreed to update records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and change their policies.

Columbia University bent to Trump by putting its Middle East studies department under new supervision, among other changes, after the administration pulled $400 million in federal funding. At the University of Virginia, President James Ryan resigned under pressure following a Justice Department investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices. A similar investigation was opened Thursday at George Mason University.

“Federal funding is a privilege, not a right, for colleges and universities,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman.

Such steps were unheard of before Trump took office. Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education and an Education Department official under President Obama, said Trump isn’t seeking deals but is “demanding more and more and more.”

“Institutional autonomy is an important part of what makes higher education work,” he said. “It’s what enables universities to pursue the truth without political considerations.”

Going after the Federal Reserve’s independence

The Fed has also faced Trump’s wrath. He blames Fed Chair Jerome Powell for moving too slowly to cut interest rates, which could make consumer debt like mortgages and auto loans more affordable. It could also help the U.S. government finance the federal debt that’s expected to climb from the tax cuts that Trump recently signed into law.

Powell has held off on cutting the central bank’s benchmark rate, as Trump’s tariffs could possibly worsen inflation and lower rates could intensify that problem. Desai said the White House believes the Fed should act based on what the data currently shows, which is that “President Trump’s policies have swiftly tamed inflation.”

Although Trump has said he won’t try to fire Powell — a step that might be impossible under the law anyway — he’s called on him to resign. In addition, Trump’s allies have increased their scrutiny of Powell’s management, particularly an expensive renovation of the central bank’s headquarters.

David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s approach could undermine the Fed’s credibility by casting a political shadow over its decisions.

“There will be real costs if markets and global investors think the Fed has been beaten into submission by Trump,” he said.

Tariff threats instead of trade deals

Trump originally wanted to enact sweeping tariffs in April. In his view, import taxes would fix the challenge of the U.S. buying too much from other countries and not selling enough overseas.

After a backlash in financial markets, Trump instituted a three-month negotiating period on tariffs. Peter Navarro, one of his advisers, said the goal was “90 deals in 90 days.”

The administration announced a few trade frameworks with the United Kingdom and Vietnam, but Trump ran out of patience. He’s sent letters to two dozen nations and the European Union informing them of their tariff rates, such as 30% against the EU and Mexico, potentially undercutting the work of his own negotiators.

Desai said Trump’s approach has generated “overwhelming interest” from other countries in reaching trade deals and gives the U.S. leverage in negotiations.

John C. Brown, a professor emeritus of economics at Clark University in Massachusetts, said the “willy-nilly setting of tariffs according to one person’s whims has no precedence in the history of trade policy since the 17th century.”

“It’s just bizarre,” Brown said of Trump’s moves. “No one has done this in history.”

The president has also used the threat of tariffs in an attempt to help political allies and influence other countries’ court systems. He told Brazil that he would implement a 50% tariff if the country didn’t drop its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who like Trump was charged with trying to overturn an election.

Inu Manak, a fellow on trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s inconsistent approach will foster distrust of U.S. motives.

She noted that two of the letters went to Canada and South Korea, allies who have existing trade agreements with the U.S. approved by Congress.

By imposing new tariffs, she said, Trump is raising “serious questions about the meaning of signing any deal with the United States at all.”

Megerian, Boak and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

The trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has culminated in a verdict, after more than seven weeks of intense media scrutiny and testimony about drug-fuelled celebrity sex parties.

But beneath the salacious details, advocates say there are critical takeaways about how sexual violence is understood – and sometimes tolerated – within the criminal justice system.

On Wednesday, a federal jury in the United States delivered a split decision.

It found Combs guilty of transporting individuals to engage in prostitution, but not guilty of the weightier question of whether he engaged in sex trafficking or racketeering for flying girlfriends and sex workers to the parties he organised.

Prosecutors had described Combs’s activity as a “criminal enterprise” in which he leveraged money, power and physical violence to force former girlfriends into abusive circumstances.

The split ruling has, in turn, divided opinion about what the case means for the beleaguered #MeToo movement, which emerged in the early 2010s to bring accountability to cases of sexual violence.

