A former personal assistant to Sean Combs testified on Tuesday in the mogul’s sex-trafficking and racketeering trial about his boss’s daily drug use, as well as fearing for his life when Mr. Combs, armed, told him to accompany him to a possible confrontation with a rival rap executive.
After four days of testimony last week by Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie who was Mr. Combs’s off-and-on companion for more than a decade, prosecutors have begun sketching out a wider of picture of the couple’s sometimes chaotic life together, which was filled with drugs, outbursts of jealousy and violence toward Ms. Ventura.
David James, the trial’s seventh witness, explained some of the routine work he did as Mr. Combs’s assistant, like rising early, keeping schedules and catering to his boss’s preferences for ketchup and apple sauce. He also described how security personnel for Mr. Combs carried a Louis Vuitton bag at all times that was filled with pills and cash. One type of Ecstasy pill, he said, was shaped like President Obama’s face.
Mr. James described a workplace in which he was closely scrutinized, sometimes to the point of feeling intimidated. Twice, he said, he was asked to take lie detector tests to prove he was not responsible for missing cash or a missing watch. After Mr. James took Ecstasy at a New Year’s Eve party, he said, Mr. Combs played footage of him dancing at the event and told him, “I want to keep this footage in case I ever need it.”
He testified about an incident one night in January 2009 at Mr. Combs’s home in Los Angeles, where Mr. James was researching possible tattoos for him on a computer. Mr. Combs, visibly upset, burst into the room, complaining about a blog post that reported that he had beaten Ms. Ventura. “Someone was lying on me,” Mr. James recalled Mr. Combs saying, and the mogul demanded to see the browsing history on the computer Mr. James was using.
Later, Mr. James said, he was instructed to deliver fried chicken to Ms. Ventura at the London Hotel in Los Angeles, where Ms. Ventura testified last week she had been taken to heal after being beaten by Mr. Combs. Mr. James said he handed the food to some of Mr. Combs’s staffers who were in the room, and that he did not see Ms. Ventura there.
In her testimony, Ms. Ventura said she had spent more than a week at the hotel to heal but then denied being hurt to her mother who had seen an item on the internet about an assault.
Mr. James also described a time in Miami, around 2008, when Mr. Combs ordered Mr. James to deliver an iPod to a hotel room. There he saw Ms. Ventura, motionless on a bed, as well as an unknown man, naked and wearing a condom, who “scurried off as if he didn’t want to be seen.” Mr. James said he did not see Mr. Combs but could hear a shower running.
Mr. James also spoke about going with a member of Mr. Combs’s security staff to a Los Angeles diner in 2008, where they saw Suge Knight of Death Row Records, a longtime rival of Mr. Combs. Back at Mr. Combs’s house, the mogul ordered Mr. James and the security officer to return with him; Mr. Combs, in the back seat, had three guns in his lap, Mr. James said.
“This was the first time, being Mr. Combs’s assistant, that I realized my life was in danger,” Mr. James testified.
Under cross-examination by Marc Agnifilo, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, Mr. James was asked why he did not raise any objection to traveling to a possible gunfight. “I was doing what I was told,” he testified. He said he then gave his six-month notice to Bad Boy, Mr. Combs’s company.
Mr. Agnifilo asked Mr. James whether he had received any legal protections from the government as a witness in the case. Mr. James said he received a proffer agreement — which allows a witness to provide information with some protections from prosecution — but he could not speak to the details.
As Mr. James stepped down from the stand, he and Mr. Combs looked at each other and briefly exchanged nods.
Prosecutors have worked to establish that Mr. Combs had coercive power over Ms. Ventura, in part because she loved him, but also because he held the reins on her career and physically beat her.
Mr. Combs has acknowledged the violence, but he has denied the sex trafficking and other accusations of criminal conduct that have been lodged against him. His lawyers say Mr. Combs engaged in perhaps unconventional marathon sex sessions with Ms. Ventura, but they say it was fully consensual and he has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Before Mr. James took the stand late Monday afternoon, the jury heard accounts from two women who said they had seen Mr. Combs physically assaulting Ms. Ventura.
Dawn Richard, a singer in two groups backed by Mr. Combs, Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money, said Mr. Combs had punched Ms. Ventura with a closed fist before an event in Central Park in New York, and attempted to hit her with a skillet of eggs in the kitchen of his Los Angeles home. She came under tough cross-examination over inconsistencies in the accounts she has given of the skillet incident over a series of interviews with prosecutors before trial.
Kerry Morgan, Ms. Ventura’s estranged best friend, said she had seen Mr. Combs drag Ms. Ventura down a hallway in Jamaica and throw her to the ground, and that she was in Ms. Ventura’s Los Angeles apartment in March 2016 — after Mr. Combs assaulted her in a hotel — when Mr. Combs attempted to enter by pounding on the door with a hammer.
The next witnesses that are expected include Regina Ventura, Ms. Ventura’s mother; Jourdan Atkinson, a former personal chef for Mr. Combs who has accused him of shoving her to the ground; and Sharay Hayes, who has described himself as an exotic dancer known as “Punisher.” (Ms. Ventura testified that a man known as Punisher participated in several freak-offs with her and Mr. Combs.)
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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