Welcome to a bonus episode of Variety's Strictly Business podcast. I'm Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety. This morning, July second brought news of the verdict in Shawn Colmbs's federal trial in New York on sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution charges. Combs was acquitted of the most serious racketeering and sex trafficking charges. He was convicted on two counts of transportation for prostitution. Variety reporter Ethan Shanfeld has covered
the trial from the start. He joins me here to discuss the trial and the circus atmosphere in and around the court house after the verdict was read. It was complete with Comb's supporters pouring baby oil on one another in celebration. Here's my conversation with Ethan Ethan Shanfeld. You are a TV reporter for us by day, but you have for these last two months you have been our man and Federal court in Lower Manhattan at the Diddy trial. You have been rising early and really having some long
days of late. We do appreciate it.
Yeah, it's been quite a ride.
Take us back eighthn to Monday.
You were in the court.
You were in the overflow room because there's a lot of pressure to get those seats in court. What did you observe the as it all started to really come down and you knew that they were about to read these verdicts.
So Monday, the judge began the day by reading the jury with the instructions, which was a pretty long two three hour process, going in detail, instructing them how to interpret the charges, how they should sort of get in the room and deliberate with each other.
Emphasizing the duty to deliberate.
The judge focused on, you know, you should consider all the evidence, and you should have an open mind. You should be willing to change your mind when you're met with good arguments. But he also told the jurors not to surrender their beliefs just for the purpose of reaching
a unanimous verdict. And then the jury ended up deliberating for a thirteen hours across two days, and at the end of Tuesday, they came in with a note for the judge and they said that they had reached a verdict on four of the five counts, and the judge instructed them to continue deliberating.
And that.
You know, they really he re emphasized the part of the jury instructions where he said, you know, keep an open mind, you can change your mind, consider the evidence. And then that brought us to today when they got back in the room, and I think to many people's surprise, after about an hour of additional deliberations, they said that they had reached a verdict on all counts.
Before you go into more, I want to ask you one thing. On Monday, when they were going through that long recitation of the instructions, what could you observe from the body language? Were the jurors paying attention? Were their eyes wandering?
The jury has seemed to take this whole process incredibly seriously. I will say that they seemed very intent on listening to the judge's instructions. Sean Conbes's lawyer, Mark Agnifilo praised the jury at the end of Tuesday when they had brought back the partial verdict. He said that the court should not need to provide the jury with any additional instructions because they've been an incredibly efficient jury so far
and that they've been paying attention. There was also a previous juror issue a few weeks ago where one of the juris was dismissed, and one of the things that the attorneys were talking about was how this jury really has paid close attention, It has taken their duty pretty seriously.
Okay, so you were surprised that they came back after just about an hour.
Yeah, I think that when they had said they reached a partial verdict, they came back in and in a note described to the judge that there were jurors on both sides with quote, unpersuadable opinions on.
Either side, and this is really into the racketeering charge.
And so I think a lot of people expected that these deliberations would take much longer because of these unpersuadable opinions. You know, the judge was even talking about holding them on Thursday, which otherwise would be a court holiday for July third, and you know, even Monday was mentioned as a day where they would come back and deliberate. So I think the fact that they were done this morning caught everybody by surprise.
So once everybody knows that the verdict is about to come, what was the ritual that you observed in terms of before the actual the envelope was opened, as it were.
Yeah, everybody stands up as the jury files in. It's quite a slow process as they come in one by one and sit down and then everybody sits. Sean Combs was watching the jury pretty focused on them, and when the judge read the note saying that they had come to a partial verdict, nobody in the room knew what the partial verdict was, so it seemed like Diddy and
his team tensed up and got pretty nervous. There was about a thirty minute waiting period in between when the judge got the note and then when he brought the jury back in, and during that time I observed did He tapping his fingers, crossing his legs, whispering to his attorneys.
It seemed like they had taken the partial verdict.
As not a good sign for him, which ultimately we learned today ended up being a pretty good.
Outcome for him.
What was did he wearing?
He was wearing a cream colored sweater. I believe every day of the trial he's come in with a sweater and a white collared shirt underneath. I believe he has a rotation of five different sweaters, and a few of them are lighter in color, like cream or oatmeal or gray and then he has one that's more brown or maroon, and I believe he has.
A black one as well.
Wow, in a different era, that would have been a sales opportunity for him. So and then what did you observe?
There were some gasps after the first the first.
Verdict was not guilty on the racketeering charge, which was count one, There were gasps. Did he ended up sort of like pumping his fist in the air. After they were all read, people in the overflow rooms were cheering and breaking out into applause, which was not entirely surprising because during closing arguments, you know, the prosecution's five hour argument landed with sort of a silence in the overflow room. And then when Ditty's attorney, Mark Agnifolo finished his argument,
there were people stood up, people cheered, people yelled. The public section of the courthouse seems to be very pro Ditty. And you know, then the rest of the people there are really mostly journalists and then some people who just work in the US Attorney's office that come by to watch here and there.
