Everything To Know About Diddy's Defence Lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro
The trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs is expected to end soon, with closing arguments being presented by both sides over the next two days. The music mogul faces charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He denies all allegations and has pleaded not guilty. However, if he is found guilty he faces a life sentence.
The task of defending Diddy against the numerous, serious criminal allegations is not an easy one. He therefore enlisted the help of leading appellate lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro, who is a partner and co-founder at Shapiro Arato Bach LLP.
Alexandra Shapiro is one of the leading criminal defence lawyers in the United States. She was one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's first clerks on the Supreme Court, served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, and later founded a litigation firm that handles many high-profile cases.
She is also an author and her novel, Presumed Guilty: A Novel, was published in March 2022.
Shapiro is a born and bred New Yorker and currently lives there with her husband, who is also a criminal defence lawyer, and their three children.
Throughout Diddy's trial, Shapiro has been campaigning for his acquittal, filing several motions for the trial to be dismissed. She says the prosecution failed to show evidence that Diddy tried to bribe anyone regarding the 2016 CCTV footage of him violently beating up his then-girlfriend Cassie, which was leaked last May.
Shapiro said there was no police involvement at the time and no charges were pressed. She also argued that Diddy never threatened 'Mia', an anonymous ex-employee and alleged victim, after she told the court he sexually assaulted her several times.
The lawyer also argued that all Diddy's former employees that testified in court and described harmful and gruelling working conditions, such as Daniel Phillip, Capricorn Clark or 'Mia', could have left the job.
On 25 June, she also filed a motion for acquittal to Judge Arun Subramanian, saying the racketeering charges should be thrown out. 'There is insufficient proof to establish a single RICO charge in the indictment' and no evidence of a criminal "enterprise" has been shown.
'They say bodyguards and high-ranking employees but they fail to prove any individual actually conspired with him,' she says. Shapiro argued that staff carried out errands and made travel arrangements but were not involved in anything that went on with Diddy and his partners in their 'freak offs'.
Shapiro has covered several high-profile cases throughout her career. As well as defending Diddy, she is also representing cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried. In March 2024, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for his orchestration of multiple fraudulent schemes. In September last year, Shapiro wrote to the appeals court asking them to overturn his conviction.
Diddy and Bankman-Fried are currently cellmates.
Shapiro has also won several high profile appellate reversals in criminal and civil cases. This includes two Supreme Court decisions narrowing the scope of the federal fraud statutes, Ciminelli v United States and Percoco v United States, as well as multiple Second Circuit rulings granting judgements of acquittal and new trials.
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The Herald Scotland
4 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Without birthright citizenship, these celebs might not be Americans
On June 27, the Supreme Court lifted temporary blocks preventing Trump's order from taking effect, but left it to lower courts to consider the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Whether Trump will ultimately be able to repeal the longstanding legal precedent that grants citizenship to all children born on American soil is unclear. Here are some well-known actors and politicians who would not have been American citizens when they were born if birthright had not existed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, is the son of Cuban immigrants who did not become naturalized U.S. citizens until 1975, years after their son was born. Rubio has previously said he does not agree with repealing birthright citizenship. Diane Guerrero Actress Diane Guerrero, who starred in the hit television show "Orange is the New Black," was born to undocumented immigrants from Columbia who were deported when she was 14, she told NPR in 2019. In an interview with the outlet, she said, "This is a country of immigrants. People forget - they like to forget that their ancestors came here with the same dream, with the same hopes, with the same fears. And it's unfair to say that because people are coming later that they don't deserve to be here." Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, was born in South Carolina to immigrants from the Punjab region of India, according to her autobiography. In 2015, she told The State news outlet that her parents were in the United States legally but did not become naturalized citizens until after her birth, and the non-partisan American Immigration Council considers her a U.S. citizen because of her place of birth. Bruce Lee Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon who starred in films such as "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury," was born in San Francisco while his parents were traveling with the Chinese Opera. The National Archives notes that under birthright citizenship he was considered a citizen - though he would not be under Trump's revision to the law. "Lee's parents filed for a Return Certificate on his behalf ... enabling him to return to the United States if he later wished to do so. Lee did return at the age of 18 and grew into the iconic martial artist and film star known across the world." Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship may have been designed explicitly against his November rival for the presidency, former Vice President Kamala Harris. David Bier, of the Libertarian Cato Institute, posted on X the day Trump signed the order: "As I predicted, Trump's birthright citizenship EO includes a Kamala Harris clause, specifically designed to deny the legitimacy of her US citizenship as the child of someone with a temporary status." Trump's order specifies that someone wouldn't be entitled to birthright if their mother was on a temporary visa - like the student visa Harris' mother was on at the time of her birth - and their father wasn't a citizen, as hers wasn't. Vivek Ramaswamy Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech billionaire and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, told NBC News in 2023 that his father never became a U.S. citizen and his mother only naturalized after he was born. Ramaswamy, who Trump endorsed in next year's Ohio gubernatorial race, has repeatedly called for an end to birthright citizenship. Contributing: Maureen Groppe, Eduardo Cuevas, Sara Chernikoff, Ramon Padilla and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Free coffee, cut-price theatre tickets and birthday upgrades: 42 genius ways to beat the system
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Libby and a similar app, BorrowBox, also lend thousands of ebooks and audiobooks; read or listen on your phone, iPad, Kindle or laptop. 3 An underutilised benefit of Amazon Prime is Prime Reading: hundreds of free Kindle books and audiobooks are included, as are magazines such as Grazia and Radio Times. 4 Bagging tickets for concerts and festivals has never been more competitive. Tools such as Visualping alert you as soon as a webpage has changed – so you can be first in the queue when seats are released. It's also handy for securing a table at hot restaurants, knowing when a sought-after pair of trainers is back in stock, or alerting yourself to events such as the Eurostar flash sale. 5 Don't let theatres fool you into thinking restricted view seats are a false economy. For instance, the end-aisle seats for Hamilton in London's West End are consistently rated five stars by users of the site SeatPlan, who report that, as Hamilton is primarily performed at the centre of the stage, you won't miss any key plot points or songs. SeatPlan collates hundreds of thousands of seat-view photos, so you can check the vantage point before you buy. 6 You should rarely be paying full price for the latest blockbuster either. Sky Cinema customers get free Vue tickets, Amazon Prime members get discounted Odeon tickets, Tesco Clubcard holders can spend their points at Cineworld, and Lidl Plus members get membership of the Cinema Society, with 40% off many screenings. Buy your insurance through and Meerkat Movies gives you two-for-one on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at a range of cinemas, including Picturehouse. 7 'JustWatch is a brilliant tool that shows the different places you can stream shows and films, and how much they might cost you,' says Francesca Steele, culture critic and writer of the Trash Culture newsletter. 'For example, you might assume you can only watch the latest season of The Last of Us if you have a Sky subscription. But the JustWatch site shows that you could also sign up to a free seven-day trial on Now, or buy the series on Apple TV.' 8 The Dice app lists cultural events in cities across the UK, which you can sort by price. It's a quick way to discover free or affordable gigs, live comedy, podcast recordings or new art exhibitions. 9 Work out when the hardest-to-book restaurants open their reservations and set an alarm (or use an AI monitoring tool). For example, Gymkhana in London's Mayfair releases tables at 6am two months in advance; for Tom Kerridge's The Hand and Flowers in Marlow, it's six months to the date you'd like to book. Sign up to restaurants' email lists too: some offer early access to loyal fans. L'Enclume, Simon Rogan's three-Michelin-star restaurant in Cartmel, Cumbria, sends priority booking invitations and cancellations via its newsletter. 10 Follow chefs, restaurants or front of house on social media to hear about last-minute tables. 