Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial updates: Defense closes; deliberations set for Monday

The government summation in the Sean Combs racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking trial has moved on to the counts of transportation for the purposes of prostitution.

“You heard about many instances when the defendant flew in escorts from across the country so he could watch them have sex,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik told the court.

Concerning one alleged example, from August 2009, Slavik showed jurors text messages from Combs coordinating travel with a male escort named Jules. Slavik then showed Combs’ American Express statement that, the prosecution claims, indicates that Combs paid for Jules’ flight, his car from the airport, and the $2,000 bill from The London hotel in New York City.

“The only reason to fly Jules Theodore into New York City was to participate in a 'freak-off,'” Slavik said, referring to the name for a sexual encounter.

Slavik included multiple other examples to support the prosecution's contention before taking a break. She told the court that she has another hour to go in her presentation, setting up a five-hour closing argument from the government.

Sean Combs “created a climate of fear” that left Cassie Ventura believing that “failure to perform 'freak-offs,' or do whatever else the defendant demanded, would result in serious harm,” prosecutor Christy Slavik said during closing statements at his racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking trial.

Slavik took aim at a defense argument that Combs' former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, made a daily decision to stay in the relationship with Combs for 11 years. She asked jurors to imagine that they were with someone who kicked them, dragged them by the hair at seemingly random times for saying the wrong things, or for failing to promptly answer the phone -- someone bigger, stronger and twice their age.

“Imagine the terror of never knowing when the next hit might come or how to fight that person off. Now imagine saying no,” Slavik said of Ventura. “She knew that when he was happy, she was safe.”

Slavik told the jury that Ventura lacked the freedom to make a voluntary, adult choice.

“If the defendant wanted a 'freak-off,' it was going to happen," Slavik said referring to sexual encounters. "You know why by now. He didn’t take no for an answer."

For Cassie Ventura, violence at the hands of Sean Combs “became her normal,” federal prosecutor Christy Slavik asserted during the government’s closing argument.

Ventura experienced it and “saw and heard about the defendant attacking her friends,” Slavik said, naming Combs' former assistant "Mia"; longtime Ventura friend Bryana Bongolan; celebrity stylist Deonte Nash; and former Ventura Kerry Morgan.

“The defense asked why, if the violence was so bad, she didn’t leave. But you know why,” Slavik told the jury, telling them that fear overrides an inclination to flee.

“There was no safe space for Cassie,” Slavik said.

So-called "freak-off" sexual encounters were also part of Ventura's norm, according to Slavik, noting that Ventura had previously testified that they became like a job.

“'Freak-offs' did not occur in isolation. The defendant wanted them all the time,” Slavik said. While Ventura testified that she agreed to participate in the first one, Slavik told the jury it should be “no surprise” that Ventura came to despise them, reminding the jury they meant hours covered in baby oil, wearing uncomfortable outfits, and sometimes occurred when she had her menstrual period. Allegedly, Combs or an escort also would urinate on her, Slavik said.

Slavik said the "freak-offs" were a “turn on for him,” meaning Combs, but humiliating for Ventura.

“We’re not asking you to find that every 'freak-off' was an instance of sex trafficking but there were many she participated in because of his force, threats of force and coercion,” Slavik said. “That conduct is illegal. That conduct is sex trafficking.”

Slavik also asked jurors not to be “fooled” into thinking that what they saw on explicit video footage was “anything more than a performance,” with Ventura pretending to like the directions Combs was giving. Combs' defense has maintained that all sexual encounters were consensual.

Slavik walked the jury through one more play of the 2016 hotel security surveillance video footage in which Combs is depicted wearing only a towel and, Slavik said, "looks ridiculous.”

She said Combs was not, as the defense asserted, “out of his mind high on drugs” when he attacked Ventura. Rather, Slavik told the jury, the video shows Combs “in complete control of himself” while dealing with a security guard after the attack and trying to limit the damage to his reputation.

The footage depicted Combs dragging Ventura after attacking her to “finish the 'freak-off,'” Slavik said. “This incident should leave no doubt in your mind that the defendant committed trafficking.”

In their continuing summation, federal prosecutors told jurors that they've heard ample evidence that Sean Combs engaged in a coercive course of conduct that left "Jane," the former Combs girlfriend who testified under pseudonym, feeling no choice but to submit to unwanted sex with male escorts.

“This is not an adult woman making a free choice,” prosecutor Christy Slavik said. “Coercion means getting someone to agree to a commercial sex act because they’re afraid of the consequences.”

Slavik asserted that the alleged coercion involved threats to withhold rent payments, threats to release sex tapes, and threats of violence and drugs.

Slavik told jurors that some of the explicit video footage they saw of sexual encounters during defense cross-examination may have appeared to show that "Jane" was “into it” but that it actually showed Jane “super, super high” on a liquid form of molly that made her feel a “sexual energy unlike anything she had ever experienced.”

Next, the jury was shown photos of Combs with a young Cassie Ventura, as Slavik reminded the jury that he's nearly 20 years older than Ventura.

“The defendant made it so it didn’t matter if she was making money through her music,” Slavik said. “He made her dependent on him.”

That control, Slavik said, extended to Ventura’s parents. She showed the jury bank records that documented a $20,000 payment that Ventura's mother and father made to Combs after he found out about her relationship with Kid Cudi. Combs allegedly demanded the money as payment to prevent him from releasing video tapes of Ventura engaging in sexual encounters. The payment was later returned to Ventura's parents.

“This wasn’t about the $20,000," Slavik told the jury. “This was about control."

Slavik also told the jury that Combs' alleged physical abuse of Ventura started early in their relationship. The prosecutor said the defense doesn't deny the abuse occurred -- “they just want to call it domestic violence,” Slavik said -- but she argued that it’s an element of sex trafficking because the so-called “'freak-offs' happened before, after and sometimes during” the violence.

“They were intertwined,” Slavik said.