For Emma Katz, a domestic abuse expert, the jury’s decision indicates there are still yawning gaps in public understanding about sexual violence. That understanding, she maintains, is necessary to assess the behaviours that accompany long-term abuse and coercion, particularly between intimate partners.

“I think a ruling like this would be a good news kind of day for perpetrators,” she told Al Jazeera. “The jury seems to have concluded you can be a victim, a survivor, whose boss beats you in hotel corridors and has control over your life, but that you’re not being coerced by him.”

“So much of what perpetrators do that enables them to get away with their abuse – and what makes their abuse so horrific and so sustained – has not been acknowledged and has disappeared from the picture in this verdict,” she added.

A ‘botched’ decision

How the jury arrived at its decision remains unknown.

But prosecutors had been tasked with proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Combs used “force, fraud, or coercion” to compel his girlfriends into commercial sex acts.

The case was centred largely on the testimony of two women: singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura Fine and a woman identified only by the pseudonym “Jane”. Both were identified as former girlfriends of Combs.

The prosecution argued that Combs had used his financial influence, violence and threats of blackmail to coerce Ventura and the other woman to perform sex acts during parties known as “freak-offs”.

The evidence included surveillance video from March 2016 of Combs beating Ventura in a hotel hallway and then dragging her away. Ventura herself gave harrowing testimony at the trial, saying she felt “trapped” in a cycle of abuse.

She explained that cycle involved regular threats and violence, including Combs “stomping” her on the face in a 2009 incident.

But the defence’s arguments throughout the proceedings appear to have swayed the jury, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor.

The defence blatantly admitted that Combs was abusive towards Ventura, as the surveillance footage had shown. But Combs’s lawyers maintained there was no evidence he coerced Ventura into committing sexual acts against her will.

The Los Angeles Times even quoted defence lawyer Teny Geragos as saying, “Domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”

“The big question in the case is: If you’re sexually abused or assaulted, why did you stay with your abuser for more than a decade?” Rahmani said. “I understand the psychology of abuse, but jurors don’t necessarily buy it”.

Rahmani broadly assessed that prosecutors “botched” the sex-trafficking portion of the case.

That included how prosecutors approached a series of messages from Ventura that indicated affection for Combs and active participation in sexual situations, which Rahmani noted were not revealed until cross-examination by the defence.

According to experts like Katz, such behaviour can be common in abusive relationships, in which an abuser expects a “performance of happiness” to avoid physical, financial or psychological repercussions.

“It would never surprise me to see a victim survivor sending loving texts and enthusiastic texts to somebody who they said was abusing them, because that’s all part and parcel of domestic abuse,” Katz said.

‘Stain on criminal justice’

From Katz’s perspective, the verdict underscores the reality of what has happened since the #MeToo movement emerged.

While #MeToo helped workplace harassment become more widely understood, the general public still struggles with the complexities of intimate partner violence.

“I think that the public has shown more willingness to consider how somebody might be harmed by an acquaintance, a work colleague, somebody who’s hiring them for a job,” Katz said.

By contrast, intimate partner abuse consistently raises victim-blaming questions like: Why did someone remain with an abusive partner?

“There’s still a lot of stigma around when you chose this person,” Katz explained. The thought process, she added, is often: “It can’t have been that bad if you stayed in the relationship.”

But domestic violence experts point to complicating, often unseen factors. Abuse can have psychological consequences, and abusers often attempt to wield power over their victims.

Children, housing and financial circumstances can also prevent survivors from leaving and seeking help. People experiencing such abuse might also fear an escalation of the violence – or retaliation against loved ones – should they leave.

Experts, however, say it can be hard to illustrate those fears in court. Still, on Wednesday, Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, struck a positive tone about the outcome of the Combs trial.

In a statement, he said Ventura’s legal team was “pleased” with the verdict and that her testimony helped to assure that Combs has “finally been held responsible for two federal crimes”.

“He still faces substantial jail time,” Wigdor noted. The prostitution transportation charges each carry a maximum of 10 years.

Several advocacy groups also praised Ventura and others for coming forward with their experiences.

