Sean Combs, one of America’s most influential music moguls, is standing trial on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Prosecutors accuse him of leading a criminal enterprise that committed a series of crimes including kidnapping, arson and obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have said all the sex at issue in the case was consensual. Read the indictment here.
The Latest:
The Jury Sees ‘Freak-Off’ Videos and a Juror Is Dismissed
As the trial enters its sixth week, the prosecution has highlighted key pieces of evidence to summarize its case. Among them were a trove of text messages from Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff, which prosecutors said showed that Ms. Khorram was closely involved in planning the intensive sex marathons that Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified as “Jane” said they endured. Over the course of the trial, those events have been called “freak-offs,” “hotel nights” and “wild king nights.”
Prosecutors also showed jurors brief excerpts from videos of those events, which were taken from devices that Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, provided to the government. That evidence is sealed, and was not visible to the public or the news media. Jurors watched the videos on screens, and listened on headphones; one juror, frowning, snatched the headphones off after the first clip was played.
The defense has called the footage “powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion.”
On Monday, the judge dismissed a juror who gave inconsistent information about where he lives, raising concerns that he had been seeking a spot on the jury of the high-profile case. Prosecutors are expected to rest this week, and the defense will then call its own witnesses, who are expected to include a former human resources manager for Mr. Combs’s company and a forensic psychiatrist.
Week 1
Opening Statements and Cassie’s Testimony
In her opening statement for the prosecution, Emily Johnson portrayed Mr. Combs as a man who ordered the performance of sex acts and “called himself the king.” She told a jury of eight men and four women that the case would center on the testimony of three women, including Casandra Ventura, whose bombshell 2023 lawsuit started the federal investigation. For the defense, Teny Geragos described Mr. Combs as a “complicated man,” and admitted that he committed domestic violence against women in his life. But those women, Ms. Geragos said, were not coerced: “This case is about voluntary, adult choices made by capable adults” in what she called “consensual relationships.”
The first two witnesses called by the prosecution were Israel Florez, a former security guard at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles where Mr. Combs was seen in surveillance footage assaulting Ms. Ventura in 2016, and Daniel Phillip, a male stripper who said he was invited multiple times by Ms. Ventura to have sex with her while Mr. Combs watched and masturbated; he said he had overheard Mr. Combs beating her in another room, and Ms. Ventura crying.
Ms. Ventura, the case’s key witness, began her testimony on the trial’s second day. Nearly nine months pregnant, she cried as she spoke about “freak-offs,” drug-fueled sex sessions with male prostitutes, directed by Mr. Combs, that she said made her feel “disgusting” and “humiliated.” The encounters ranged from roughly 36 hours to as long as four days, she testified: “The freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.” She detailed Mr. Combs’s orchestration of the events, down to dictating the color of her nails, and said she participated because she wanted to make him happy, and out of fear of violence. Her testimony at times contained graphic descriptions of unwanted sex acts; in one incident, she described an escort urinating into her mouth until, choking, she put up her hands.
In her second day of testimony, Ms. Ventura was questioned about the 2016 hotel assault, which happened a few days before the premiere of a movie she starred in, and other beatings that occurred “too frequently,” she said. She said sexually explicit video recordings of the freak-offs were wielded by Mr. Combs as “blackmail materials.” In 2018, toward the end of their relationship, Mr. Combs raped her after they had dinner, she said. About a month later, she testified, they had consensual intercourse. She testified that she entered drug rehab and trauma therapy in 2023 after she considered suicide.
In its cross-examination, Mr. Combs’s defense team confronted Mr. Ventura with dozens of messages between them in an effort to suggest she had been a more willing, even enthusiastic, participant in the freak-offs; Ms. Ventura pushed back, saying that she was just acceding to his requests. Much of the questioning focused on drug use and its potential influence on the behavior of both Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura. She testified that both of them were dependent on opiates for most of their relationship, and that Mr. Combs did other drugs, including Ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and GHB, in her presence. During Ms. Ventura’s testimony, she had revealed that Mr. Combs paid her $20 million to settle her lawsuit. When a prosecutor questioned her again, she said, “I’d give that money back if I never had to have freak-offs.”
