What's Next for Diddy After Verdict? Criminal Defense Attorney Weighs In
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In Touch

Ryan McGuigan

On July 2, Sean “Diddy” Combs was acquitted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering after a two-month trial in New York. However, he’s not a free man yet, as he was found guilty on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Criminal defense attorney Ryan McGuigan exclusively shares his reaction to the case and the jury’s verdict with In Touch and reveals what he thinks is next for the rapper.

“A few weeks ago, the prosecutor had decided to drop some of the charges, which were the predicate charges on the trafficking in their in the RICO case, and when that happened — I had been watching it on the news, but from the snippets that I had gotten — it looked as though the government was going to have a lot of trouble proving their cases, because they didn’t have the witnesses lined up,” McGuigan tells In Touch InvestigatesKristin Thorne. “And if they had them lined up, they didn’t have them committed to their testimony. And then when the people decided not to show up at all, that was a fairly good indication that this prosecution was going off the rails.”

McGuigan said he had a feeling that the “government was going to have a lot of trouble with their burden of proof, and ultimately they did.”

Combs, 55, was arrested in September 2024 and pleaded not guilty to all charges. His trial, which began in early May, primarily focused on the “freak offs” that were allegedly orchestrated by the music producer, with his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and a woman known as Jane Doe serving as key witnesses.

The trial came after Cassie, 38, accused Combs of abusing her throughout their 10-year relationship in a November 2023 lawsuit, which was settled one day after it was filed. Combs denied all allegations made against him.

Hotel surveillance footage from 2016 later resurfaced in May 2024 and showed Combs apparently physically assaulting Cassie. Combs issued a public apology video after the footage was released, stating that he “sought help,” but Ventura’s lawyer, Meredith Firetog, said in a statement that his video was “more about himself than the many people he has hurt.”

McGuigan tells In Touch that he believes Combs’ case “being taken federally was an overreach.”

ITI-Diddy-Verdict-2
In Touch

Kristin Thorne

“I had seen the videotape of Sean Combs and his significant other, and it was a brutal assault, but that’s what it was,” he says. “It was an assault in the third degree, and it was a domestic assault, and those are handled by state prosecutions. There is no federal prosecution for, you know, assaulting your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whoever your significant other is, and so, for the federal government to come in and step in, basically on a domestic case, seemed like a gross overreach.”

McGuigan was also surprised to see that nothing came of the claims that other Hollywood stars might get wrapped up in the case.

“So you had these sort of sensational media leaks, and we were all waiting for all this sensational information to come out, and it was a big nothing burger,” he says. “I mean, nobody testified to any of it, which makes me kind of scratch my head and just wonder. You had raids of his home in Los Angeles, you had raids of his home in Miami, and reams and boxes of videotapes and information and thousands of baby oil bottles. I mean, it was absolutely bizarre, but when you had all that information, anybody from the public, whether you’re a layperson or you’re an expert, you would have thought, ‘Oh my goodness, something unbelievable is going to come out of this,’ and nothing did.”

While Combs faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, McGuigan says this is “not realistic.”

“The government’s going to say he needs 42 months in prison to be able to learn his lesson from this,” he explains. “And his defense is saying on the low end of the guideline range, he should be getting around 21 months. … What’s realistic is the guideline calculation. So you’re looking at somewhere in between there. And with this judge, and after this trial, I don’t think he’s going to be given the benefit of the doubt. … They might split the baby in there, and maybe you’d have like 36 months.”

Combs is scheduled to be sentenced on October 3.

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