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 Christian Combs, one of Mr. Combs’s sons. 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 and cover up a variety of crimes, including kidnapping, arson and obstruction of justice. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty.
Ye’s presence in the courthouse 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 an overflow room on the 23rd floor that was mostly empty. With Christian Combs and Charlucci Finney, a friend of Mr. Combs’s who has been present throughout the trial, Ye watched a closed-circuit video feed as the proceedings were set to resume after a break.
But by then, a crowd had begun to gather and Ye left, taking an elevator downstairs. The closest exit to the building, on Pearl Street, was crowded with families celebrating after becoming naturalized citizens. So Ye — trailed by crowds of reporters and onlookers — exited on Worth Street. He entered a black sedan and rode away just before noon.
Mr. Combs and Ye have stayed in touch while Mr. Combs has been detained in a Brooklyn jail ahead of trial. A leaked clip of a phone call this spring included snippets of Mr. Combs encouraging Ye to make new music and promising to call again.
Last month, a Ye song leaked that was called “Diddy Free,” which included the lyrics “not going to sleep till we see Diddy free.”
The 23rd day of the trial began on Friday with a federal agent 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.
As prosecutors displayed a map of Mr. Combs’s sprawling home, Special Agent Andre LaMon, of Homeland Security Investigations, highlighted the locations where the items had been found: in the garage, a security room and Mr. Combs’s master bedroom and closet.
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 200 bottles of the baby oil had been recovered and “900 or so” bottles of Astroglide.
One image shown to the jurors captured more than a dozen cardboard boxes of Astroglide, packaged in bulk, arranged in two piles in the garage.
Agent LaMon, who was the lead agent on the search and said he was part of a group dedicated to human trafficking cases, was asked under cross-examination by Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, whether he had ever before seized lubricant during a search.
“It’s only been this one,” the officer said.
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 had the ability to 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 been located within a locked safe in the security room once he arrived to inspect them.
In night stands in Mr. Combs’s bedroom, and in a nearby closet, agents found drugs including ketamine and MDMA.
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.”
Agent LaMon’s appearance followed the longest stretch of testimony by a single witness during the first five weeks of Mr. Combs’s trial. On Thursday, a woman appearing under the pseudonym Jane completed more than 24 hours on the stand over six days.
The detailed questioning of Jane, who was in a relationship with Mr. Combs from 2021 until his arrest in September, illustrated a central tension in the case: whether the two women he is accused of sex trafficking had been coerced, or had made their own decisions to take part in encounters with Mr. Combs and the various men they had hired for sex.
In addition to Jane, Mr. Combs is accused of sex trafficking Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who had also been in a long-term, on-and-off relationship with Mr. Combs before he began seeing Jane.
Under questioning from both prosecutors and the defense, Jane said she had taken part in those encounters, which she called “hotel nights,” to please her boyfriend. Once he began paying the $10,000-a-month rent for the home where she still lives, she was worried that Mr. Combs would revoke his financial support.
But the defense also presented numerous text messages and other communications from throughout their three-year relationship, including some in which Jane reflected positively on hotel nights and gushed lovingly to him afterward.
“He’s just so good at showering me with love and affection, with all the sexual exploitation in between, and then showering me with love and affection and all the sex and violating exploitation in between,” she testified under her final questioning from the prosecution. “It’s just so confusing.”
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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