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This is a whole area of expertise that helps restaurateurs boost their profits, and it pays not to be taken in by the tricks. 'The top-right corner of a menu is prime real estate,' says Ben Floyd, a chef and the managing director of Lumière Consultancy. 'That's where your eyes tend to land first, so you'll often find the most profitable dish there. You'll rarely see pound signs any more – they remind people they're spending money. And often there'll be a 'decoy' dish – something expensive to make the rest of the menu seem more reasonably priced.' 14 Before booking any element of your holiday via a third-party site, have a look at what you could get by going direct. On flights, online travel agents often charge more for seats or bags than the airline itself. 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Francesca Collinson of Tiny Travelship, a family-focused travel agency and hotel directory, says, 'We have the insider intel on when luxury hotels have sales running, when the best time of year to book flights is – 11 months in advance. We can unlock free transfers, free creche sessions, or complimentary upgrades to room and board.' 18 Hiring a car for a foreign trip? Go to the destination country's website. Research from Which? found that, in the US for example, booking the same car through Hertz's site there rather than cut the cost by £347. In general, just replace the end of the url with the relevant country's top-level domain. 19 A local bus can be a cheap way to see the tourist sites. Lonely Planet rates the 101 that runs along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia, towards the scenic rock stacks making up the Twelve Apostles. I rate the number 7, down the hill from the Tuscan hilltop city of Fiesole into Florence, Italy, which costs less than €2. 20 Before you travel overseas, open a Monzo or Starling bank account if you don't already have one. You can do it with a quick selfie video and a picture of your passport, and you'll get a card in the post within a week, which you can use for all holiday spending, free of currency conversion charges. 21 Luton airport lets you skip queues, without any cost, by prebooking security. But don't automatically pay in advance for fast-track access at all other airports: for example, Manchester and Stansted will let you buy it on the day. 22 When buying any item online, try adding it to your basket then sleeping on it before you hit pay. 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Are there any hidden benefits I can use here, such as double-points days, referral bonuses or rewards?' advises Harriet Meyer, consumer journalist and creator of AI for media. 'I found I had £50 worth of Nectar points I didn't know I was entitled to. Or try, 'I'm buying XX. What's the best combination of cashback sites and discount codes to maximise savings?'' You could also upload an image of your supermarket shop and ask how you can save money on your food bills. 25 Supermarkets have taken the obvious expiry dates off fruit and veg to reduce food waste. But if you're buying food and you would like it to last for as long as possible, you can hack their codes. According to Which?, at Asda and Tesco, look for a letter followed by a number: 'A' is January, 'B' is February, 'C' is March, while the number is the day of the month. For example, the best-before date of an item with the code 'I27' is 27 September. Sainsbury's codes begin with 'J' and end with 'S', standing for J Sainsbury, and contain the date in the middle. So the best-before date of an item with the code 'J0910S' is 9 October. 26 As former operations director with butchers The Ginger Pig, Lynsey Coughlan recommends buying meat on the bone, which is always cheaper, to save money when cooking at home. 'If you buy chicken breasts, you're more or less paying for the whole bird, and you can use the carcass for soup and the thighs for curry. The same goes for any kind of meat. Ask your butcher to bone it out, and keep the bones for stock.' Sausages can be a cheaper substitute for mince. 'With Italian sausage, you've already got the perfect fat balance, you've got all the seasoning to make a proper ragu and it's a time saver, too.' 27 The packaging for many household products seems designed to make it impossible to use every last drop. That's why everyone needs a tube-squeezer key (for toothpaste, moisturiser, puree; try Lakeland) and a foam pump bottle, which reduces liquid soap use by turning it into foam (try Muji). 28 If you take at least five empties to be recycled at Boots – these have to be packaging you can't recycle at home, such as mixed metal and plastics, or old mascara wands – then spend £10, you'll receive 500 Advantage Card points (worth £5). 29 Price tags are not set in stone. The thought may make you shudder, but you can haggle at many high-street shops. Martin Lewis reports that a member of staff at a big DIY store told him that if anyone asked for a discount, they would automatically give them 10% off. Of those who dared to try, 57% of people got a discount at B&Q, 49% at Currys and 38% at Waitrose, according to a survey a few years ago by Money Saving Expert. 