The verdict “shows that even when power tries to silence truth, survivors push it into the light,” Lift Our Voices, a workplace advocacy group, wrote on the social media platform X. “The #MeToo movement hasn’t waned, it’s grown stronger.”

Fatima Goss Graves, head of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), echoed that Ventura’s and Jane’s testimonies were accomplishments in and of themselves.

“Coming forward and seeking accountability took extraordinary bravery and no jury can take that away,” she said.

Others were less optimistic about the jury’s split verdict. Arisha Hatch, interim executive director of UltraViolet, a gender-justice advocacy organisation, called the verdict a “decisive moment for our justice system” – and not in a good way.

“Today’s verdict is not just a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers like Diddy,” Hatch said. “It’s also an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”

Terrance “T.A.” Dixon, once a hype man to rapper Fat Joe, has sued his former employer for $20 million, making some allegations that might blend right in at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ RICO and sex-trafficking trial.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York and reviewed by The Times, alleges that the rapper underpaid Dixon, cut him out of promised pay for contributing to album tracks, defrauded authorities about his income, ditched Dixon in foreign countries without money or transportation home and is running a criminal organization built on intimidation and violence.

The lawsuit alleges that Fat Joe forced the hype man — a sort of backing vocalist who pumps up the audience — into approximately 4,000 sex acts with women in front of him and his crew.

The 54-year-old rapper, born Joseph Antonio Cartagena, is also accused of having sexual relationships with girls who were 15 and 16. The allegations go back to when the rapper was in his late 30s, the lawsuit says. Fat Joe’s song “She’s My Mama,” which has graphically sexual lyrics, was based on what is alleged to have happened with him and one of the girls in real life, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that Dixon’s role over about 16 years was more than that of the usual hype man. He “consistently” had duties that included co-writing lyrics, structuring hooks, recording background vocals, performing at more than 200 live shows as Fat Joe’s primary onstage counterpart and managing travel logistics, including equipment transport, security and emergency arrangements. The complaint alleges that Dixon also acted as Joe’s bodyguard and handler during tours.

According to the filing, Dixon wrote or co-wrote tracks including “Congratulations,” “Money Over Bitches,” “Ice Cream,” “Cupcake,” “Blackout,” “Dirty Diana,” “Porn Star,” “Okay Okay,”“No Problems,” a version of “All the Way Up,” “300 Brolic,” “All I Do Is Win (Remix verse),” “Red Café (Remix),” “Winding on Me,” “Cocababy” and “Get It for Life.”

The complaint alleges that Dixon was not properly paid for his efforts, even though he says he was promised certain ownership percentages and documented credit on songs that Fat Joe released commercially. Dixon, who left Fat Joe’s team in 2020, was unable to obtain certain evidence of wrongdoing until a person named as “Accountant Doe” came forward last year with information, the lawsuit says.

Fat Joe “exercised sole control over contracts, budgets, tour management, licensing, and credit attribution and intentionally omitted Plaintiff’s name from liner notes, publishing registrations, and royalty structures, despite Plaintiff’s direct contributions to these works’ creative and commercial success,” the complaint says.

Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Fat Joe, called the lawsuit “a blatant attack of retaliation” and labeled the allegations “complete fabrications” that his client denies in a statement to Variety. Retaliation referred to the slander lawsuit that the rapper filed against Dixon in April after the former hype man accused him on social media of flying a 16-year-old across state lines for sex.

Dixon’s attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, is also representing producer Lil Rod (Rodney Jones) in his $30-million federal lawsuit filed last year against Sean “Diddy” Combs and others in Combs’ orbit, in which Lil Rod alleged sexual harassment and sexual assault. A judge tossed out a majority of Lil Rod’s allegations against Combs in late March.

Both lawsuits include trigger warnings in bright red type ahead of the allegations — something not often seen in such documents.

“Fat Joe is Sean Combs minus the Tusi [pink cocaine],” Blackburn said in a statement to the Independent. “He learned nothing from his 2013 federal conviction,” the attorney added, referencing Fat Joe’s four-month sentence and $15,000 fine in a plea deal for failure to file a tax return in multiple years on more than $3.3 million in income.

