At trial, Sean Combs can be represented by a big and diverse protection group — one which has grown even bigger and extra diverse in latest days.
Since early within the authorities’s investigation, Mr. Combs has retained Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos of the agency Agnifilo Intrater.
Mr. Agnifilo is a longtime felony protection lawyer who has represented high-profile figures like the previous pharma government Martin Shkreli; Keith Raniere, the chief of the Nxivm intercourse cult; and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the previous managing director of the Worldwide Financial Fund, who in 2011 was accused of sexually assaulting a lodge maid in New York. (The case in opposition to Mr. Strauss-Kahn was dismissed earlier than a trial.) Together with Karen Friedman Agnifilo, his spouse, Mr. Agnifilo can also be a part of the protection group for Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with homicide within the killing of a well being care government.
Out and in of the courtroom, Mr. Agnifilo has been maybe the strongest voice in Mr. Combs’s protection. At a listening to final month, he reiterated the protection’s argument that Mr. Combs’s “freak-offs” — sexual encounters that the federal government contends have been coerced — have been consensual, with Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura a prepared participant. “Name it ‘swingers,’ name it no matter you’ll,” Mr. Agnifilo stated.
In media interviews, he has referred to as the case an “unjust prosecution” and stated that Mr. Combs is “an imperfect particular person however will not be a felony.”
Mr. Agnifilo was a longtime lawyer on the agency Brafman & Associates however left final 12 months to assist begin Agnifilo Intrater. With him, he introduced Ms. Geragos, whose father is Mark Geragos, the celeb lawyer who has represented Mr. Combs prior to now. Ms. Geragos has additionally spoken publicly concerning the case, together with in a collection of TikTok movies that she posted earlier than Mr. Combs was arrested in September.
The group additionally consists of Alexandra Shapiro, a outstanding appellate court docket lawyer on the agency Shapiro Arato Bach who was as soon as a prosecutor within the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the Combs case. She graduated from Columbia Regulation Faculty and was one of many first clerks for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court docket. She additionally wrote a novel, “Presumed Responsible.”
Ms. Shapiro is well known for her success fee at trial and on appeals. “If you wish to maximize your probabilities of both prevailing at trial or on attraction in opposition to the S.D.N.Y., then it’s best to name Alexandra Shapiro (if you happen to can afford her),” the authorized e-newsletter Unique Jurisdiction wrote final 12 months.
Given her specialty, Ms. Shapiro could also be conserving an in depth eye through the trial on any points that could be helpful if the protection appeals a verdict.
Mr. Combs’s protection additionally consists of Jason Driscoll of Shapiro Arato Bach and Anna Estevao of Harris Trzaskoma.
In the previous few weeks, Mr. Combs has added a number of different legal professionals.
Most outstanding is Brian Metal, who defended the rapper Younger Thug in a long-running racketeering trial in Georgia. Younger Thug, whose actual identify is Jeffery Williams, pleaded responsible to collaborating in felony road gang exercise, and was launched with time served. However Mr. Metal — who was lately profiled in The New Yorker — drew vast discover, in authorized circles and past, for a courtroom showdown the place he accused a choose of improperly assembly with a witness. He was held in contempt however later vindicated when the choose was ordered to recuse himself from the case.
Mr. Combs’s group has additionally lately added Xavier Donaldson, a New York lawyer whose LinkedIn profile describes him as “litigator, professor, speaker, disaster supervisor,” and Nicole Westmoreland, who represented one in every of Younger Thug’s co-defendants in his trial.
In April, Mr. Combs’s authorized group requested for a two-month delay of the trial to contemplate what it stated was newly produced proof by the federal government. The choose denied the request, noting that Mr. Combs had 4 regulation corporations working for him, giving him ample assets to organize.
Since then, Mr. Combs has added two extra.
