The fourth week of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ intercourse trafficking trial featured testimony from the second of two ex-girlfriends who’re essential witnesses within the authorities’s quest to show intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy costs in opposition to the hip-hop mogul.
Combs, the founding father of Dangerous Boy Information, has pleaded not responsible within the trial, which resumes Monday.
Listed below are key moments from the previous week:
Lodge employee says Combs sought video of Cassie beating
Fearing profession break, Combs delivered $100,000 in money to a safety guard for a Los Angeles resort in return for assurances that he was given the one safety footage of Combs’ 2016 assault on then-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the safety guard testified.
Eddy Garcia, 33, recounted how the deal got here to be, saying he first heard from a quick speaking, stuttering and “very nervous” Combs on a cellphone name searching for to acquire the video of him kicking and dragging Cassie from the resort’s elevator financial institution right into a hallway as a result of “if this obtained out it might break him.”
Days later, Garcia stated, he was the nervous one when he was greeted in an workplace constructing by a smiling Combs who known as him “Eddy, my angel” earlier than Garcia turned over a USB drive containing the safety footage. Combs then made him signal a nondisclosure settlement promising it was the one copy of the video and that Garcia would by no means communicate of it, he stated.
Then, Combs, with a bodyguard at his facet, fed stacks of money from a brown bag into an oblong cash counter machine till it reached $100,000, Garcia stated. He stated he pocketed $30,000 and gave $50,000 to his boss and $20,000 to a different resort safety guard. Garcia testified below immunity.
A recording of the resort assault on Cassie aired on CNN final 12 months and safety footage together with clips of the safety tape recorded by a guard on his private cellphone so he might present it to his spouse have been proven repeatedly throughout the trial.
Choose threatens Combs with trial expulsion
Minutes after a prosecutor complained that Combs was seen “nodding furiously” as his lawyer cross-examined a witness on Thursday, Choose Arun Subramanian took a glance himself and stated he noticed Combs “nodding vigorously and looking out on the jury” and doing the identical later when the legal professionals and the decide have been having a sidebar dialogue.
Assistant U.S. Legal professional Maurene Comey stated prosecutors have been involved as a result of the gestures amounted to “testifying by nodding affirmatively” whereas his lawyer requested questions.
Throughout a lunch break, protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo promised to talk with Combs and guarantee it would not occur once more after the decide advised him it was “completely unacceptable.”
The decide sternly responded: “If it occurs once more, if it occurs even as soon as, I’ll hear an software from the federal government to offer a healing instruction to the jury, which you do not need. Or I’ll contemplate taking additional measures, which might end result within the exclusion of your consumer from the courtroom.”
Mia says she was “brainwashed” to ship Combs loving texts after rape
A former Combs private assistant who testified below the pseudonym “Mia” advised jurors that Combs had sexually assaulted her a number of instances over her eight-year profession, although the assaults have been “random, sporadic, so oddly spaced out” in order that she thought every was the final.
She stated he first molested her and forcibly kissed her at his fortieth celebration earlier than raping her months later in a visitor room at his Los Angeles residence.
On cross-examination, protection lawyer Brian Metal’s steered that she fabricated her claims to money in on “the #MeToo cash seize in opposition to Sean Combs.”
Metal confronted her with loving texts she despatched Combs lengthy after her employment ended and requested how she might inform him, as she did in a 2019 textual content, that she had imagined Combs rescuing her from a nightmare during which she was trapped in an elevator with R. Kelly, the singer who has since been convicted of intercourse trafficking.
“I used to be nonetheless brainwashed,” Mia defined.
President Donald Trump was requested Friday if he would contemplate pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs, who’s at the moment preventing 5 legal counts: one rely of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of intercourse trafficking by pressure, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution.
Protection has success with questioning of Cassie’s good friend
The protection had considered one of its most profitable moments of the trial when lawyer Nicole Westmoreland forged doubt on the credibility of a graphic designer who says Combs as soon as dangled her from the balcony of a Seventeenth-floor condominium in Los Angeles.
Bryana “Bana” Bongolan, a good friend of Cassie who’s suing Combs, had taken a cellphone picture of a softball-size welt on her leg that she stated occurred when Combs held her over the balcony for 10 to fifteen seconds after which threw her into furnishings.
After it was proven to the jury, Westmoreland confirmed the jury cellphone metadata revealing that the {photograph} was taken whereas Combs was on tour in September 2016, staying at a Manhattan resort.
“You agree that one particular person can’t be in two locations on the similar time?” Westmoreland requested.
“In, like, principle, yeah,” Bongolan responded.
“You’re undecided?” Westmoreland requested.
“Exhausting to reply that one,” she stated.
Later, Bongolan stated she didn’t recall the precise date, however she had little doubt the balcony episode occurred.
On Saturday, protection legal professionals despatched the decide a letter requesting a mistrial, saying that prosecutors “knew or ought to have identified” that Bongolan was mendacity about Combs having dangled her over a balcony.
Mistrial requests are not often granted. An earlier request by protection legal professionals for a mistrial was instantly rejected by the decide.
Lady remembers intercourse performances throughout three years as a Combs’ girlfriend
A lady testifying below the pseudonym “Jane” fought by way of tears and sobs to recount frequent sexual performances she participated in with male intercourse employees to please Combs and preserve their three-year relationship alive till his September arrest.
Jane’s testimony, which is more likely to proceed deep into subsequent week, is equivalent in some ways to the four-day testimony within the trial’s first week by Cassie. Jane stated she by no means wished to have intercourse with different males however did it to please Combs as a result of she liked him.
Cassie described having a whole lot of drug-fueled sexual performances referred to as “freak-offs” during which she had intercourse with male intercourse employees for days at a time whereas Combs watched, typically directed the exercise, and pleasured himself.
Jane described having almost the identical experiences from 2021 till final August, although she known as them “resort nights.” She stated her relationship with Combs started with romance however later turned reliant upon the sexual performances, particularly after Combs started paying hire for her condominium.
Protection attorneys have insisted that Jane and Combs solely engaged in consensual intercourse and that Jane’s protests to Combs in textual content messages have been fueled by jealousy.