DAY BY DAY
May 12: Sean Combs’s Trial Begins With Explicit Accounts of Sex and Violence
May 13: Cassie Testifies She Was ‘Humiliated’ by Marathon Sex Sessions
May 14: Cassie Testifies That Sean Combs Was Routinely Violent
May 15: Sean Combs’s Defense Suggests Jealousy and Drug Use Fueled His Aggression
May 16: Cassie Is Questioned About Recollections and Motives
Week 2
Kid Cudi Testifies About a Torched Porsche
The rapper Kid Cudi testified about becoming a focus of the music mogul’s jealous rage when he was briefly dating Ms. Ventura, recounting what he viewed as Mr. Combs’s break-in at his home and his suspicion that Mr. Combs had arranged for a Molotov cocktail that exploded inside his Porsche 911 convertible. (Mr. Combs’s lawyers have said he was “simply not involved” in the arson outlined in the indictment.) The musician, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said he called Mr. Combs, cursed at him and asked whether he was at his house. He testified that Mr. Combs replied, “I’m over here waiting for you.”
Dawn Richard, a singer in two groups associated with Mr. Combs, testified that she saw him punch, kick and slap Ms. Ventura. A lawyer for Mr. Combs pushed her on cross-examination about an account involving Mr. Combs threatening Ms. Ventura with a skillet, saying the details had changed over time.
Kerry Morgan, who said her 17-year-long friendship with Ms. Ventura ended after Mr. Combs attacked Ms. Morgan in 2018, testified about seeing Mr. Combs abuse Ms. Ventura on several occasions. On a trip to Jamaica, she testified, Mr. Combs dragged Ms. Ventura by her hair and pushed her to the ground, where her head struck a brick surface.
David James, a former personal assistant to Mr. Combs, testified about his boss’s daily drug use, as well as to fearing for his life when an armed Mr. Combs told him to accompany him to a possible confrontation with the rival rap executive Suge Knight. George Kaplan, another former assistant, said he left his job because “I was not comfortable or aligned with the physical behavior that had been going on that I had seen pieces of.” He still expressed gratitude for the business lessons he learned from the mogul.
Regina Ventura, Ms. Ventura’s mother, testified that in late 2011, her daughter informed her that Mr. Combs was threatening to release two explicit sex tapes of her. Around the same time, she said she and her husband wired a company associated with Mr. Combs $20,000 because “he was angry that he had spent money on her”; the money was returned.
Sharay Hayes testified that from 2012 to 2015, while working as an escort under the name Punisher, he was hired for eight to 12 freak-offs, and was paid up to $2,000 at a time. “It seemed like it was consented as far as I was concerned,” he said of the sex with Ms. Ventura. Gerard Gannon, an agent with Homeland Security Investigations, testified about the government’s 2024 raid on Mr. Combs’s luxury estate in Miami Beach, Fla., where agents found disassembled AR-15-style guns, cocaine and ketamine, lingerie — and many bottles of baby oil.
DAY BY DAY
May 19: Dawn Richard Recalls Witnessing Sean Combs’s Violence Against Cassie
May 20: Cassie’s Mother Testifies at Sean Combs’s Trial About Bruises and a Payment
May 21: At Sean Combs Trial, Details of a Raid That Found Guns and Baby Oil
May 22: Kid Cudi Recalls His Porsche Being Torched as Witness at Sean Combs Trial
Week 3
Former Employees Describe Violence and Intimidation
Capricorn Clark, a former employee of Mr. Combs’s who rose from personal assistant to a brand director, testified that she was kidnapped by the mogul when he came to her apartment with a gun one morning in December 2011 after he learned Ms. Ventura was dating Mr. Mescudi, and told her “get dressed, we’re going to go kill” Mr. Mescudi. Later that day, she said, she watched Mr. Combs beat Ms. Ventura. On cross-examination, Mr. Combs’s lawyer questioned whether the event was a kidnapping and underscored how Ms. Clark repeatedly sought to return to work for Mr. Combs.
