Jurors in the federal criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs reached a mixed verdict Wednesday, finding the rapper and music mogul not guilty of the three most serious charges levied against him.

The jury deliberated for 13 hours across three days before reaching the verdict and found Combs guilty of two of the five charges against him, both for transportation to engage in prostitution.

They found Combs not guilty of the more serious offenses: sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Combs will avoid the harshest sentence — life in prison — but could still face up to 20 years if given the maximum sentence for his remaining convictions. The outcome was seen as a victory for Combs, who responded by falling to his knees before his courtroom chair, applauding the courtroom gallery, and crying out, “Thank god” and “I love you” several times.

The verdict concludes a seven-week trial that contained plenty of lurid details about Diddy’s decades of “freak-offs” and other sex parties, along with shocking anecdotes of his bizarre and controlling behavior toward both his girlfriends and his employees. The defense ultimately chose not to present any witnesses for Diddy but rested after cross-examining the prosecution’s case, relying largely on a strategy of persistently hammering away at the credibility and motivations of the prosecution’s witnesses.

With all that hammering away, the Diddy trial resurfaced some of the very same rape myths that the Me Too movement worked to dismantle a few short years ago, including the one about the perfect victim. The fact that the defense’s tactics appear to have been by and large successful is just the latest indication that America is prepared to put the lessons of Me Too in the rearview mirror.

1. What was the verdict? What does it mean?

Jurors convicted Diddy on two charges under the Mann Act of transporting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, and another woman known in the courtroom only as Jane for the purposes of prostitution. He was found not guilty, however, of sex trafficking Ventura or Jane.

Effectively, that means while the jury accepted the state’s argument that Diddy illegally transported the women for purposes of engaging in sex work, they were not convinced that the women were actually coerced into participating in these acts.

Legal analyst Paul Mauro, who correctly predicted this split verdict, emphasized that the prosecution had to prove coercion. Given that Judge Arun Subramanian excluded all discussion about coercive control — the overall........

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