30 Monitor Vinted or eBay when there's a popular beauty subscription box or Advent calendar on sale. You can pick up a bargain when people resell unopened makeup or perfume that doesn't suit them. Last year that included dozens of Le Labo Rose rollerball perfumes, from Liberty's Beauty Advent calendar, for £20 or so (they're £78 new). 31 Shops discard skincare, hair care or makeup products when external packaging is damaged or opened, even if the product is untouched. Sites such as This is Beauty and Boop buy them up and sell them on, often at a 70% discount, to avoid landfill. The product is quality-checked and it's made clear what is wrong. 32 It's frustrating that with some bills – water and council tax, for example – it's impossible to shop around. Martyn James, a consumer-rights expert, says there is one way to ease the pain of your council tax payments, 'and it's so simple, you'll kick yourself. Almost all of the local authorities in the UK will bill you over 10 months, so you get February and March for free each year. But you can ask your council to spread the payments over 12 months instead. If you're paying £1,800 a year, then over 10 months you pay £180 per month. But over 12, you pay £150.' When it comes to water, if you have the same number or more rooms than people living in your house, a meter will most probably save you money. This is because you're being charged for the actual water used rather than an estimate based on the rateable value of your property. Look on your water company's website for water-saving gadgets; some are free. A tap aerator can reduce water consumption by up to 50%. 33 Before paying for software – or signing up for trials you might forget to cancel – look for the open-source alternative. Gimp is the free rival to Adobe Photoshop; Audacity lets you record, edit and manipulate audio files; and KeePass is a free, open-source password manager. 34 The best deals on mobile contracts are available from smaller companies that use the same infrastructure as the big four, such as Lebara (on Vodafone), or 1p Mobile (EE). Both score higher in Which? customer satisfaction ratings, too. You'll feel extra smug on holiday: while three of the big four now have roaming charges in the EU on their standard packages, many of these small companies don't. 35 University libraries are peaceful but vibrant co-working spaces, at a fraction of the cost of a WeWork. The University of Manchester, for instance, offers annual community membership for free, with access to its 2,000 study spaces and guest wifi, and it's open into the evening. Members of the public can get reference access to UCL libraries from £7 a day, £30 a month or £200 a year – less than the cost of just one month at many private co-working offices – giving access to study space across all campuses in London, including Senate House, as well as the subsidised student canteen. 36 Buy discounted gift cards online, or through cashback websites such as TopCashback. You can then use them to pay for your normal shopping, services such as Spotify and Uber, food prep services like HelloFresh, and most supermarkets and chain coffee shops. It's a faff, but will work out a little cheaper as long as you don't forget to spend them. 37 Comparison sites are constantly competing for business, so they offer generous freebies. 'I got a £20 Sainsbury's voucher and a monthly free coffee at Greggs when I bought car insurance via says Clare Seal, a financial coach and presenter of the podcast Help Me, I'm Poor. She also rates the app Sprive, which lets you overpay your mortgage using cashback from everyday spending, 'potentially knocking years off your term'. 38 Don't pay for mobile data you don't need. Switching on low data mode on your phone saves battery life, but also bills, if you have a low-data package, by reducing how much you're using. Adjusting your app settings to lower the default video quality and turning off auto-play on social media helps, too. 39 Got a parking ticket? If a car park operator is not a member of the British Parking Association (BPA) or the International Parking Community (IPC) and they leave a ticket on your car, they can't access your details from the DVLA. Citizens Advice says you can choose to do nothing, if it's a private parking firm, as it's a civil rather than a criminal matter. 40 The best interest rates on savings often fall away after a year and providers bank on their customers not having time to shop around. By signing up to a platform such as Raisin UK you can easily move your money between different accounts when rates fall or rise, without having to fill out new application forms each time. 41 If you open a bank account with a subscription fee jointly with a partner, you can both take advantage of add-ons, such as mobile phone and travel insurance, for no extra monthly cost. 42 Check if you can access financial advice through your employee benefit scheme for the whole family. One money coach says that she offers the opportunity for employees to bring a partner to one-on-one coaching sessions, free – though hardly anyone takes her up on it.