Did that coalescing of the pro Diddy camp? Did that surprise you? Did that grow? Over time?
It did seem to grow over time. It seems like things reached a climax this week.
You know, after the verdict was read, people were literally squirting baby oil on each other and cheering. They were chanting freedom, They were chanting you know, the saying from the OJ trial, which is, you know, if the glove does not fit, you must have quit. Even though that doesn't really have any bearing on this trial, you know did the's family was coming out, coming in and out of the van, and people were congratulating the kids.
I was in the cafeteria where his kids and his mother were.
And a lot of the people, including journalists, were going up to them and saying congratulations. It's I don't know how surprising it is, but it certainly seemed to reach a culmination these past few days.
It truly does sound like a circus atmosphere. And I just want to be clear. People had, like the bottles of baby oil, not in the courtroom, You're.
Talking about outside outside. Yes, I knew.
Yesterday I talked to a woman who is a content creator and is outside the courthouse every day filming herself. She had brought twenty five bottles of baby oil and had told me that they were going to basically pop them like champagne.
After the verdict was read and then lo and behold.
Today there were people squirting it on each other, there were people dancing without their shirts on people in underwear, and then there's just police that are trying to keep everything in order. But it has been definitely a circus, is the way I would describe it.
Sticking with the pro Diddy camp, would you say the sentiment was that he was over zealously charged. Were people saying let the man have his lifestyle despite the obvious evidence of violence.
I think there's probably a variety of opinions there.
I think there are people who think he's completely innocent and who would not accept any of the evidence that the prosecution showed over you know, six or seven weeks.
I think there are people who believe that he committed.
Acts of violence, took a lot of drugs, had a sort of toxic relationship with some of these women, but that he was not guilty of sex trafficking or racketeering, that those charges that the government brought against him were
maybe a little too high. You know, one guy yesterday was handing out t shirts that said a freako is not a rico In reference to the racketeering charge, and I think that sort of speaks to the mindset that a lot of these people have, which is like Diddy had a lot of sexual fetishes.
He lived a wild life behind closed doors.
But you know, as his attorney said, he's not the leader of a criminal enterprise and he was not a sex trafficker. That these women, you know, voluntarily played into this lifestyle because they loved him and they wanted to be with him.
It's been such an extraordinary look behind the scenes at people with money and power and means and the power of celebrity. What did you learn about the process. What stood out to you about getting this very very strong look at the legal system in process.
I think one thing that I was a little surprised by was how friendly everybody was. I mean, especially among the journalists. I kind of went in thinking, you know, we'd be elbowing each other out of the way, diving into elevators to get outside first, you know, that sort of thing. But really, everybody was so helpful to each other. So you know, if somebody, you know, missed a quote that the judge said, like people were happy to sort of share their notebooks or this is what he said.
People shared information with each other pretty willingly, you know, even the sort of more extreme pro diddy people who were.
Just there to watch.
You know, if you get in conversations with them, I might not agree with them on everything, but they have an interesting perspective.
Most of them were good people.
And you know, all the court martials who you know, might have sort of hazed me now and then when going through security.
Four or five times a day to keep reaching my editors.
You know, they we always greeted each other good morning.
You know, they're pretty jovial and also helpful.
So I think, you know, the whole experience of covering this trial over the last two months has been, you know, pretty fun in some aspects.
You meet a lot of people, You get close to people.
You're sitting in a room for eight hours a day with no technology, so you know, you really have to in those periods where nothing is happening, You're getting to know people.
That alone in your lifetime has got to be a very unique experience. Being hours and hours away from your phone and laptop. That must have really sharpened your listening and your reporting skills.
Certainly, we kept saying it felt like school, like.
Everybody had their pens and their notebooks, and you know everybody's listening pretty closely. It definitely helped my speed at transcribing by hand, which is something that you know, I don't get a lot of practice doing in my day to day job.
Very good old school skills that will serve you well in a power outage and other issues. Well, Ethan, thank you. I love hearing about the camaraderie, even even in tough situations and very very serious charges. I love hearing about the camaraderie of journalism because the other big story of the past twenty four hours, President Trump and CBS settling the very specious lawsuit, has been a very dark day
for journalism. But you're reminding me that it goes on and the job of bearing witness and chronicling is really really important, and you've done an incredible job. Now, with all that said, let's end on a lighter note, because everything is eventually turned into a limited true crime, real life story. Who would you cast as the lead defense attorney and who would you cast for the lead prosecution attorney?
Well, I suppose it depends on how big the budget of this project is.
If it's an HBO, mini series. I'm going to pull out some big.
Names fooking like a variety reporter.
I think maybe Amy Adams could play the lead prosecutor, Maureen Comy, and I think for Diddy's lead council Mark Agnifilo, I think Mark Ruffalo. They have very similar names, and I do think he could pull that off.
Ethan, again, thank you so much for taking the time on a busy day that is not over for you. Deeply appreciated. Thanks so much, Cynthia, thanks for listening. Please leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice, and don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.