Nicolás Maduro Bolsters Defence with Lawyer Who Helped Acquit Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

Venezuela’s embattled former president, Nicolás Maduro, has recruited a star American trial lawyer who recently helped secure the acquittal of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs on sex trafficking charges. Anna Estevao, of the boutique litigation firm Harris Trzaskoma, formally joined Maduro’s defence on Thursday, court filings show, as he prepares to contest US federal charges of narcoterrorism and drug trafficking from a detention centre in Brooklyn.

The move comes barely 48 hours after Maduro’s lead attorney, Barry Pollack—known for representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—announced that he was bringing his practice to Harris Trzaskoma, effectively folding the Venezuelan’s case into the firm’s portfolio. Pollack told Business Insider that he chose the firm for its “incredible lawyers,” a sentiment now borne out by the addition of Estevao, whose cross-examination of the prosecution’s star witness in the Combs trial was widely credited with dismantling the most serious charges.

In that high-stakes criminal trial, Estevao grilled Cassandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie and Combs’s former partner, helping to blunt her testimony. The rapper was ultimately acquitted of sex trafficking and extortion, charges that carried the threat of life imprisonment. Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty, will hope that the same forensic courtroom skills can be deployed against the US government’s narcotics case, which stems from a multi-year investigation into alleged cocaine smuggling involving the once-revered Cartel of the Suns.

Viewed from Washington, the assembly of such a high-calibre defence team underscores the legal and political sensitivity of prosecuting a former head of state. It also reflects a broader trend of beleaguered Latin American politicians turning to elite American litigators when facing the US justice system. The firm has further bolstered its ranks by hiring Susan Hoffinger, a former Manhattan prosecutor who helped convict Donald Trump on fraud charges before his return to the White House—a signal that Harris Trzaskoma is positioning itself at the intersection of celebrity, politics, and international criminal law.

Across Latin America, however, the news is filtered through sharply divergent language. Outlets in Brazil and Peru refer to Maduro as an “ex-ditador” or “derrocado presidente,” while English-language business publications adopt the neutral “former president.” Such semantic fissures mirror the hemisphere’s polarised views of the man who once succeeded Hugo Chávez. As pre-trial motions loom, Maduro’s legal strategy appears increasingly intertwined with the same adversarial American courtroom traditions that his political rhetoric has long scorned.