Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' lawyer seeks to undermine mogul's former assistant at NYC sex trafficking trial
NEW YORK — Sean 'Diddy' Combs' defense team Friday sought to undermine claims by the mogul's former assistant that he raped, sexually assaulted and otherwise abused her throughout her employment.
Mia, the second of three alleged victims slated to testify at Combs' Manhattan federal court trial, under questioning by prosecutors Thursday, said he had habitually traumatized her after her hiring in 2009. She has taken the stand under a pseudonym, and the judge has ordered members of the press and public not to sketch her likeness.
The former assistant alleged Combs sexually assaulted her at his 40th birthday party at The Plaza hotel in Manhattan in 2009, raped her not long after at his Los Angeles home, forced her to perform oral sex at another one of his California properties, and targeted her on other occasions that her memory was foggy about.
Seeking to cast doubt on Mia's accounts on cross-examination, Combs' defense attorney Brian Steel on Friday pulled up several effusive social media posts she had published online, like saying that Combs inspired her and was one of her greatest friends in an Instagram post for his 40th, which also said, 'I love you.' Mia said the social media site was a place to make it look like she had a great life, even if it wasn't.
Of a 2013 image of Mia, Combs and Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura at a music festival, Steel asked, 'You're standing right next to and leaning toward him — the man who terrorized you?'
'Yes,' Mia said.
In addition to the alleged sexual assaults, Mia on Thursday further accused Combs of leaving her with PTSD by subjecting her to regular physical and emotional abuse, frequently berating her and hurling objects at her like a computer, a bowl of spaghetti and his phone. Mia said she'd seen Combs violently targeting Ventura many times and corroborated several such accounts the 'Me & U' singer told jurors when she took the stand.
'Weren't you living in fear of the man who took your innocence?' Steel asked Mia at another point in his cross-exam, pressing her on photos and social media activity.
'I was in fear anytime Puff was not happy, yes,' she said. 'Because I wanted to make sure I was safe.'
Later, asked how she could refer to her alleged assailant as a friend, Mia said the dynamic was complicated.
'He was vulnerable with me quite a bit, so I would feel responsible for helping him and then I would feel bad for him. I don't know,' Mia said. 'I mean, I can describe it, but I'm not a psychologist or a therapist.'
Steel notably represented Jeffery 'Young Thug' Williams in the Young Slime Life racketeering case, the longest criminal trial held in Georgia. The rapper's case resulted in him pleading guilty last year to drug, gun, and gang charges and effectively receiving a lenient term of time served.
Combs, 55, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, transporting individuals for prostitution and related offenses. He has pleaded not guilty. The entrepreneur's lawyers have acknowledged he committed domestic violence but say he's innocent of the crimes charged.
The Bad Boy Records co-founder, who launched the careers of iconic artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige, was long considered among the most influential figures in the hip-hop industry and amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through his various businesses, including his music and media companies and clothing brand Sean John.
Starting in the 1990s, his annual star-studded 'White Party' in East Hampton, Long Island, hosted some of the most famous names on the planet, and by 2017, Forbes estimated he was nearing billionaire status.
Prosecutors say that behind the veil, from 2004 to 2024, Combs' lifestyle was criminal and involved regularly coercing vulnerable women in his orbit into dayslong, dehumanizing sexual performances with random men found on the internet, recordings of which were used as blackmail. They allege a network of staff helped bring his twisted fantasies to life, keep victims compliant, and invoke fear in anyone who challenged him through sex trafficking, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice, kidnapping and arson.
In addition to Ventura and Mia, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office is expected to call a single mom who alleges she was coerced into sexual performances by Combs. She will testify under the pseudonym Jane.
