After weeks of graphic testimony that detailed drug-fueled sex marathons, jurors weighing the fate of Sean Combs saw for the first time videos taken of the sex sessions at the heart of the case.
The footage, from 2012 and 2014, involved Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, who testified that she participated in the encounters — known as “freak-offs” — out of fear of retribution from Mr. Combs, who repeatedly beat her during their relationship.
The sensitive footage was not shown to the full courtroom, after the judge in the case sealed it from reporters and members of the public who attend the trial. Jurors watched the videos while wearing headphones and looking at screens that had been outfitted with privacy guards. Several jurors winced. One, frowning, snatched the headphones off after the first clip was played.
The videos were shown in several brief clips, about 30 seconds each. Some footage was from an October 2012 stay at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan, where two male escorts were invited to meet Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs.
Mr. Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which revolve around his relationships with Ms. Ventura and another former girlfriend, known in court under the pseudonym Jane. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have asserted that the two women repeatedly consented to the nights of sex.
The defense has called the footage “powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion.”
During four days of testimony at the start of the trial, Ms. Ventura described freak-offs as unwanted, unrelenting sex marathons that made her feel humiliated, explaining that she agreed to participate out of fear and a desire to please Mr. Combs. “He brought the concept to me when I was 22, and I would do absolutely anything for him and I did,” she testified.
Ms. Ventura said that Mr. Combs directed which sex acts she would engage in with male escorts while he masturbated and sometimes filmed. And she said that several times, when Mr. Combs was upset with her, he threatened to release the videos.
The videos shown to jurors came from devices that Ms. Ventura turned over to the government.
Before jurors saw the clips, prosecutors presented a trove of text and audio messages that involved the music mogul’s former chief of staff, seeking to weave together the evidence in their racketeering conspiracy case.
Though the former employee, Kristina Khorram, has not testified, she has been a main character at the trial, where prosecutors have sought to prove that an inner circle of staff members helped facilitate sex trafficking. Mr. Combs has referred to Ms. Khorram as his “right hand.”
The messages presented by prosecutors showed Ms. Khorram’s involvement in directing assistants to handle logistics for Mr. Combs’s stays at luxury hotels. Prosecutors say that for years, Mr. Combs’s staff booked him hotel rooms, stocking them with baby oil and drugs, for the events known as freak-offs, “hotel nights” and “wild king nights.”
“Can you run four thousand dollars cash to PD’s hotel?” Ms. Khorram texted one of Mr. Combs’s assistants in 2016, using a nickname for Mr. Combs. Earlier, she had asked the assistant to equip a Four Seasons hotel room with Gatorade, water and chicken noodle soup.
The defense has asserted that his inner circle was working for an entirely lawful business, not a criminal conspiracy.
“Not one witness will get into this courtroom and will take that witness stand and tell you that they were part of any ‘Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization Act’ enterprise,” said Teny Geragos, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, at the start of the trial, referring to the federal law underlying the case.
“And the reason is simple,” she went on, “There was not one.”
In outlining the final witnesses scheduled to testify this week, prosecutors have not signaled that Ms. Khorram will take the stand. Instead, they have been seeking to underscore her role through years of communications.
The text messages were presented through the testimony of an employee from the prosecutor’s office who reviewed extensive charts containing the communications.
During cross-examination, the defense suggested that the texts about nights at hotels told an incomplete story of Ms. Khorram’s work for Mr. Combs. His lawyers highlighted text messages that showed efforts to keep business expenses and personal expenses separate in an attempt to support their argument that Mr. Combs’s private sex life had “nothing to do” with his businesses.
The government seized Ms. Khorram’s cellphones in March 2024, when she was with Mr. Combs at a Florida airport, on the same day that agents raided two of the mogul’s homes.
In the messages, Ms. Khorram referred to Mr. Combs wanting a “wild king night.” Messages involving Ms. Khorram and, at times, Mr. Combs’s security employees detailed purchases from a person referred to as “Guido,” who has previously been identified by witnesses as a drug dealer.
The prosecution also highlighted Ms. Khorram’s interactions with Ms. Ventura and Jane.
Ms. Ventura testified that the violence in her relationship contributed to her compliance in the sexual encounters. Jane said she started to feel obligated to participate because Mr. Combs would bring up the $10,000-a-month rent that he paid for her home.
Jurors saw texts from 2017 in which Ms. Ventura appeared to address Mr. Combs’s violence, telling Ms. Khorram “no one deserves being dragged by their hair.” In that exchange, Ms. Khorram asked if Ms. Ventura was OK and told her she would try to talk to Mr. Combs.
In 2023, after Ms. Ventura filed a lawsuit alleging years of physical and sexual abuse by Mr. Combs, messages showed that Ms. Khorram was privy to the growing conflict between Mr. Combs and Jane over the sex nights.
Around that time, when Jane was telling him that she had been traumatized by the events, Ms. Khorram urged Mr. Combs to be honest with her, saying, “We all know what your kryptonite is and where you don’t make the best choices.” In that exchange, Mr. Combs texted Ms. Khorram asking for her to ensure that Jane’s rent had been paid.
The next month, Jane texted Ms. Khorram that Mr. Combs had threatened to send videos of the sex nights to her child’s father. “Mind you, these are sex tapes where I’m heavily drugged and doing things that he asked of me for the past three years that I am currently recovering from,” Jane wrote to Ms. Khorram. Jane previously testified that she later had a conversation with Ms. Khorram in which the aide assured her that “nothing is going to happen with these tapes.”
At the start of Monday, the judge dismissed a juror after the man gave inconsistent information about where he lives, raising concerns that he had been seeking a spot on the jury of the high-profile case.
Lawyers for Mr. Combs have acknowledged that the jury is diverse, but strenuously opposed the juror’s removal, arguing that the dismissal of the man, who is Black, would unfairly disadvantage Mr. Combs. The alternate juror who will replace him is a white man.
Prosecutors raised the issue last week after the juror, in casual conversation with a court staff member, said he had recently moved in with his girlfriend in New Jersey. During jury selection, the juror, who works in accounting for the Department of Corrections in New York, had said he lived in the Bronx with his fiancée. The prosecution said the inconsistency demonstrated a concerning “lack of candor.”
Judge Arun Subramanian said that during discussions with the man — Juror No. 6 — in his robing room, the inconsistencies about where he lived only deepened. The judge said Juror No. 6’s explanations raised the concern that he was “shading answers” to try to get on the jury originally — and to stay on the jury once his qualifications were questioned.
“There’s nothing that the juror could say at this point that would put the genie back in the bottle,” the judge said on Monday.
Last week, after prosecutors first raised concerns about the juror, a lawyer for Mr. Combs accused the government of making a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.” The jury is racially mixed, but the defense has noted that Juror No. 6 was one of two Black men.
Judge Subramanian quickly rejected the accusation, saying there was no basis for it.
“To be perfectly clear, from the outset of this proceeding to the current date, there has been no evidence and no showing of any kind of any biased conduct or biased manner of proceeding from the government,” he said.
Anusha Bayya, Olivia Bensimon and Ben Sisario contributed reporting.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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