In addition to Fat Joe, defendants in the new lawsuit include Peter “Pistol Pete” Torres, Richard “Rich Player” Jospitre, Erica Juliana Moreira and several companies —including Roc Nation — that are affiliated with the rapper. Dixon is asking for a jury trial.

Power is the ability to get others to do what you want. That can be accomplished by coercion (“sticks”), payment (“carrots”) or attraction (“honey”). The first two methods are forms of hard power; attraction is soft power. Soft power grows out of a country’s culture, its political values and its foreign policies. In the short term, hard power usually trumps soft power. But over the long term, soft power often prevails. Joseph Stalin once mockingly asked, “How many divisions does the pope have?” But the papacy continues today, while Stalin’s Soviet Union is long gone.

When a nation is attractive, it can economize on carrots and sticks. If allies see the United States as benign and trustworthy, they are more likely to be open to persuasion and to following our lead. If they see us as an unreliable bully, they are more likely to drag their feet and reduce their interdependence when they can. Cold War Europe is a good example. A Norwegian historian described Europe as divided into a Soviet and an American empire. But there was a crucial difference: The American side was “an empire by invitation” rather than coercion. The Soviets had to deploy troops to Budapest in 1956, and to Prague in 1968. In contrast, NATO has voluntarily increased its membership.

Nations need both hard and soft power. Machiavelli said it was better for a prince to be feared than to be loved. But it is best to be both.

Because soft power is rarely sufficient by itself, and because its effects take longer to realize, political leaders are often tempted to resort to the hard power of coercion or payment. When wielded alone, however, hard power is an unnecessarily high-cost proposition. The Berlin Wall did not succumb to an artillery barrage; it was felled by hammers and bulldozers wielded by people who had lost faith in communism and were drawn to Western values.

After World War II, the United States was by far the most powerful country because of its hard and soft power. It attempted to enshrine its values in what became known as the liberal international order — a soft power framework made up of the United Nations, economic and trade institutions, and other multilateral bodies. Of course, the U.S. did not always live up to its liberal values, and Cold War bipolarity limited the order it led to only half the world’s people.

Donald Trump is the first American president to reject the idea that soft power has any value in foreign policy. Among his first actions upon returning to office were withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, despite the obvious threats that global warming and pandemics pose.

The effects of the Trump administration’s surrendering soft power are all too predictable. Trying to coerce democratic allies such as Denmark or Canada weakens trust in the U.S. among all our alliances. Threatening Panama reawakens fears of imperialism throughout Latin America. Crippling the U.S. Agency for International Development — created by President Kennedy in 1961 — undercuts our reputation for benevolence. Silencing Voice of America is a gift to authoritarian rivals. Slapping tariffs on friends makes us appear unreliable. Trying to chill free speech at home undermines our credibility. This list could go on.

China, which Trump defines as America’s great challenge, itself has been investing in soft power since 2007, when then-Chinese President Hu Jintao told the Chinese Communist Party that the country needed to make itself more attractive to others. But China has long faced two major obstacles in this respect. First, it maintains territorial disputes with multiple neighbors. Second, the communists insist on maintaining tight control over civil society. When public opinion polls ask people around the world which countries they find attractive, China doesn’t shine. But one can only wonder what these surveys will show in future years if Trump keeps undercutting American soft power.

Of course American soft power has had its ups and downs. The U.S. was unpopular in many countries during the Vietnam and Iraq wars. But soft power derives from a country’s society and culture as well as from government actions. When crowds marched through streets around the world in freedom protests, they sang the American civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.” An open society that allows protest can be a soft-power asset.

But will America’s cultural soft power survive a downturn in the government’s soft power over the next four years?

American democracy is likely to survive the next four years of Trump. The country has a resilient political culture and the Constitution encourages checks and balances, whatever their weaknesses. In 2026, there is a reasonable chance that Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives. Moreover, American civil society remains strong, and the courts independent. Many organizations have launched lawsuits to challenge Trump’s actions, and markets have signaled dissatisfaction with his economic policies.

