As Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Took a Victory Lap, He Planned Sex Nights, Prosecutors Say

It was September 2023, and Sean Combs was on top of the world.

On the 12th day of that month, he accepted the global icon award at the MTV Video Music Awards, which recognized Mr. Combs’s decades of success as a trailblazing record producer and media mogul.

Three days later, he released “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” his first solo studio LP in 17 years, and Mayor Eric Adams of New York gave him the key to the city, recognizing Mr. Combs as “the embodiment of the New York City attitude.”

That month, Mr. Combs was also busy planning sexual encounters involving his girlfriend “Jane” and hired male escorts, at hotels in New York and Miami Beach, Fla. These encounters, which the government has described as elaborate, drug-fueled sex marathons with hired men that Mr. Combs coerced two women to participate in, are central to the government’s case, which charges Mr. Combs with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

The arrangements for those encounters — flight plans, hotel reservations, negotiations over escort rates and a web of payments — were laid out in detail at Mr. Combs’s trial on Monday. Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor in the case, asked a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations to walk jurors through the planning of the events by reading from text messages, American Express bills and other records as the 34th and final witness for the government before it rests its case.

Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty and denied the accusations against him. His lawyers have argued consistently throughout the seven-week trial that Mr. Combs’s sexual arrangements were all consensual, and that no criminal conspiracy exists.