At about 11:20 a.m. on Friday, there was a commotion at the entrance to the Federal District courthouse in Lower Manhattan when Ye, the rapper and provocateur formerly known as Kanye West, entered the building where Sean Combs is standing trial.
Ye, wearing sunglasses and a white denim jacket and pants, was accompanied by Mr. Combs’s son Christian. When he was asked by a reporter if he was there to support Mr. Combs, Ye said yes — though he stayed in the courthouse for only about 30 minutes, and was never seated in the courtroom.
For months, Ye has been one of the only major celebrities to offer public support for Mr. Combs, who is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors have said that employees of Mr. Combs, including security staff, worked on his behalf as part of a “criminal enterprise” to commit a variety of crimes, including kidnapping, arson and obstruction of justice. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty.
The presence of Ye — who has become a pariah in the music industry in recent years for issuing brazen antisemitic comments — was brief, but it electrified the building.
When he tried to enter the 26th-floor courtroom where Mr. Combs’s trial was underway, Ye was told that he was not on the approved list for the day, which is held by court officers and includes reporters and members of the public who arrive early.
So Ye was directed to a mostly empty overflow room three floors down. There, with Christian Combs and Charlucci Finney, a friend of Mr. Combs, Ye watched a closed-circuit video feed as the proceedings were set to resume after a break.
But with a crowd gathering, Ye left, taking an elevator to the ground floor. The nearest exit, on Pearl Street, was crowded with families celebrating after becoming naturalized citizens. So Ye — trailed by reporters and onlookers — exited on the other side of the building. He entered a black sedan on Worth Street and rode away just before noon.
During Ye’s time in the courthouse, a former personal assistant to Mr. Combs, Jonathan Perez, took the stand.
Mr. Perez described the kind of supplies he took to hotel rooms to stock them for what he knew as “king nights” — a version of the “freak-offs” and “hotel nights” that the jury has heard about for weeks. Those items included condoms, lubricant, food, liquor and red lights. The jury saw text messages between Mr. Perez and Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff, in which they discussed setting up for and cleaning up after the nights.
Witnesses in the case have said that Mr. Combs masturbated and sometimes filmed during these events, which prosecutors say involved drug-fueled, marathon sexual encounters between Mr. Combs’s girlfriends and hired male escorts.
Mr. Perez described an episode when another Combs staff member showed him a portion of a video of one of those girlfriends — known in court under the pseudonym Jane — engaging in sex acts with an unfamiliar man, with Mr. Combs in the background. The video, Mr. Perez said, was on an iPad typically used by employees. In a recording played at court, Mr. Perez was closely questioned about what he saw by Ms. Khorram.
Over six days of questioning, Jane repeatedly said she did not want to take part in hotel nights, and that she suffered from painful urinary tract infections as a result of them. Brian Steel, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, asked Mr. Perez under cross-examination whether Jane ever appeared upset or unhappy after her “king nights” with Mr. Combs. No, Mr. Perez said.
“Did you ever get the feeling that she was hesitant of joining the ‘king nights’?” Mr. Steel asked, “No,” Mr. Perez said.
Mr. Steel also sought to differentiate between the business-related work Mr. Perez did for Mr. Combs and his boss’s personal requests. Mr. Perez said that only one percent of the work he did for Mr. Combs was personal.
When Madison Smyser, a prosecutor, asked Mr. Perez who asked him to make preparations for king nights, Mr. Perez said Ms. Khorram did. Last week, prosecutors said they considered Ms. Khorram a part of the criminal conspiracy at the heart of the racketeering charge against Mr. Combs. Ms. Khorram has not been called as a witness.
Mr. Perez, who worked for Mr. Combs from 2021 until around the time of the mogul’s arrest in 2024, is testifying under an immunity deal with the government.
When asked why he left the job when he did, Mr. Perez said: “There was a lot going on personally for Mr. Combs.”
The 23rd day of the trial began with Special Agent Andre LaMon, of Homeland Security Investigations, detailing the guns, drugs and copious stores of lubricant seized from the music mogul’s Los Angeles-area mansion during a raid in March 2024.
Jurors saw images of dozens of bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby oil and Astroglide, a lubricant. Asked by prosecutors how many of those items had been found during their raid of the house, Agent LaMon said that about 200 bottles of baby oil had been recovered and “900 or so” bottles of Astroglide.
One image captured more than a dozen cardboard boxes of Astroglide, packaged in bulk, arranged in two piles in the home’s garage. Sitting with his lawyers, Mr. Combs smiled slightly and nodded while viewing images of the seized lubricants.
Last week, Mr. Combs was admonished by the judge, Arun Subramanian, for “looking at the jury and nodding vigorously.” On Friday, a prosecutor complained that Mr. Combs had continued to nod, though not in the jury’s direction. The judge said that some reactions in the courtroom might occur, reminding lawyers for both sides about proper courtroom behavior.
One of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, Mr. Steel, defended his client’s conduct, saying “he has been nothing but professional.”
Agent LaMon, who led the search and said he was part of a team dedicated to human trafficking cases, was asked under cross-examination by Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, whether he had ever before seized a bulk supply of lubricant during a search.
“It’s only been this one,” the officer said.
At that point, a female juror smiled with an open mouth, and looked back and forth between the officer and Mr. Agnifilo.
Jurors also saw images of six firearms and associated ammunition found in the security room. Those included Ruger and Smith & Wesson rifles, as well as a Glock pistol. Among the rounds of ammunition were a large “drum” magazine with 59 rounds of “green tip” bullets, a type that Agent LaMon said could pierce body armor.
The serial number on one of the weapons had been scratched or sanded off, Agent LaMon testified. When asked by Mr. Agnifilo, Agent LaMon said he did not know whether the guns had initially been in a locked safe in the security room before he arrived to inspect them.
After those seizures — which also targeted Mr. Combs’s island mansion outside Miami — a lawyer for Mr. Combs criticized the raids as “a gross misuse of misuse of military-level force.”
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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