For years, anyone who wanted access to Sean Combs had to go through Kristina Khorram first.
An employee at his company since 2013, becoming his chief of staff in 2020, Ms. Khorram was the mogul’s “right hand,” as he once called her. Before leaving her role in the last year, she commanded a rotating army of personal assistants for Mr. Combs and was the central go-between for his multifaceted business empire.
While much of her work related to Mr. Combs’s businesses, she also made doctor’s appointments for his girlfriends. Made sure their rent was paid. Apprised them of the boss’s daily moods.
“Don’t know how I’d function without her,” Mr. Combs wrote in a Facebook shout-out in 2021.
The actions of Ms. Khorram and others who worked for Mr. Combs over the years are now being scrutinized in federal court, where prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Mr. Combs is guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, asserting that he ran a “criminal enterprise.”
Ms. Khorram, 38, has not been charged in the case, has not been called as a witness and has denied wrongdoing in the past. But her presence is woven through various accounts given at the trial of wrangling hotel logistics for the sex marathons that are at the heart of the case, or of arranging for drugs to be transported by plane to the music mogul.
“Her duties as Mr. Combs’s chief of staff were extremely broad,” Meredith Foster, a prosecutor, told the judge this month. “They involved setting up hotel nights,” she added, “facilitating the transportation of narcotics, various items such as that.”
During the trial, prosecutors have described the behavior of various bodyguards and staff at Mr. Combs’s companies, as well as Ms. Khorram, as they argue to the jury that the conduct of the employees was not just the work of dutiful assistants, but of racketeering co-conspirators.
Mr. Combs has denied all the charges and his lawyers have denied the existence of any racketeering enterprise, saying that his employees have been engaged in lawful and legitimate business. Alexandra Shapiro, a lawyer for the famed producer, has also argued in court that the government has not proved that Ms. Khorram is part of a conspiracy.
“To establish that someone is a co-conspirator,” Ms. Shapiro said out of the presence of the jury two weeks ago, “there has to be evidence that they agreed with Mr. Combs and/or others to engage in a racketeering enterprise that had as its goal committing two predicate acts. And I don’t think they’re remotely close to that.”
A lawyer for Ms. Khorram declined to comment on anything related to the case, including the government’s depiction of her client.
As central as she has been to Mr. Combs’s life, Ms. Khorram, also known as K.K., was little known outside of the mogul’s business circles before his recent legal troubles. A 2009 graduate of North Carolina State University with a degree in business administration, she was hired by Mr. Combs after she held a series of marketing and business development jobs in fashion and media, according to a deleted LinkedIn page.
Her public profile changed after Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, filed a bombshell lawsuit against Mr. Combs in 2023, accusing him of rape, physical abuse and coercing her into lengthy sexual encounters with male prostitutes. Though not named in that case, Ms. Khorram was listed as a co-defendant in some of the dozens of lawsuits that followed in which Mr. Combs was accused of sexual abuse.
In those suits, the accusations against her included procuring drugs for Mr. Combs and enabling sexual assaults, which she has strongly denied.
“For months, horrific accusations have been made about me in various lawsuits regarding my former boss,” Ms. Khorram said in a statement in March. “These false allegations of my involvement are causing irreparable and incalculable damage to my reputation and the emotional well-being of myself and my family. I have never condoned or aided and abetted the sexual assault of anyone. Nor have I ever drugged anyone.”
Through her lawyer, Ms. Khorram declined to comment for this article.
Dana Tran, a friend of Ms. Khorram’s and the mother of Mr. Combs’s youngest child, his daughter Love, said the portrait of “K.K.” being portrayed in court bears no similarity to the woman she knows as Ms. Combs’s energetic, hard-working former aide.
“She coordinated a lot of his life, but not anything against anyone’s will,” Ms. Tran said in a phone interview. She added: “I’ve never seen K.K. break the law ever. She wouldn’t make an illegal U-turn.”
Ms. Khorram has never appeared in the courtroom, but her name has come up myriad times in witness testimony and text messages as the government portrays her as Mr. Combs’s intermediary and fixer.
“Jane,” a former girlfriend who said she felt pressured by Mr. Combs to participate in the encounters she called “hotel nights,” testified it was Ms. Khorram who helped make appointments for her to get dental veneers or nipple piercings at Mr. Combs’s request.
