In the 20th day of testimony in Sean Combs’s federal trial, lawyers for the music mogul cross-examined a former girlfriend, highlighting her feelings of affection for him and the agency she had in their relationship in an effort to counter prosecutors’ narrative of a romance curdled by intimidation and coercion.
Mr. Combs, the music producer and impresario also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The government has accused him of running a “criminal enterprise” whose objectives included coercing women into sex and covering it up.
The woman, Jane — who is appearing in court under a pseudonym to protect her privacy — is the second person put forth by prosecutors as a victim in the case, after Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who testified over four days last month.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty, and the defense has argued that Jane and Ms. Ventura were willing participants in sex acts with the mogul.
Here are takeaways from the day in court.
Mr. Combs’s lawyers worked to paint a contrasting narrative of the couple’s relationship.
In her initial, gripping testimony as a government witness, Jane told jurors of being pressured to participate in drug-fueled sex marathons with male prostitutes at Mr. Combs’s direction. She called the sessions “hotel nights” or “debauchery” and said she suffered frequent urinary tract infections as a result. One time, she said, she had even been pressured to have sex after vomiting; she testified that Mr. Combs also used financial leverage against her.
But Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, focused on the positive side of the couple’s tumultuous three-year relationship and Jane acknowledged cherishing their time cuddling and watching “Dateline” on television. She bathed Mr. Combs and comforted him with foot rubs. “He was my baby,” Jane said.
Jane said she was eager to please Mr. Combs, felt their hotel nights satisfied him and accepted that he filmed the encounters.
Ms. Geragos sought to display that Mr. Combs brought benefits to the relationship, including a $20,000 investment in Jane’s fashion brand and a presence that Jane described as motivating and uplifting at times.
Some of Jane’s testimony gave a starkly different perspective on events she had spoken about in previous days, such as a “hotel night” in Turks and Caicos that she had testified included four rounds of sex over 24 hours with a hired escort named Paul. It left her “extremely sore” and in tears, Jane said.
In the cross-examination, though, the defense played an audio message from Mr. Combs in which he gave her the nickname “crack pipe.” Jane explained the name on Tuesday, saying it was because Mr. Combs was addicted “to my sex.” Smiling, Jane recalled she had “so much fun” with Mr. Combs on the trip.
Ms. Geragos asked whether at each of the three stops on that trip, “entertainers” — Jane and Mr. Combs’s term for hired escorts — were present. “Unfortunately, yes,” Jane said.
The defense focused on times when Jane herself reached out to male pornography actors to involve them in the sex nights. She testified that she did so in an attempt to seize some level of control in the unwanted sex that came to dominate their relationship.
In court, jurors heard Jane read from dozens of text messages in which she projected enthusiasm for their sex nights with male escorts — often with explicit detail in words or suggested in emojis. Sometimes Mr. Combs appeared to give her power over those decisions, telling her he wanted to follow her lead.
But when interpreting those messages for the jury, Jane said she was often responding to perceived pressure from him.
Jane said that when she and Mr. Combs were with an escort named Paul, they would jokingly call themselves “the trifecta” and take on the names of basketball stars: She was Kobe Bryant, Mr. Combs was Michael Jordan and Paul was Shaquille O’Neal.
Asked if she ultimately wanted to break up with Mr. Combs, Jane replied, “Of course not.”
Jane said their relationship involved ‘a chaotic whirlwind’ of sex and jealousy.
Jane acknowledged angry bouts of jealousy over the time and rewards that Mr. Combs gave to other women in his life.
For most of her testimony, Jane has spoken in a clear, even tone of voice, but on Tuesday she seemed to grow testy with questions about her jealousy in seeing Mr. Combs shower attention on another woman.
In a text message to Mr. Combs in 2021, Jane expressed anger at him for asking her for another hotel night, pointing to how another of his girlfriends was posting publicly about their relationship — and was the recent recipient of a Chanel bag.
Ms. Geragos asked if she got a Chanel bag as a gift from Mr. Combs. “No, I only got trauma,” Jane answered.
The defense lawyer suggested that actually she had gotten a pricey bag from Mr. Combs, and that it was from the brand Bottega Veneta. How much do those bags typically cost, Ms. Geragos asked Jane.
“How much does my body cost?” Jane shot back.
One romantic rival that caused friction in Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs was Caresha Brownlee, a rapper known as Yung Miami. While Jane’s time with Mr. Combs was private, she said, his relationship with Ms. Brownlee was public and widely documented on social media.
“That was hard to watch,” Jane said, adding that she felt there was an “imbalance” in how much more attention Mr. Combs gave Ms. Brownlee.
Jane said that from the start of their relationship, Mr. Combs was upfront about seeing other women, describing himself as “polyamorous.”
Even while testifying against him, Jane retains strong ties to Mr. Combs. He is paying her lawyer and her $10,000-a-month rent in Los Angeles, but she said he has never interfered with her legal representation.
Jane searched for information to understand Mr. Combs’s preference for voyeurism.
Jane said that at one point she researched the word “cuck,” which is short for cuckold — she defined it as referring to a man who watches his female partner having sex with another man. (In other contexts, it is sometimes used as an emasculating insult.)
Mr. Combs, she said, often used the words voyeurism or escapism to describe his interest. “I would use the word cuck for him more so,” Jane said.
She also said she found in her research that sometimes, cucks “have a bi-curiosity that they’re too ashamed to experience themselves.”
Mr. Combs’s lawyers are working to counter a racketeering charge.
Jane’s cross-examination is expected to continue for at least another day, and some of Ms. Geragos’s questions appeared to point to another of the defense’s goals: undermining the government’s charge that Mr. Combs directed a criminal conspiracy that included security guards and high-ranking executives at his companies.
Jurors have heard the names of many of those people, but only one has been explicitly identified by the government as part of a criminal conspiracy: Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff.
Answering questions about her hotel nights with Mr. Combs, Jane said she believed that none of Mr. Combs’s assistants saw the entertainers with her and Mr. Combs — though in previous testimony she had said she saw various unnamed assistants set up hotel rooms for them.
She also said that Ms. Khorram had no knowledge of escorts at hotels.
“I can’t have KK know, damn,” Mr. Combs once told Jane in a text.
Olivia Bensimon 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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