Inside the Diddy trial: why it felt like a watch party at the courthouse

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🗓️ 12 July 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

On July 2nd, Sean Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced: racketeering and sex trafficking. He was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — and he remains in prison awaiting sentencing in early October.

Over the course of eight weeks, the trial became a spectacle, even by the high standards of celebrity courtroom dramas. One reason? All of the influencers.

For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series we bring you the the view from inside the courthouse as the Diddy spectacle unfolded.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Every reporting beat has its own unique challenges, and sometimes it's just getting inside the building.
0:05.2	The first few days, starting off with jury selection, I was outside of the courthouse at around 5 a.m.,
0:09.7	so it was still dark and cold and kind of rainy.
0:12.9	That's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, one of the reporters who covered the Sean Combs trial for NPR.
0:18.2	People started paying line sitters pretty early on, so someone to hold their
0:22.9	spot in line for them overnight, which quickly turned into 10 p.m. the day before, 2 p.m. the day before.
0:28.0	The federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan is a busy place even without the circus of a hip-hop
0:32.9	tycoon's criminal trial. So on some days, the lines would be even more chaotic. Every Friday morning, that's when they would be swearing in new American citizens in other
0:42.2	courtrooms. Anastasia Seyulchus also covered the trial for NPR.
0:46.2	Isabel was really great when I was filling in for her on Fridays to be like, don't forget,
0:50.7	it's New Citizens Day. And I was like, oh, that's right.
0:53.9	And once they did get inside the building? So when you first enter in, there's New Citizens Day. And I was like, oh, that's right. And once they did get inside the building?
0:55.9	So when you first enter in, there's a metal detector, like at an airport, and one of the
1:00.9	marshals there inspects how many electronics you're bringing in.
1:03.7	Then a second marshal confirms that number, hands you a little disc.
1:08.1	You go marching down the hallway with your stuff and this little disc to yet another marshal who checks you in, stashes your stuff in a cubby, and gives you yet another token to carry up to the courtroom.
1:20.1	Some days they'd be in the courtroom, and other days they'd be in an overflow room with TV monitors beaming in the action.
1:26.7	And with all their stuff in a cubby,
1:27.9	at this point, all they had was pen and paper. No phone, no laptop, old school.
1:34.4	I think for this trial, the days that I was sitting through whole days of testimony,
1:39.9	I was averaging about 35, 36 handwritten pages, notes.
1:44.4	I went through four notebooks throughout the eight weeks of the trial.
	...

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