After Sean 'Diddy' Combs was handcuffed inside Manhattan's Park Hyatt hotel in September 2024, federal investigators crowed that his arrest sent a message to the rich and powerful: 'Today, we shatter any false notion of impunity,' declared a special agent at a news conference for the US attorney's office.
Almost ten months later, many are left wondering where it all went wrong.
'Frankly, it's an embarrassment, what the government did,' David Gelman, a former state prosecutor and criminal defense attorney told the Daily Mail.
Combs wasn't simply 'over-charged', said Gelman, insisting that the government 'shouldn't have charged him at all.'
On Wednesday Combs, 55, was acquitted on three of the five charges he faced. A jury determined Combs was not guilty of leading a criminal organization or trafficking women for sex, but they convicted him on two counts of transportation of individuals across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.
Now serious questions are being asked about why the case was brought in the first place - as legal experts tell the Daily Mail that Combs's convictions are likely to be overturned upon appeal.
A jury determined Combs was not guilty of leading a criminal organization or trafficking women for sex, but they convicted him on two counts of transportation of individuals across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.
On September 17, 2024, Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, unfurled the indictment against Combs with considerable fanfare.
Appointed by Joe Biden, then removed from his position by Donald Trump, Williams had earned a reputation over the course of three years for his ambition, said Gelman.
'I don't think any previous attorney in that office would have brought the case,' said Gelman. 'Williams had a reputation for over-charging. And he focused his office on DEI and the MeToo movement, which was a theme of the Biden administration.
'That's why this case was brought. That, and for publicity, because Williams loved the camera.'
Indeed, right from the start, the federal government seemed to run the case like a reality show.
Federal raids of Sean Combs's sprawling Miami property were conveniently captured by television network cameras as CNN helicopters hovered overhead, and rumors abounded that word of the planned raids had been leaked to generate maximum exposure for authorities investigating him.
Not long after, in May, the same network broadcast leaked security footage of Combs kicking and dragging his longtime girlfriend Cassie Ventura down a hotel corridor in 2016, as she apparently tried to flee one of the rapper's notorious 'freak-offs.'
The defense, ahead of the trial, accused prosecutors of leaking the footage to CNN.
On September 17, 2024, Damian Williams (pictured), US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, unfurled the indictment against Combs with considerable fanfare.
'The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,' wrote Combs's lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, in a court filing.
Prosecutors, in their letter of response to the judge, said the accusation lacked 'a good faith basis' and insisted they did not even have a copy of the videotape until the network aired it.
Leading the charge inside the courtroom was Maurene Comey, daughter of disgraced former FBI director James Comey.
James Comey, of course, approved the launch of the FBI's investigation into alleged Russian interference in Trump's 2016 election victory, which resulted in a multi-year, multi-million-dollar special counsel probe that found no evidence of collusion with the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
A DOJ Inspector General's investigation later determined that Comey's FBI committed a series of errors that included the secret surveillance of a Trump campaign aide.
His public career was since imploded.
Maurene Comey currently leads the violent and organized crime unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the same position her father once held. And her name was referenced in every US attorney pronouncement about the Combs's trial as if the Comey brand brought a touch of stardust to this high-profile celebrity prosecution.
Comey and her all-women team portrayed Combs as a violent and vicious sexual compulsive who forced women to submit to his degrading demands. They summoned 34 witnesses who painted a picture of terrifying and traumatic encounters.
'Sean Combs did not take 'no' for an answer, not from employees and certainly not from his girlfriends,' said Comey on the final day of closing arguments.
Indeed, even Combs's defense team admitted that he abused Cassie Ventura - and that was apparent to anyone who saw the surveillance video of Combs’s chasing her down a hallway in the Los Angeles’s InterContinential hotel in 2016 and viciously punching and kicking her.
However, as legal observers point out, Combs was not charged with domestic violence - and prosecutors failed to make the other charges stick.
Now Alan Dershowitz has told Daily Mail that he expects Combs would win an appeal to overturn his conviction for transportation for the purposes of prostitution.
'It's not a crime to transport someone across state lines for voluntary sex. What he has been found guilty of is based on an anachronistic statute; it's not a real crime,' said Dershowitz.
Whether the careers of Damian Williams and Maurene Comey will follow the trajectory of James Comey remains to be seen but perhaps they can start by explaining to the American public why there undertook a prosecution - that in hindsight - seemed doomed.