Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and the alleged killer of healthcare CEO Luigi Mangione have decided on a similar defense strategy: hire an Agnifilo. Or two.
Marc Agnifilo is leading Combs’ defense against racketeering and sex trafficking conspiracy charges, while Karen Friedman Agnifilo is leading Mangione’s murder defense, with Marc in a supporting role.
For much of the last few decades, the legal power couple often found themselves on opposite sides of such complex cases: she for the prosecution and he for the defense. Now, they are representing two of the most notorious cases in the country today.
From 2014 to 2021, Karen was second in command at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, bringing notable cases against defendants including Harvey Weinstein and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. She left the department in 2021 and has since moved into the media, with a stint as a legal analyst and CNN contributor.
Meanwhile, Marc has represented many of the targets of those DA investigations, including “fellow pharma” Martin Shkreli, Nxivm founder Keith Raniere, and former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng. He worked for the law firm Brafman & Associates from 2006 until earlier this year, when he left to co-found the firm Agnifilo Intrater.
Parents of three adult children, the law is what brought them together. The two met at the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 1992 while working on a case in which two bagel shop delivery drivers argued and one slashed the other’s arm with a machete, according to The New York Times.
Their interconnected careers have sometimes given rise to legal conflicts of interest. In 2011, Karen had to recuse herself from the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn when the former head of the International Monetary Fund hired the law firm where Marc worked.
“It’s never been awkward,” Marc told the New York Times in 2011. “We’re pretty regimented about it. “If she is recused from a case, we don’t really talk about it.”
The Agnifilos declined an interview request from CNN.
But that was then, and now, the Agnifilos have joined forces. On Monday, when Mangione appeared in a New York court for his arraignment, Karen was seated to his left and Marc was seated to his right.
Karen spoke in court and criticized what she called the NYPD’s over-the-top “criminal walk” toward her client, drawing on her years of service for perspective.
“It was on display for all to see in the biggest criminal walk-through I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said.
From public service to defense
Karen Friedman Agnifilo has decades of experience in the legal field, primarily in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He most recently served as Senior Assistant District Attorney under then-District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. until 2021.
His professional biography notes his “pivotal leadership role in prosecuting high-profile violent crime cases, including complex cases involving a mental health component.” He led a team of 1,500 people with a budget of $120 million and “was also an integral part of the creation of the Human Trafficking Unit, the Hate Crimes Unit, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, the Terrorism Unit, his Cybercrimes and Identity Theft Office, as well as working on the creation of Manhattan’s first Mental Health Court,” according to his bio.
He left public service in 2021, with a bagpipe farewell to the NYPD and the district attorney’s office, and moved into private practice.
In an interview with the “Shut Up Mommy’s Talking” podcast in 2022, Karen said moving into advocacy work was an adjustment. She cited her husband’s experience in deciding who to hire as a client.
“My husband is also a criminal defense attorney and he has had some clients who are just not nice to him. And I don’t mean that he’s not kind, but abusive,” he said. “And I don’t want that at this stage of my life.”
“There’s not necessarily any crime he wouldn’t commit or even a set of factors he wouldn’t commit,” he added. “I believe that everyone has the right to a defense and good representation, and I have always believed that.”
Karen said her children have also influenced her. Her twin daughters became interested in politics and the Black Lives Matter movement during the Covid-19 pandemic, which changed the way they thought about the topic. “I have to give them credit for opening my eyes to these issues,” he said.
Her third child has autism, she told the podcast, and she had frustrating experiences trying to get them help. She then used her experiences as a “special needs mother” to implement systems in the district attorney’s office to help those with less money or opportunity, she said.
“That became kind of a mission in the district attorney’s office. “It was about alternatives to incarceration, I pushed it a lot,” he said.
In recent years, Karen has become closer to the media. She has served as legal counsel for the long-running show “Law & Order,” worked as a legal analyst for CNN, and weighs in on legal issues as a podcast host for “Legal AF” and “MissTrial” on the MeidasTouch Network.
Your vocal presence in the media may offer a preview of your defense strategy. Earlier this month on CNN, before taking on Mangione as a client, she offered her opinion on how the case might proceed.
“It seems to me that there might be a not guilty by reason of insanity defense that they will be thinking about because the evidence that he did what he did will be so overwhelming,” he said Dec. 10.
“As a former prosecutor in that office, I would be concerned that you have someone who is the valedictorian of his class, was brilliant his entire life, comes from this great family. I mean, something changed, significantly, something changed. And they will potentially have a possible defense of not guilty by reason of insanity, so prosecutors will try to shore that up in their investigation as well.”
Marc has represented Shkreli and Diddy
Marc Agnifilo also began his career in prosecutors’ offices and has since made his mark defending high-profile defendants in complex cases at the state, federal and international levels.
A graduate of Connecticut College and Brooklyn Law School, he worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan before turning to criminal defense, his website states.
He has defended some of the most publicly vilified defendants of the last decade in Shkreli and Raniere, both of whom were convicted at trial.
“You may find it repulsive, disgusting and offensive. “We don’t condemn people in this country for being repulsive or offensive,” he argued at Raniere’s trial on charges of extortion and sex trafficking. “Unpopular ideas are not criminal. “Disgusting ideas are not criminal.”
In recent months, Marc has taken over Combs’ case and has repeatedly asked the court to release the rapper on bail before trial.
Other cases, many of which are listed on its website, have been resolved without charges or with short sentences.
He told Law.com earlier this year that his new law firm will focus on complex criminal litigation with an eye toward trying cases.
“I’ve found that people come to me when they have something to say against the government’s accusations,” Marc said. “Very often that means they want to go to trial. So we all plan to do what we’ve always done: try a bunch of cases. “That is our supreme value.”
