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Some celebrities are reportedly worried about being called to testify in the Sean “Diddy” Combs sex trafficking trial and have hired lawyers.
“I have heard that there are some celebrities worried about being called to testify and have even lawyered up trying to fight that,” TMZ founder Harvey Levin tells Fox News Digital.
“I think [rapper Kid] Cudi and Cassie were the star witnesses, but I don’t know who else the prosecution has up their sleeve,” Levin said. “I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes there, but they’ve got four weeks left of testimony before they hand it over to the defense. We will see. But what they clearly are doing is cobbling together what they claim is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he has committed these various crimes.”
Levin didn’t detail which celebrities might be called to testify.
Diddy’s ex, Cassie, rapper Kid Cudi and singer Dawn Richard have already taken the stand.
The rapper went on trial this month after being charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution.
On Wednesday, arson investigator Lance Jimenez, who investigated the car fire that damaged Kid Cudi’s Porsche beyond repair in 2012, and Diddy’s former stylist both testified.
Jimenez testified he believed the Porsche was targeted after Kid Cudi’s testimony that he thinks Diddy was involved in setting the car on fire. Kid Cudi had been dating Cassie at the time, while she was on a break from Diddy.
Jimenez told the jury he believed someone lit a Molotov cocktail and dropped it into the cut-open roof of Kid Cudi’s car.
He said he tried unsuccessfully to reach Diddy’s assistant at the time about the vandalism. The assistant testified she hung up on him because she “wanted this whole thing to be over.” Jimenez also tried to reach Cassie.
According to Jimenez, no charges were brought in the car fire case, but he never closed the case. It is currently listed as “inactive.”
Following Jimenez, Diddy’s former stylist, Deonte Nash, testified that he witnessed the rapper threaten Cassie often, calling her names like “b—-” and “s—” and allegedly warning that he would “beat her a–.”
“I have heard that there are some celebrities worried about being called to testify and have even lawyered up trying to fight that.”
— Harvey Levin
He claimed he also saw Diddy hit her more than once, including a time when he came over to her house unannounced and allegedly beat her until she was bloody, telling her, “Look what you all made me do.”
Nash also testified that Diddy once choked him, accusing him of going out with Cassie without his permission.
The prosecution has been focused on Cassie in the Diddy trial so far, which experts previously told Fox News Digital is their “star witness.”
Levin told Fox News Digital if the jury believes Cassie’s earlier testimony that Diddy showed her a sex video from a “freak off” he filmed while on an airplane returning to New York from Cannes, threatening to release it unless she did another freak off with him in New York, “I think they could nail him certainly as it pertains to Cassie because that clearly would show coercion.”
He added, “So, I think Diddy has a big problem there if the jury believes it. Diddy also has a problem with the interstate transportation of sex workers, I think.”
But Levin said he wasn’t clearly seeing proof of racketeering.
“When you look at all of the things he did, he’s burglarizing Kid Cudi’s house and going not for money or drugs or jewelry or anything like that. He is going for the Christmas present that he was going to give Cassie, and then he torches Cudi’s car, and then makes threats against her mother. This feels like a crazed, criminal, jealous boyfriend,” Levin said. “And I don’t think it necessarily shows him to be a racketeer.”
Levin said Diddy did allegedly use his employees to do “various things, but usually when you talk about racketeering and organized crime, you’re talking about having an undercover illegal business, selling drugs, running guns, doing hits on people. He’s not selling drugs. He’s using people to help him buy drugs. That, to me, is not racketeer. So I have a feeling. At least at this point, the jury isn’t sold on that.”
The post Celebrities reportedly lawyering up to avoid testifying in Diddy’s sex trafficking trial appeared first on Fox News.
