The New Yorker:

After being acquitted of the charges that would have put him away for life, Sean Combs likely has a plan to work his troubles into a narrative of redemption.

By Doreen St. Félix

Sean Combs mouthed “thank you” to the jurors, his hands clasped in prayer. The intricacies of their deliberations will be revealed later on, in the requisite television interviews, but, as of Wednesday morning, what mattered was that Combs had been acquitted of the racketeering and sex-trafficking charges that would have put him away for life. The diminishment in reputation, the status as pariah or laughingstock, the looming sentencing for the lesser charges (two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, amazingly, his first conviction)—he would work his troubles into a narrative of redemption. As one of Combs’s associates said in a Profile of the mogul that ran in this magazine more than two decades ago: “Puffy will always come back. He’s like nature.”

On the second day of jury selection in the case of U.S. v. Sean Combs, Arun Subramanian, a federal judge for the Southern District of New York, called for a closed-door meeting with a defense attorney involved in the case. Subramanian, who is in his forties, and appointed to the court by Joe Biden, exudes a kind of good-natured adaptability; he is a disciplinarian, but a reasonable one. And yet his patience had already been tested by the sixty-seven-year-old Mark Geragos, defense attorney to the stars, who was serving as an unofficial adviser to Combs’s legal team.

Go to link