American soft power recovered after low points during the Vietnam and Iraq wars, as well as during Trump’s first term. But once trust is lost, it is not easily restored. After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia lost most of what soft power it had. Right now, China is striving to fill any soft power gaps that Trump creates. The way Chinese President Xi Jinping tells it, the East is rising over the West.

If Trump thinks he can compete with China while weakening trust among American allies, asserting imperial aspirations, destroying USAID, silencing Voice of America, challenging laws at home and withdrawing from U.N. agencies, he is likely to fail. Restoring what he has destroyed will not be impossible, but it will be costly.

Joseph S. Nye Jr. was dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and a U.S. assistant secretary of Defense. His memoir “A Life in the American Century” was published last year. Nye died earlier this month.

R&B artist Cassie Ventura’s movie premiere was days away in March 2016 when her then-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs texted her asking what she was doing.

She already felt “trapped” in a cycle of physical and sexual abuse by him, she told a New York federal jury this week, outlining 11 years of alleged beatings, sexual blackmail and a rape.

She claimed Combs threatened to leak videos of her sexual encounters with numerous male sex workers while drug-intoxicated and glistening with baby oil as he watched and orchestrated the events, known as freak-offs.

“If I pleased him with a freak-off, then my premiere would run smoothly,” she said, according to reporting from inside the Manhattan courtroom from the Associated Press.

What happened next could end up being the beginning of the end of Combs’ public life.

Video footage from that March 2016 night shows Combs punching and kicking Ventura as she cowers and tries to protect herself in front of an L.A. hotel elevator bank. He then drags her down the hall by her hooded sweatshirt toward their hotel room. A second angle from another camera captures Combs throwing a vase toward her. She suffered bruising to her eye, a fat lip, and a bruise that prosecutors showed was still visible during the movie premiere two days later. She donned sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.

Ventura’s testimony is at the center of the federal trial accusing Combs of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation for prostitution.

Sweeping allegations

The federal indictment alleges that Combs and his associates lured female victims, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then allegedly used force, threats of force, coercion and controlled substances to get women to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes while he occasionally watched in gatherings that Combs referred to as “freak-offs.” Combs gave the women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and compliant” during the performances.

The freak-offs, which prosecutors say sometimes lasted for days, were elaborately produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often recorded, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege in a detention memo filed in court that the freak-offs occurred regularly from at least 2009 through 2023 and that the hotel rooms where they were staged often sustained significant damage.

Combs’ alleged “criminal enterprise” threatened and abused women and utilized members of his enterprise to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, coercion and enticement to engage in prostitution, narcotics offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice, prosecutors said. In bringing so-called RICO charges, prosecutors in opening statements said Combs was helped by cadre of company employees, security staff and aides. They allegedly helped organize the crime and “freak-offs” and then covered up the incidents. Thus far, Combs is the only one facing criminal charges related to the investigation.

Combs’ attorney this week said her client was far from perfect but that the charges were overblown.

“Sean Combs is a complicated man. But this is not a complicated case. This case is about love, jealousy, infidelity and money,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors. “There has been a tremendous amount of noise around this case over the past year. It is time to cancel that noise.”

How Ventura and Combs met

Jurors heard that Ventura was 19 when she met the 37-year-old Combs in 2005, and she signed a 10-year contract with his Bad Boy Records label. About two years later, he had Britney Spears come to her 21st birthday party, where Ventura and Combs kissed and their relationship began, she said. She testified that the freak-offs became a way of life, and she even stepped away from her own birthday party for one.

Cassie Ventura, left, and Sean “Diddy” Combs arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story” at the Writers Guild Theater on June 21, 2017, in Beverly Hills.

(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)

Combs, she told jurors, required her to let a male sex worker urinate in her mouth. That man and others were paid thousands of dollars to have sex repeatedly for 36 to 48 hours, she told the jury.

On the stand, Ventura identified 13 male sex workers through photos presented by prosecutors that she said Combs’ had her recruit for the freak-offs. Hers and Combs’ relationship would end on a day in 2018 when she met him for dinner and he raped her on her living room floor, she testified.

Violence

During four days of testimony, Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, described being raped, beaten at least six times, most severely in 2009.

