Day 1 of Sean Combs’ trial: Prosecutors expose two decades of organized crime, defense says victims are out for money

A week after its official start, the trial of Sean Combs (also known as Diddy or Puff Daddy) finally began Monday. He faces five counts of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution, plus approximately 50 years in prison. Jury selection took place last week, a complex task that culminated Monday with the selection of the 12 people (eight men and four women between the ages of 30 and 70, plus six alternates) who will have to decide Combs’ guilt or innocence. After that process was complete, verbal exchanges between the prosecution and the musician’s defense attorneys began, and the first witnesses appeared.

Anticipation for the trial is peak, and the U.S. media is following the developments minute by minute. Early Monday morning, there was chaos and lines of curious onlookers outside the courthouse, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in Manhattan. Those present saw the businessman’s relatives enter, including his mother and some of his children (he has seven, most of whom are adults), as well as prosecutors and lawyers. Combs was not seen, but reporters inside the courtroom stated that he was calm. Dressed in a gray sweater, he occasionally took notes, greeted people he recognized in the audience, and occasionally read from the Bible. During the testimony of the day’s two witnesses, he was reportedly tense.

The prosecution presented their arguments regarding the charges against Combs, before the defense made its opening statements; it was revealed that there are four victims in the case, simply referred to as 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the court documents. On the prosecution side, led by Jay Clayton, the newly appointed district attorney, Maurene Comey is the lead prosecutor and the one with the most experience. She previously worked on the trials of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. But it was another prosecutor, Emily Johnson, who delivered the powerful opening statement. She asserted that Combs was responsible for clearly structured crimes. “To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Johnson said. “A cultural icon, a businessman — larger than life. But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise."

“During this trial you are going to hear about 20 years of the defendant’s crimes,” Johnson stated. “But he didn’t do it alone. He had an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees who helped him commit crimes and helped him cover them up,” she added, recounting how Combs often enjoyed being treated “like a king,” getting everything he wanted, from women and drugs to orgies known as “freak-offs.”

Johnson spoke about one of the protagonists in the trial, Casandra Ventura, a singer known as Cassie, who was the artist’s girlfriend on and off for a decade. She was the first to file a complaint against him, in November 2023, although she withdrew the lawsuit a day later after reaching an out-of-court settlement. But the prosecution has continued to pursue the matter.

When they met, she was a 19-year-old aspiring model — 17 years younger than him — and Combs promised her a 10-album music career; a pattern that has since been repeated by his hundreds of victims. They began dating in 2005, and the prosecution has alleged that by 2009 he was already abusing her: the prosecutor recounted how he threw her to the floor of a car and stamped on her face. And she gave another example: when Combs learned that Ventura was starting to see someone else, he woke up an employee in the middle of the night and told him he was going to kill the man. They entered his home, but he wasn’t there, so they went after Ventura instead and beat her up. “Her livelihood and safety depended on keeping the defendant happy,” Johnson explained, referring to Ventura’s difficulty in leaving the relationship and why she initially agreed to participate in those dark parties, the freak-offs, even though she didn’t want to. Combs later threatened to leak videos of her with prostitutes at those parties. He “had the power to ruin her life.” The prosecution said Combs and Ventura “were unfaithful and jealous,” but “only one had power.”

The prosecution also presented the case of a second victim, a woman they’ve dubbed “Jane,” a single mother who began dating Combs in 2020 and also agreed to participate in a freak-out, thinking it would be a one-time thing, but who soon realized it was a recurring event. She always asked the singer to use a condom, which he refused. On one occasion, according to the prosecution, the musician made her take so many drugs that she ended up vomiting, and he told her to hurry up so he could return to his prostitute. He tried to choke her by grabbing her neck, leaving bruises on her face from his blows. He also threatened her with videos and controlled her financially, paying her rent.

A third case, involving a woman known by the pseudonym Mia, has also been exposed. She is apparently a former employee who was also raped by Combs, who forced her to perform oral sex on him and then got into her bed to “penetrate her against her will,” according to the prosecutor. This demonstrates that he also committed crimes within the workplace. The three testimonies were accompanied by videos, messages, and evidence.

