Moira Penza
speaker
110 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Moira Penza’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, I think the prosecution is being very methodical. They are trying to elicit testimony that is really going to meet the elements of the crimes. And so where they have salacious details, I think they are keeping it narrowly focused on what they actually are going to need to prove. And I think that's the right approach for the government. I also think the defense is doing a good job as well.
I think that they have an uphill battle because there is so much evidence here. We have pictures. We have a lot of corroboration. We have video. But what's standing out to me from the defense side is that they're really not defending the indefensible.
So they're taking responsibility for things that they know they have to take responsibility for, like the fact that the defendant engaged in domestic violence. It's on tape. So by standing up and taking responsibility for that on the defendant's behalf... That's preserving their credibility with the jury so that they can actually make other arguments about the law.
I also thought the defense was smart to not be overly aggressive with Ms. Ventura. We've seen defense attorneys make that mistake. in other sex crimes prosecutions. And I think what they were trying to do is just allow the messages to speak for themselves. So regardless of what Ms. Ventura may have said on any occasion or what the text messages say,
to the extent the jury is going to be persuaded by those messages, that's enough. They don't need to be standing up there attacking Ms. Ventura, who's eight and a half months pregnant and was clearly the victim of crimes, even if, according to the defense, not sex trafficking or racketeering.
Well, I'm a former prosecutor and I've prosecuted very similar crimes back when I was at the Eastern District of New York. And what we've seen is that the government has really laid out a strong case of of the elements of sex trafficking. I think we've also seen them lay out a strong case for the RICO conspiracy charges as well.
But talking about the sex trafficking first, the most important things for the government to prove there is that there was commercial sex that was compelled through forced fraud or coercion. And so in this case, we have very clear commercial sex. So commercial sex is any time there is sex exchanged for a thing of value.
In a lot of sex trafficking prosecutions we've seen recently against high-profile individuals, we're not talking about an actual exchange of sex for money as one might traditionally think about sex trafficking. For example, in the Harvey Weinstein cases, you're talking about an exchange of sex for a position in the entertainment industry.
That's really what you're thinking about in terms of thing of value. Here, this is a somewhat unique case in terms of recent sex trafficking prosecutions in that we actually have participants in the Sex Act. We have the escorts who actually are being paid. Then you need the force, fraud, or coercion. And there, I think the government's laid out a very clear case as well.
We have incident after incident of physical violence against Ms. Ventura surrounding these freak-offs. We also have strong evidence of coercion. So where you have an individual who is... in a dynamic with an abuser, where that abuser really has control over every aspect of her life.
So her career, all the way down to what color she's painting her fingernails, that's going to take away an individual's agency. And so in that situation, it is much easier for somebody who intends to hurt somebody to do so. We also have the government introducing evidence of the threats against Ms. Ventura that the tapes of the freak-offs would be used if she were to leave him.
And so that's another really strong piece of evidence that we see as to the sex trafficking elements.
Absolutely. So racketeering laws do prosecute criminal organizations. That's absolutely true. And that's what the government is saying here. The government is saying that Sean Combs was able to operate the way that he did because he was in fact part of a criminal organization. that there were other individuals who helped facilitate the crimes that he is charged with.
And that expansion of the racketeering laws to prosecute crimes other than mob cases has been going on for a long time. So in the Eastern District of New York, you had the prosecution of soccer corruption under the racketeering laws. We've seen various opioid cases that are brought under the racketeering laws.
And in fact, I used the racketeering statute when I prosecuted Keith Raniere, who was the head of the NXIVM, what's colloquially called a sex cult. But there— My argument was, in fact, that Keith Raniere was running a criminal organization. He wasn't a cult leader. He was a crime boss. And that's really what you hear the government doing in this case as well.
And that's why we're getting testimony from assistants, other people in his entourage, other people who were employed by him, who saw what was happening and helped facilitate it, including by covering up his crimes.
Yes. So when the government is charging racketeering, they can say that an organization is entirely criminal or they can say that there is an association of individuals who together are committing crimes. And sometimes... an organization or the way that somebody is operating their businesses can help facilitate crimes.
So again, similarly in the case that I prosecuted, even though we talk about it as the NXIVM case, I did not charge NXIVM as a criminal organization. I charged Keith Raniere and his associates together as a criminal organization who were using NXIVM classes, the individuals who were taking NXIVM courses. to commit these crimes, sometimes as participants in the crime, sometimes as victims.
And so just because there can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, same thing with the FIFA case, right? There can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, but where an individual is working with others to commit crimes, even if they are also doing things that are legitimate, that can still be racketeering.
So they've charged Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy. So they have to show that he agreed with at least one other person to engage in racketeering. Then to actually figure that out, what you're looking for is two predicate acts of racketeering that other people were involved in facilitating.
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