Sean Combs Found Not Guilty of Sex-Trafficking in Shocking Verdict

Hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was found not guilty on major charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. He was found guilty on two lesser charges of transportation for prostitution.

Prosecutors had alleged that Combs, 55, had been engaging in sex trafficking and racketeering in regards to his so-called “freak offs,” in which they alleged he coerced former girlfriend and key witness Cassie Ventura and sex workers into long, drug-fueled, sexual encounters. Combs still faces up to 20 years in prison, or 10 years on each charge, but is acquitted from the most serious of his charges.

Combs’s defense framed Ventura as some messy, unstable lover rather than the abused woman we all watched him brutally beat on camera.

This acquittal is a shocking end to a case that was closely watched by millions of people for months. The result raises questions about the strength of the federal government’s RICO and sex-trafficking charges and the impact this ruling will have on survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence across the country, especially those who are the victims of rich and powerful men.

“Although the jury did not find Combs guilty of sex trafficking Cassie beyond a reasonable doubt, she paved the way for a jury to find him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution,” Ventura’s lawyers wrote in a statement after the verdict. “By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice. We must repeat – with no reservation – that we believe and support our client who showed exemplary courage throughout this trial. She displayed unquestionable strength and brought attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion. This case proved that change is long overdue, and we will continue to fight on behalf of survivors.”

This story has been updated.

Even Donald Trump’s most unwavering allies are irate over the contents of the president’s spending package.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” narrowly passed through the Senate Tuesday when Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote on the highly controversial legislation that both strips Medicaid from millions of Americans and is projected to add trillions to the national deficit.

In the wake of the vote, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene joined Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, flaming the effort as a “shit show.”

The MAGA acolyte said the battle over the bill was “far from over,” adding that she believes “there’s no way” it will pass through the House.

“It is really a dire situation. We’re on a time clock that’s been really set on us, so we have a lot of pressure,” Greene said, referring to the July 4 deadline that the president imposed on Congress to pass his key agenda item.

“And then also given the fact that there’s 435 members of Congress and it’s hard for us to get to an agreement on anything,” she continued. “So this whole thing is—I don’t know what to call it—it’s a shit show. And I’m sorry for saying that. I know we’re not supposed to say that on the air, but that’s truly what it is.”

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations in exchange for $880 billion in cuts to social programs such as Medicaid, practically gutting the critical low-income health care option. But none of the cuts to other areas of government actually pencil out the massive tax rewrite. Instead, on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate legislation would increase the deficit by more than $3.9 trillion over the next 10 years—an incredible moralistic flip-flop for a party that has claimed for decades to be focused on curtailing government spending.

Even senators who voted for the bill have already changed their tune about it. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose switched “no” vote Tuesday was critical to advancing the bill, said after the vote—and massive national backlash—that she expects the House to send the bill back to the Senate.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told Punchbowl News.

When asked why she voted for the legislation if she didn’t align with it, Murkowski said that a vote against the bill would have been its death knell.

“Kill it and it’s gone,” she said.

The Wisconsin state Supreme Court relegated a 176-year-old abortion ban to the ash heap of history on Wednesday, as the court’s liberal majority ruled that the ban was superseded by state laws that have been passed since.

The ban went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, halting abortion providers’ operations in the state. Then in 2023, a Dane County judge invalidated the ban, allowing clinics to resume operations. Also that year, Wisconsin voters resoundingly elected pro-choice Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, tipping its majority from conservative to liberal. Liberals on the court hung onto their majority after Judge Susan Crawford defeated an Elon Musk–backed candidate in April this year.

The state Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling, issued 4–3 along ideological lines, affirms the lower court’s ruling. In doing away with the ban, the decision leaves in place a law allowing abortions until about the twentieth week of pregnancy.

In the majority opinion, Justice Rebecca Dallet noted that the state Supreme Court had applied the ancient ban in a 1968 ruling. “But that was over 50 years ago,” the opinion states. “In the decades since, the legislature has enacted a myriad of statutes governing abortion.”

Namely, laws adopted in 1985, 1997, and 2015 narrowed the ban, as did “many additional statutes” enacted since then. These laws “specify, often in extraordinary detail, the answer to nearly every conceivable question about abortion.” Yet with the near-total ban in effect, they “would serve no purpose.”

Further, if the ban were in effect, that would nonsensically mean that existing state statues that allow the state, counties, and municipalities to fund abortion in cases of sexual assault, incest, and medical necessity would necessarily “authorize the state, counties, or municipalities to subsidize a crime.”

That said, the court concluded that state abortion legislation had “impliedly repealed” the ban.

“This case is about giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion including where, when, and how health-care providers may lawfully perform abortions,” the majority opinion states. “The legislature, as the peoples’ representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future. But the only way to give effect to what the legislature has actually done over the last 50 years is to conclude that it impliedly repealed the 19th century near-total ban on abortion, and that [the ban] therefore does not prohibit abortion in the State of Wisconsin.”

This story has been updated.

Truckling to President Donald Trump, Paramount has agreed to settle the president’s frivolous lawsuit over the editing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

Some executives at the media conglomerate reportedly desired this outcome, for it would clear the way for a megamerger requiring the Trump administration’s approval, despite surely emboldening his war against the press.

As part of the settlement, Paramount will reportedly not apologize or admit wrongdoing—cold comfort, considering it will, per The New York Times, fork up $16 million, including to Trump’s legal fees and planned presidential library, and release written transcripts of future 60 Minutes interviews with presidential candidates.

Trump alleged that the show deceptively edited an answer from Kamala Harris on Israel during an October 2024 interview. Of course, 60 Minutes and other news programs customarily edit politicians’ remarks for concision, including those of the notorious prolix president.

The settlement paves the way for a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance, which requires the approval of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. In May, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden wrote to Paramount that “Paramount may be engaging in potentially illegal conduct involving the Trump Administration in exchange for approval of its megamerger with Skydance.”

Paramount’s supine settlement starkly contrasts a court filing from just last Monday, in which the company called the “meritless lawsuit” an attempt “to evade bedrock First Amendment principles establishing that public officials like themselves cannot hold news organizations like CBS liable for the exercise of editorial judgment.”

Previously, the company had called the lawsuit “an affront to the First Amendment … without basis in law or fact.”

Former FBI agent and January 6 rioter Jared L. Wise—who shouted “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!” while the mob attacked law enforcement at the Capitol—is now part of Trump’s Department of Justice. 

Wise will act as counselor to Ed Martin while the latter heads the Weaponization Working Group, a committee tasked with enacting revenge on the president’s political enemies, particularly those involved in investigating January 6. This means that a man who broke into the Capitol in a face mask and called for the deaths of police officers is now playing a key role in an agency that is attacking those who criticize and question the events of that infamous day.   

Wise worked for the FBI from 2004 to 2017 before joining the far-right propaganda think tank Project Veritas, where he infiltrated teachers’ unions across the Midwest. Wise was officially charged with two felonies and four misdemeanor counts in 2023, including trespassing and disrupting the orderly conduct of government. All of his charges were dropped by Trump, along with those of the hundreds of other insurrectionists he pardoned. 

This should all but confirm that there is not an ounce of MAGA remorse or discomfort about the January 6 insurrection. They have time to play Nixon and attack protesters across the country for acting against ICE raids and speaking out on Palestine, while venerating people who are proud and obvious threats to the U.S. government.