Willem Marx

the defendant's digital lives.

And many of the subpoenas, the warrants served on electronic devices, on online accounts, iCloud accounts, created this kind of underlying fabric of evidence that they were able to draw upon, not just for specific witnesses, but more broadly for the pattern of behavior that was the basis for one of the accounts, which was a conspiracy account to sex traffic.

And it really made me think how powerful it is to have access to all of our online worlds, if that makes sense.

I can't speak to kind of the jury's side of mind.

I mean, obviously, they were unanimous on all of the decisions on all of these counts against all these defendants.

There were definitely moments where you saw again and again and again the defense trying to

not just undermine the evidence presented by these women, but also, as you mentioned there, bring out the idea that these men weren't criminals, they were just assholes, to use their terminology.

And it didn't seem to ever really land if you were to watch the faces of some of the jurors.

If anything, it made the defendants even less likable than the testimony of the witnesses and the evidence of some of their communications.

And seemingly, you know, in terms of the counts,

It was very complicated to try and explain what the thresholds were to convict on some of the charges around enticement to travel and sex trafficking, conspiracy to sex traffic.

It took a long time for the prosecution to lay out which verbs needed to be considered and the chain of events and the intent.

I think the concern of many amongst the supporters of the prosecution of these men, amongst witnesses, amongst victims,

was a concern that that complexity would perhaps be a barrier to conviction.

But it seems not to have been.

Yeah, I mean, so two things on that.

You're right to say that at least one of the attorneys worked on Diddy's case, Marco Nifilo, his firm, and Tony Garagos, his partner, had both been involved in that case.

And

talking to the defense team ahead of the trial, you know, they were at pains to point out that this was a very complex statute.

I think the phrase that one of them used to describe it to me was a square peg in a round hole.