Deonte Nash, who worked as a stylist with both Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura, testified that he had witnessed the music mogul beating Ms. Ventura, including an encounter involving a woman known in court as “Mia,” in which Mr. Combs hit Ms. Ventura until her head struck the edge of a bed frame, drawing blood. He said Ms. Ventura had confided in him about freak-offs, and said Mr. Combs threatened to release “sex tapes.” He detailed a time when at a hotel, he told Ms. Ventura that Mr. Combs was looking for her; she said “Oh, no,” and headed to the balcony. “She said that she was going to climb over the balcony,” Mr. Nash testified. Under cross-examination, he was asked why, if he was worried about Ms. Ventura, he did not do more to intervene.
A second woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Combs took the stand on the trial’s 12th day. Mia, appearing under a pseudonym, worked for Mr. Combs for eight years in various capacities starting in 2009, and testified about a grueling work environment in which she was subjected to sleep deprivation and violence. She said Mr. Combs penetrated her without her consent while she slept in a bedroom in his home, and another time forced her to perform oral sex on him; she felt unable to say no, fearing retaliation. “I couldn’t tell him no about a sandwich — I couldn’t tell him no about anything,” she said. She described Mr. Combs attacking Ms. Ventura after he discovered the two women had attended a house party featuring Prince after he had instructed them to stay in a hotel room.
During cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Combs sought to show the jury another side of Mia’s time working for the famous record producer, displaying dozens of posts from her Instagram account, many of which showed her posing beside or celebrating Mr. Combs, whom she called a “mentor” and an “inspiration.” “Those are the only people I was around, so that was my life,” Mia replied, describing her time working for Mr. Combs as a “confusing cycle of ups and downs.”
DAY BY DAY
May 27: A Former Employee Testifies Sean Combs Threatened to Kill Kid Cudi
May 28: Beatings, Arson and a Denied Mistrial: Latest Takeaways From the Combs Trial
May 29: Ex-Combs Assistant Says She Feared His Wrath: Latest Takeaways From the Trial
May 30: Trump Says He’d ‘Look at the Facts’ of Combs Case: Latest Trial Takeaways
Week 4
A $100,000 Payment, an Encounter on a Balcony and the Prosecution’s Second Key Witness
In Mia’s third day on the stand, a lawyer for Mr. Combs asked why she had not disclosed earlier the accusations that her boss had sexually assaulted her. “I was still deeply ashamed and wanted to die with this,” she said. She said that it took her time to understand what had happened to her because when she worked for Mr. Combs, “nobody acted like what was happening to me was wrong.”
Eddy Garcia, a security officer at the InterContinental Hotel where Mr. Combs was captured on surveillance video assaulting Ms. Ventura, testified that Kristina Khorram, who worked as the mogul’s chief of staff, contacted him to get a copy of the footage; he said that after he eventually agreed, Mr. Combs told him on the phone, “‘Eddy, my angel, I knew you could help.’” Mr. Garcia said he delivered a USB drive and received $100,000 in a brown paper bag to share with two co-workers; jurors were shown a nondisclosure agreement he signed with Mr. Combs’s company.
During testimony from Derek Ferguson — the former chief financial officer of Bad Boy Entertainment — the government highlighted bank records that showed transfers of business funds into an account associated with one of Mr. Combs’s personal properties. Mr. Ferguson testified that he never saw anyone help Mr. Combs commit crimes.
The week’s most dramatic testimony came from Bryana Bongolan, a friend of Ms. Ventura’s, who accused Mr. Combs of holding her over a 17th-floor apartment balcony, making her fear for her life. She testified that Mr. Combs arrived at Ms. Ventura’s apartment and pounded on the door before entering and picking up Ms. Bongolan by the armpits, holding her above the balcony’s railing. She said he then threw her onto the balcony furniture; jurors were shown a photograph she said she took of herself later the same day showing a large bruise on her leg, which she said had been caused by Mr. Combs. Under cross-examination, Ms. Bongolan was pressed on details from her previous accounts of the encounter. In answer to many questions, she responded: “I don’t remember.” She said that she and Ms. Ventura had drug problems, and that she feared Mr. Combs.
One of Mr. Combs’s lawyers threw the timing of her account into question, pointing to a photo — dated Sept. 26, 2016 — that Ms. Bongolan said she took with her phone hours after being attacked in Los Angeles. The night before, Mr. Combs was performing in New Jersey, and the defense showed a detailed hotel bill indicating that Mr. Combs was in New York the whole week. Asked if she had lied on the stand about the account, Ms. Bongolan testified, “I can’t agree with you.” Mr. Combs, who responded to his lawyer’s line of questioning with enthusiastic nodding, was admonished by the judge.