Scotsman
6 hours ago
- Scotsman
The 'nothing' politicians who measure progress in 'likes' and victories in reposts
MPs like Maguire and Sultana are 'dopamine-chasers' who favour virtue-signalling provocation over reasoned persuasion Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I think it highly unlikely there currently exists a politician who hasn't been subjected to online abuse. In days long since passed, it took effort to write a threatening letter to an MP. Now, one may fire off an endless stream of slurs and threats with ease. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Unsurprisingly, because a lot of men really hate women, the vitriol directed towards female members of parliament is especially threatening and degrading. For Women Scotland campaigners outside the Supreme Court in London after its ruling that, in law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings. Picture: Lucy North/PA Wire On occasion, police have acted (the case, in 2021, of Grant Karte, an SNP member who pleaded guilty to sending messages that were 'grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character' to then nationalist MP Joanna Cherry, springs to mind) but the problem continues and it grows worse. Politicians, of course, are not the only popular targets for online hate: Jews should expect to be denounced as baby-killers by righteous 'anti-Zionists'; feminists fighting to preserve the integrity of women's single-sex spaces have long since grown accustomed to accusations of transphobia, often accompanied by rape and/or death threats. With all of the above in mind, the behaviour of Liberal Democrat MP Ben Maguire is disturbing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad During a Westminster debate last week the member for North Cornwall mocked JK Rowling's involvement in the campaign to defend women's rights against the demands of trans activists. The moment was bleakly entertaining, like a scene from a watch-through-your-fingers comedy. Maguire told fellow MPs Rowling was 'desperate for attention and relevance'. The pathos was almost unbearable. I cringed for the man. Had the Lib Dems' shadow attorney general – yes, really – left things at that, then we could comfortably have continued to ignore him. His words confirm him to be a default-setting sexist. In response to Maguire's pitiful bid for attention and relevance, Rowling evoked the words of the late Labour MP Denis Healey who once said debating Conservative Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I fear the pain of Rowling's barb may have lingered for in the early hours of the following morning, Maguire was still smarting about those feminists and their demands. Following another positively masochistic engagement with Rowling, Maguire turned his ire on the feminist campaign group For Women Scotland. At 12.57 am on Wednesday, the MP responded on X to a post by the group – which brought the recent case that saw the Supreme Court rule, in law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings – claiming it had a 'fascist agenda'. Hours later, Maguire closed his X account. A non-apology followed. The MP said he regretted the comment which had been made in 'the heat of the moment'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This whole debate,' added Maguire, 'has become quite toxic, so I felt it best to step away from X for a while.' Suggesting the problem was the tone of debate rather than his behaviour, Maguire was riffing on that old classic 'look what you made me do'. I struggle, even when squinting, to detect any difference between Maguire's behaviour and the behaviour of the sort of trolls who revel in making the lives of MPs as miserable as possible. At 12.57 am, Maguire was just another loser lashing out at women who dared to talk back. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Is it the place of an elected politician to make wildly defamatory claims about an organisation that's only crime is to have forced governments across the UK to meet their responsibilities when it comes to the protection of women's rights? Obviously not. Nor, if we wish to be cynical about this, is it at all wise for a politician who wishes to appeal to the all important reality-aligning demographic to attack an organisation whose objectives are supported by a clear majority of voters. A YouGov poll in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's April ruling found that 63 per cent thought it correct while just 18 per cent reckoned the wrong decision had been made. In Maguire, I see the archetype of the dopamine-hit politician. These caricatures of the radical, who see posting something provocative online as an act of leadership, who eschew such basics of politics as diplomacy, intellectual curiosity, and a grasp of the law, while chasing ultimately worthless plaudits from ideologues and social media users, enjoying their own dopamine-hits, with every like and re-post. The contemporary pseudo-iconoclast politician thrives both on the adoration of those who support their positions and the anger they provoke among those they don't. Driven by the need for another roar of approval from the cool kids, they state all-or-nothing positions that betray their failure to engage in the issues they proclaim to care about. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ben Maguire does nothing for the case he wishes to advance by smearing his opponents. Rather, he helps reinforce the position of the majority which believes him to be on the wrong side of the argument over the impact on women's rights of the demands of trans activists. Labour MP Zarah Sultana is another dopamine-chaser who favours virtue-signalling provocation over reasoned persuasion. When it was announced, last week, that the group Palestine Action faced proscription as a terror group after members broke into RAF Brize Norton, Sultana posted on X the message: 'We are all Palestine Action'. A statement which was as provably wrong as it was needlessly offensive. Intentional damage to any part of the UK's defence hardware goes far beyond the principle of freedom of expression and into the serious realm of national security. Members of Palestine Action understood this when they broke into Brize Norton. That was the point. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Like Maguire, Sultana measures political progress in 'likes', sees victories in reposts, and gains validation from outrage. She cannot imagine the existence of someone who might feel sympathy for, even rage on behalf of, Palestinians while simultaneously believing the UK's national security is important.