In the 2009 attack, she testified that Combs was “stomping” on her face after he discovered she was dating rapper Kid Cudi. Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, had his car torched a short time afterward. Prosecutors allege in court papers that Combs ordered it.

Legal analysis

Legal experts say the testimony is designed to build the federal case against Combs, even if on the surface it does not appear directly related to the charges he’s facing.

“Why is the government talking about rape and assault when the charges are RICO and sex trafficking?” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani. Well, he said, “what separates sex trafficking from consensual sex between adults — which the defense is arguing — is force, fraud or coercion.”

“Ventura’s testimony that she was given drugs to the point of throwing up … and forced to have sex when she was menstruating or had a UTI is evidence of coercion,” he said.

Rahmani said that Ventura’s portrayal of Combs as a gun-brandishing mogul who beat her on multiple occasions, tracked her movements and sent a security team to find her is evidence of force.

Then there were the alleged threats. She recounted that during a commercial flight in 2013, Combs pulled out his laptop and began playing a freak-off recording as they sat together. She said Combs told her that he was going to embarrass her and release them.

“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” Ventura said.

Authorities raid Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Los Angeles home as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation

(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)

Rahmani said the racketeering charge against Combs requires prosecutors to prove the existence of a criminal enterprise.

“People typically think of the mob, street gangs, or drug cartels, but any loose association of two or more people is enough like Combs’ entourage,” the former federal prosecutor said. They must show two or more predicate acts over 10 years.

“That is why the evidence of bribery, kidnapping, obstruction, witness tampering and prostitution is important,” he said.

LAPD officer testimony

Israel Florez, a hotel security guard who confronted Combs in 2016, now a Los Angeles Police officer, testified Combs flashed a bundle of cash at him — something he believed was an attempted bribe. He rejected it, he said.

Combs’ defense is seeking to paint Ventura as participating in the behavior, recruiting and paying sex partners, acquiring narcotics and texting to push for freak-offs that were part of a swingers’ lifestyle. She is one of four alleged victims in the case, with jurors expected to hear from at least three of them.

On Thursday, defense attorney Anne Estevao had Ventura read a series of loving texts to Combs and got Ventura to testify she’d watched Combs have sex with another woman on multiple occasions. To support the swingers’ defense, the lawyer produced a 2009 text where the singer declared, “I’m always ready to freak off.”

Ventura sued Combs in the fall of 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse, triggering a cascade of lawsuits and allegations by others who say they’re victims of Combs and eventually, a raid by Homeland Security on his L.A. and Miami homes and his arrest. Ventura acknowledged Wednesday that she got a $20-million settlement within days of filing her lawsuit.

Combs attorney pushes back

During opening statements in a Manhattan federal courtroom, Geragos, one of Combs’ defense attorneys, drew a distinction for jurors between the violence they would hear testimony about and the charges Combs was facing, saying “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”

She said the video of Ventura’s assault in the hotel was indefensible, but that the singer “made a choice” to stay with Combs for 11 years.

After the attack, a friend called police to Ventura’s home, she testified. But when officers arrived, she did not identify Combs as the culprit.

The prosecutor asked her why she did not talk. “In that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way. I wasn’t ready,” she replied.

On Thursday, the defense cross-examining Ventura sought to change the narrative using dozens of text messages between Combs and Ventura. In a July 2013 text message exchange, Comb’s defense lawyer noted that Cassie raised the idea of having a “freak-off,” writing to Combs: “Wish we could’ve FO’d before you left.”

Using the text message exchanges, the defense lawyer highlighted Ventura’s admitted jealousy over the attention he gave other women.

“You’re making me look like a side piece and that is not what I thought I was,” Cassie told Combs in a 2013 text message.

Estevao tried to recast the hotel incident as the result of the two taking a “bad batch” of the psychedelic stimulant MDMA during a “freak-off” before the hotel beating.

During her testimony this week, Ventura testified that Combs allegedly overdosed on opioids while partying at the Playboy Mansion in 2012. While she wasn’t there, she said, he told her about it.

Ventura’s testimony ended on Friday.

The Associated Press contributed court testimony for this analysis.