After two weeks of testimony in the racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial of Sean Combs, the rapper and producer known as Diddy, much of the prosecution’s central narrative is clear. Mr. Combs, they say, used his power and wealth, along with violence and threats of blackmail, to coerce women into complying with his elaborate sexual demands that included commercial sex workers.
Such coercive behavior was enabled, the government argues, by members of his staff, who helped to arrange and stock the marathon sex sessions known as “freak-offs” and to clean up any fallout from Mr. Combs’s entanglements.
The groundwork of the defense’s counternarrative has been laid firmly, as well. Mr. Combs, they have argued, while jealous, aggressive and drug-addicted, had nontraditional but consensual sex with long-term girlfriends. That may have led to damaging, interpersonal chaos but it was not sex trafficking, Mr. Combs’s lawyers have argued.
Even as some of the contours of the case have become more clear through the testimony of Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend, and others, major lingering questions will remain when the trial continues next week. Below are three unresolved issues that could affect how the trial, which is estimated to last about six more weeks, pans out.
What happened to ‘Victim-3’?
Before trial, the government repeatedly referred to a woman it called Victim-3, saying that she was subjected to sexual coercion by Mr. Combs outside of any freak-off activity. She was listed prominently in the indictment as an additional person whose experience would demonstrate that Mr. Combs’s conduct hurt people beyond Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie who is the prosecution’s star witness.
But for reasons that have yet to be explained publicly, Victim-3 is no longer expected to take the stand, according to the lawyers involved. The trouble first surfaced two weeks ago when prosecutors told the court they were having a hard time reaching her lawyer.
Still, Victim-3, who has been referred to in testimony by only the name Gina, has hovered over the case as Ms. Ventura and others have described Mr. Combs’s overlapping romantic and sexual relationships.
The defense has aimed to depict Ms. Ventura as a jealous girlfriend, not a victim of coercion, and she was asked repeatedly by Mr. Combs’s team about Gina, who he was involved with at the same time.
Gina gave a tell-all interview about her relationship with Mr. Combs to the YouTube gossip personality Tasha K in 2019. During it, she described being subjected to regular physical abuse by Mr. Combs — including having her stomach stomped on and head punched — and being made to terminate two pregnancies. Prosecutors said in court papers that Victim-3 had text messages and Notes app journaling that backed up an account of abuse and financial coercion.
She was served with a subpoena to appear as a witness, but prosecutors said in court two weeks ago that they were not sure she would honor it and were having trouble reaching her lawyer.
This week, Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, acknowledged there might be some difficulty securing Gina’s appearance as a witness but noted: “They are the United States of America. They can get Gina into this courtroom if that is what they want to do. They are choosing not to.”
None of the charges against Mr. Combs rely fully on Gina’s testimony. Rather, her story was supposed to buttress the broader, complex racketeering conspiracy charge, which aims to show that Mr. Combs ran a criminal enterprise that helped to facilitate and cover up his sex crimes.
Even if Gina does not testify, the prosecution has pushed to include evidence related to her relationship with Mr. Combs, saying she is “very much a part of this case.”
The defense is also not ready to just let her fade away. Mr. Combs’s lawyers have been arguing that Ms. Ventura stayed in the relationship, not because of blackmail or fear of beatings, but because she loved the music mogul. Gina has emerged in testimony as someone whose relationship with Mr. Combs makes Ms. Ventura’s commitment to him clear, even after years of beatings. Through Gina, they have aimed to show that Mr. Combs’s infidelity was a larger issue for Ms. Ventura at the time than any alleged abuse.
“Was Gina the main problem in your relationship?” a lawyer for Mr. Combs asked Ms. Ventura on the stand last week. She agreed.
Who is part of what the government calls Mr. Combs’s ‘criminal enterprise’?
The wider use of racketeering laws against people who are not mobsters — the people these statutes were first created to pursue — is well established at this point, with people like R. Kelly and Keith Raniere as prime examples. But prosecutors using federal racketeering laws still need to convince a jury that they are being shown the work of a criminal enterprise.
The government’s indictment said Mr. Combs used “security staff, household staff, personal assistants and high-ranking supervisors” to help carry out and cover up crimes including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
After two weeks of testimony, though, jurors have heard relatively little to illustrate the government’s theory of how Mr. Combs’s wider entourage functioned as a criminal organization.
One former assistant said Mr. Combs, armed with three guns, brought him on a journey to a potentially dangerous confrontation at a diner. Another assistant said he twice purchased drugs for Mr. Combs and that part of his job involved delivering a “hotel bag” for Mr. Combs stocked with clothes, candles, liquor and baby oil.
Two men hired for sex during freak-offs, Daniel Phillip and Sharay Hayes, described their encounters with Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura in graphic detail, but they did not mention seeing anyone else from Mr. Combs’s circle.
The government contends that Mr. Combs’s henchmen tried to bomb Kid Cudi’s car, and prosecutors’ opening statement mentioned Mr. Combs commanding “an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees.” But, at this point, prosecutors have not specifically named anyone as a co-conspirator responsible for criminal behavior.
It is still early in what is expected to be a lengthy criminal case, but so far it is unclear whether a high-ranking person who helped run Mr. Combs’s affairs will emerge as a key witness during the trial.
Will videos of the ‘freak-offs’ emerge as major evidence?
With consent such a central question in the case, there had been anticipation that the government would present the jury with video footage of freak-offs as evidence of the degrading abuse that Ms. Ventura had suffered at Mr. Combs’s hands.
The defense, meanwhile, suggested that any airing of them would help to support Mr. Combs’s contention that the sessions, as his lawyers wrote in court papers, show “adults having consensual sex, plain and simple.” News organizations fought to have some access to the footage so they would be able to assess what they depicted.
But the videos were not played for jurors during the four days Ms. Ventura was on the witness stand. Instead, prosecutors asked Ms. Ventura to identify herself in several still images from freak-offs, which they say Mr. Combs sometimes filmed.
When Ms. Ventura was shown the images, she identified herself with male escorts — in separate images, Jules, Dave and Greg — and described herself in one image sitting on a couch wearing high heels.
Others in the courtroom, aside from the jury, were blocked from viewing the images. (The screens in front of the jurors are fitted with covers so that the content can only be viewed head-on.)
The defense also could have played the tapes for the jury during Ms. Ventura’s testimony but did not. One of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, Teny Geragos, told the judge outside the jury’s presence that the defense does intend to play some footage but not until later, during the testimony of a different witness: a government expert who worked to enhance the quality of the videos.
The lawyers involved in the case have also discussed sexually explicit videos related to another woman whom Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking, who is going by the pseudonym Jane. She is expected to take the stand in the coming weeks, but it remains unclear how much the footage of her will come into play.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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