The week ended with the prosecution’s second-most critical witness: a woman, using the pseudonym “Jane,” who dated Mr. Combs from 2021 until his arrest in September 2024. She described an intense love affair with the music mogul that turned into a pattern of unwanted sex with male prostitutes that she struggled to end: “It was a door that I was unable to shut for the remainder of the relationship.” Unlike Ms. Ventura, who called the sexual encounters freak-offs, Jane said she and Mr. Combs used the terms “hotel nights” or “debauchery.” Describing herself as a single mother who made her living as a social media influencer at the time of their relationship, Jane said she became financially dependent on Mr. Combs after he began sending her thousands of dollars and paying her rent.
DAY BY DAY
June 2: Combs Lawyers Question Assistant’s Abuse Allegations: Latest Trial Takeaways
June 3: A $100,000 Payment for Assault Footage: Latest Combs Trial Takeaways
June 4: A Woman Says Sean Combs Held Her Over a Balcony: Latest Trial Takeaways
June 5: Judge Rebukes Combs for Nodding at the Jury: Latest Trial Takeaways
June 6: ‘Drugs for Days’ and Unprotected Sex: Sean Combs’s Ex-Girlfriend Testifies
Week 5
‘Jane’ Testifies About Violence, Forced Sex and Loving Mr. Combs
Jane returned to the stand, testifying about an explosive physical fight in June 2024 that began with jealousy over another woman Mr. Combs was seeing. The two exchanged blows, she said, and she hid from him, barefoot, in her neighborhood for about two hours. They tussled again, Jane testified, and she was left with a black eye and welts on her forehead. “Sean said, ‘Just put some ice on it and put an outfit on,’” she testified; a man, invited by Mr. Combs, came over to have sex with her, Jane said. Jane testified that Mr. Combs held out an Ecstasy pill, ordering her to have sex with the escort in front of him. When she repeatedly told him that she did not want to, she said, Mr. Combs — his face “an inch away” from hers — said to her, “Is this coercion?”
“I’m not a porn star,” she texted Mr. Combs that fall. “I’m not an animal. I need a break.” A month later, Ms. Ventura filed her lawsuit and Jane was stunned to see her own experiences mirrored in it. “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma,” she wrote to him three days after Ms. Ventura’s suit was filed. “It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish.”
On cross-examination, Jane described the happier, loving sides of her relationship with Mr. Combs, and was questioned about times she hired male pornographic actors for hotel nights and expressed enthusiasm for the encounters in texts. When interpreting those messages for the jury, Jane said she was often responding to perceived pressure from him and wanted to please Mr. Combs: “I resent him for knowing how much I loved him and knowing I couldn’t say no to him.” In total, Jane testified for more than 24 hours over six days on the stand.
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 Mr. Combs’s Los Angeles-area mansion during a raid in March 2024: about 200 bottles of baby oil had been recovered and “900 or so” bottles of Astroglide. Jonathan Perez, another former personal assistant to Mr. Combs, testified about setting up for “king nights” at hotels. He described an episode when another Combs staff member showed him a portion of a video of 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. Asked if he ever got the feeling that Jane “was hesitant of joining the ‘king nights,’” Mr. Perez said no.
The day also featured an unexpected appearance from Ye, formerly Kanye West, who arrived at the courthouse around 11:20 a.m. to support Mr. Combs. After being directed to an overflow room, he made a quick exit.
DAY BY DAY
June 9: How a Girlfriend Became a Government Witness: Sean Combs Trial Takeaways
June 10: Combs’s Defense Depicts Ex-Girlfriend as Willing Sex Partner: Trial Takeaways
June 11: Latest Trial Takeaways: Combs’s Lawyers Challenge Ex on Escort Sex
June 12: Sean Combs’s Ex ‘Jane’ Ends Grueling Testimony With Hugs for Both Sides
June 13: At Sean Combs’s Trial, Talk of Baby Oil, Guns and a Guest: Ye
The post The Sean Combs Trial: A Timeline of the Testimony appeared first on New York Times.