Sometimes Ms. Khorram was a friend. After “Mia,” another employee, lost her job at a film and television division of Mr. Combs’s company, she texted Ms. Khorram: “I’m going to kill myself. My life is over.” Within seconds, Ms. Khorram checked in with her, begging Mia to take her call. Once Mia confirmed she was OK, Ms. Khorram texted, “Love you to death Boo Boo!,” adding a red heart emoji.
(Jane and Mia both testified under pseudonyms to protect their privacy.)
And when Jane appealed to “K.K.” — whom she called Mr. Combs’s “right brain” — for help because he threatened to share sex tapes of her, Ms. Khorram told Jane: “Don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen with these tapes.”
“She’s a nice girl,” Kerry Morgan, Ms. Ventura’s friend, testified about Ms. Khorram. “She always seemed very innocent and she’s always trying to help everybody.”
In other testimony, Ms. Khorram’s interactions were described as less innocuous.
Jane testified that Mr. Combs twice asked her to transport drugs for him in her flight luggage. The first time, Jane said, she asked Ms. Khorram if that was safe.
“She said, ‘It’s fine, I do it all the time,’” Jane said on the stand.
Some Combs employees testified that Ms. Khorram was aware of bouts of violence by their boss.
Deonte Nash, a stylist, said he told Ms. Khorram and another stylist that he had witnessed Mr. Combs be violent with Ms. Ventura. Asked how Ms. Khorram responded, Mr. Nash said, “That she would talk to him.”
The jury has heard differing accounts about what, if anything, Ms. Khorram and other assistants knew about the sex marathons Mr. Combs arranged between his girlfriends and hired male escorts, which have been referred to as hotel nights, “freak-offs” or “wild king nights.” The government contends the sex sessions were coerced. The defense says they were consensual.
Ms. Ventura and Jane both testified that the events were a closely held secret. When Jane was asked under cross-examination whether Ms. Khorram knew that escorts were joining her and Mr. Combs at hotels, she answered, “I don’t think so.”
But the government has also presented evidence suggesting Ms. Khorram was closely involved in setting up hotels for some of these encounters. Text messages between Ms. Khorram and some of Mr. Combs’s assistants and security personnel depicted her as playing a role in having others secure various supplies for the encounters — Gatorade, chicken noodle soup, outfits and thousands of dollars in cash — along with coordinating the arrival of escorts.
“Heads up,” Ms. Khorram once texted another aide. “He’s probably about to do wild king tonight.”
In its pushback on this evidence, the defense suggested that Ms. Khorram’s role in helping arrange logistics for hotel nights, which took place over more than a decade, was infrequent. And the Combs team has consistently argued that everyone associated with them, including Mr. Combs, viewed these events as consensual.
The government has presented evidence to suggest that Ms. Khorram was also essential in damage control when one of the freak-offs ran off the rails in 2016. In an episode that has become central to the case, Mr. Combs was captured on security video striking, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura in a hallway of a Los Angeles hotel. Mr. Combs can be seen running around the hallway in a towel in the aftermath of what Cassie would testify was a freak-off.
Eddy Garcia, a security officer at the hotel, said Ms. Khorram asked him for the tape that day. He said he deflected, saying that she could ask hotel management or get a subpoena. Mr. Garcia said Ms. Khorram was not easily dissuaded.
About an hour later, he recalled, she showed up in person at the hotel; he met her in the lobby, and again said no. That evening she called again and put Mr. Combs on the line, who pleaded “if this got out it could ruin him,” Mr. Garcia testified.
Ultimately, he said, his boss approved a deal where Mr. Combs would pay $50,000 for the tape. Mr. Garcia said the mogul gave him an address, and he took a USB drive with the footage to a high-rise building. Inside, he testified, a bodyguard took him to a room where Mr. Combs and Ms. Khorram were waiting.
Mr. Garcia handed over the drive. Mr. Combs, he testified, gave him a brown paper bag with $100,000 in it, and had him sign two documents: a nondisclosure agreement and another attesting that he had handed over the only copy of the video.
“Eddy, my angel,” Mr. Combs said with a smile when Mr. Garcia arrived, the officer testified.
Mr. Garcia said he could remember some detail of the meeting, such as the fact that it took place in a small room furnished with a couch and a coffee table.
He also recalled that Mr. Combs attempted some small talk to make him comfortable, and that he “asked his assistant to bring me a tea.”
Ms. Khorram, he said, got it for him.
Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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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