Fifty minutes of defense argument

The prosecutors preempted the defense: “This case is not about the private sexual preferences of a celebrity,” they stated. Combs’ defense attorneys, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos — daughter of the well-known attorney Mark Geragos, who, among other clients, handles the Menendez brothers’ case — knew exactly where they were going. In their 50-minute argument, they presented the case as one that had been exaggerated in public when it was a private matter. Furthermore, they sought to portray the victims as women who knew what they were doing and were only after money.

“This case is about Sean Combs’ private, personal sex life, which has nothing to do with his lawful businesses,” the attorney asserted, admitting that Combs may be violent and have anger issues, use drugs, and even be disliked, but that he is not guilty of these accusations. “You might think he is a jerk, that he is mean. But he is not charged with being mean. He is not charged with being a jerk. He is charged with running a racketeering enterprise.” For Geragos, his relationships were “consensual threesomes by adults” and not sexual abuse, as hundreds of victims have reported.

Furthermore, she portrayed the victims as “strong, capable, and they were in love with him,” women who had consensual relationships with Combs. “Being a willing participant in your own sex life is not sex trafficking,” Geragos insisted. “The evidence will show a toxic and dysfunctional relationship between two adults,” she told the jury. “You may think, wow, that is a really bad boyfriend. But the evidence will show you a capable, strong woman, willingly engaged in their relationship.” She concluded: “When these people testify, ask yourself why. For many of them, the answer is money.”

You might think he is a jerk, that he is mean. But he is not charged with being mean. He is not charged with being a jerk. He is charged with running a racketeering enterprise”

Teny Geragos, defense attorney for Sean Combs

What they have acknowledged is that domestic violence occurred, “a bad, illegal problem and something the law addresses” Geragos stated. “We will not shy away from the things Mr. Combs did,” she asserted, without being able to deny the hotel security video footage, similar to that leaked a year ago by CNN, showing Combs chasing, dragging, and hitting Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. The video provides “overwhelming evidence of domestic violence,” Geragos said, but added that it does not provide “evidence of sex trafficking.”

After the defense statement, the prosecution presented their first witness. This was Israel Florez, a Los Angeles police officer who was a security guard at the Intercontinental Hotel in California in 2016, where the incident took place. According to the investigation, Combs purchased the recordings and security tapes for $100,000. The jury saw the video, but at a slower speed than the CNN video.

Florez said that he went up to the sixth floor that day, where the incident took place, and saw “a woman in distress” with a black eye, who told him she wanted to grab her purse and leave; Combs sitting, wrapped in a towel and with a “devilish stare” on his face, but he didn’t seem drunk or drugged; and a broken vase on the floor. Combs offered him a large sum of cash in what he understood to be outright blackmail: “He was telling me, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’” She left in a luxury car, and one of the hotel staff went up to “remind Combs of the hotel rules.” Combs got angry and took the employee’s phone, thinking he was being recorded. Florez explained that they didn’t call the police because Ventura didn’t want to answer questions, just to leave.

After Florez, the prosecution presented a second witness, a man named Daniel Phillip, who explained that in 2012 or 2013, he was paid to perform as a stripper at a supposed party at a Manhattan hotel, and that this culminated in several encounters of prostitution. According to Phillip, it was Ventura who greeted him in her underwear and paid him, explaining that she wanted to do “something special” with her partner, without telling him that it was Combs. When he arrived, Combs was wearing a cap and a bandana over his face and told Phillip he was in the import business, although he recognized him. Things then escalated, and he was asked to have sex with Ventura in Combs’ presence. They had several encounters — he said they were recorded a couple of times — for which he received between $700 and $6,000, and he recalls Combs yelling and hitting Ventura on occasion. In fact, he claims he returned to these encounters worried about whether the singer was okay and to check on her condition. If he didn’t call the authorities, it was because he saw Combs as “someone with unlimited power”: “Chances are even if I did go to the police, that I might still end up losing my life.”

Phillip’s testimony was very explicit: Combs gave him very specific instructions on how to have sex with Ventura, asked him to use body oil — the prosecution’s investigation found hundreds of bottles in Combs’ home — and sat in a corner masturbating. The jury was asked if they felt capable of hearing such testimony, and some said they weren’t. In fact, the defendant’s three daughters left the courtroom during the hearing.

The trial is expected to last approximately eight weeks. It will be held, barring any changes, every weekday. The 12 jurors will take notes in numbered notebooks, which they will submit to judicial authorities at the end of the day. They will then decide whether or not Combs is guilty of the five crimes he is accused of.

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