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Business Insider
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These so-called "freak off" performances were first revealed in Ventura's quickly settled 2023 lawsuit. (Combs paid Ventura $20 million.) Ventura's allegations have since been corroborated at trial by freak off videos she'd saved over the years, by hotel records, and by testimony from eye-witnesses, including sex workers. One exotic dancer told jurors he witnessed Combs beating Ventura twice during freak offs in Manhattan between 2012 and 2014. "Bitch, when I tell you to come here, come now, not later," the dancer recalled Combs saying during one of more than a dozen beatings recounted at trial by witnesses and Ventura herself. Proof of sex trafficking Prosecutors say Ventura was sex-trafficked, meaning coerced into crossing state lines to participate in commercial sex acts (commercial because they involved paid sex workers). They say the violent, 2016 InterContinental hotel hallway video is unavoidable proof that she was sex-trafficked by force. 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He loved it when she dressed in lingerie and "high stripper heels." He'd play pornography and tell her to fantasize about the men on screen. "Do you like what you see there?" she said he'd ask her of these men. "Do you want that?" Then one night in 2021 at his Miami mansion, as the pornography rolled, he told her, "I can make this fantasy a reality if you'd like that." She loved him, she explained, and agreeing made him so happy. So she said yes. Jane said she soon realized she'd opened up "Pandora's box." Gone were the romantic trips and dinner dates of their first four months. Combs wanted freak offs — by now he was calling them "hotel nights" — nearly every time they saw each other over the next three years, up until his arrest in 2024. "It was just a door I was unable to shut," she told the jury. Jane must show force, fraud, or coercion Jane's testimony has so far described some of the elements of sex trafficking. She said she reluctantly crossed state lines, traveling from the East Coast to Miami to Los Angeles, to engage with paid sex workers. But her testimony, which continues next week, has yet to show that Combs sex trafficked her using force, fraud, or coercion, as the indictment requires. She instead described intensive psychological and financial pressure. She said she agreed to hotel nights because she loved him, and because he'd moved her to Los Angeles from the East Coast and was paying rent and other costs for her and her child. And when she told him she no longer wanted to do hotel nights, he would brush her off, or make what may or may not rise to the level of a coercive threat to withdraw that financial support. "If you want to break up, that's fine," she testified he'd tell her. "Do you need, like, what, three more months in the house? Because I'm not about to be paying for a woman's rent that I'm not even seeing." Prosecutors have said Combs defrauded Jane by promising romantic dinners and trips, only to renege and persuade her into another hotel night. They have also said Combs was brutally violent with Jane, though it's unclear how they plan to draw a link between that violence and sex trafficking by force. Meanwhile, the defense will likely use hundreds of affectionate and erotic texts between Jane and Combs to argue that she is a bitter ex who willingly suffered any demands and violence, and who continues to have her expenses paid by Combs in return. Asked late Friday who is currently paying her rent, Jane answered, "Sean is." Jane pushes back Prosecutors have also hinted that Jane is a witness to obstruction of justice, one of the underlying crimes they can use to prove the racketeering charge. 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She told the jury that Combs raped or sexually assaulted her at least four times throughout her eight years working as his personal assistant and as an executive for his short-lived movie company, Revolt Films. As with Jane and Cassie, Mia described in dozens of texts and social media posts struggling with her financial dependence on Combs and her fear of his violent nature, even as she spoke warmly of him. Mia supported the Ventura sex-trafficking claim. She said she saw Combs throw Ventura to the ground and "crack her head open." But Mia was not herself sex-trafficked, according to prosecutors — she is instead a racketeering witness. Forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice Mia's testimony may be used to support an underlying racketeering crime of forced labor. She told the jury that Combs made her work as many as five days in a row with little or no sleep. Combs was a volatile boss who stole her phone and passport during arguments that turned violent, she said. Her testimony may also support an underlying crime of bribery and obstruction of justice. Mia told the jury that Combs' bodyguard, Damion "D-Roc" Butler, called and texted her repeatedly in the weeks after Ventura's lawsuit, spinning the "Puff and Cass" relationship as normal, and offering her "a gift." Capricorn Clark, his kidnapping accuser In her testimony, Capricorn Clark, Combs' former personal assistant and marketing exec, supported the Ventura sex-trafficking charge, describing Ventura as docile, trapped, and frequently subjected to beatings. During one beating, Clark said, Combs stopped briefly to warn her, "If I jumped in he was going to fuck me up, too." Kid Cudi, kidnapping, and extortion Clark is primarily a racketeering witness. Her testimony supports the underlying crimes of kidnapping and extortion. Clark said Combs was so enraged by Ventura's brief 2011 romance with rival rapper Kid Cudi that he forced Clark at gunpoint to ride with him and a bodyguard to Cudi's nearby house in Hollywood Hills. "He just said get dressed, we're going to go kill this —" and here he used the N-word. Cudi — whose given name is Scott Mescudi — told the jury that he arrived home to find his dog locked in the bathroom and a table full of Christmas presents unwrapped and rifled through. Clark also corroborated trial testimony by Ventura and her mom, Regina Ventura, concerning what prosecutors call a $20,000 extortion threat. The mom said she wired Combs the money after he threatened to release explicit sex tapes of her daughter. Dawn Richard, death-threat witness Former Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard testified to a brutal 2009 beating at Combs' rented Los Angeles mansion that supports both the Ventura sex-trafficking-by-force allegation and racketeering. 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Bryana "Bana" Bongolan, who says Combs dangled her over a balcony Bryana "Bana" Bongolan, a marketing director, told jurors she and Ventura are longtime friends. They shared a lot of drugs over the years, she said — including cocaine, ketamine, and GHB. They also shared trauma, she told the jury. She once saw Combs throw a knife at Ventura, who she said threw it back. "I'm the devil and I could kill you," she testified Combs told her in 2016, seemingly at random, when she and Ventura were with him on a Malibu beach. Combs, she said, gave no explanation for the threat. A violent, criminal racket Bongolan's most important testimony — feeding the prosecution's argument that Combs stood at the head of a violent, criminal "racket" — described him picking her up and holding her over the railing of a 17th-story balcony in September 2016. "You know what the fuck you did!" she said Combs kept shouting as he hoisted her into the air. Asked if she knew what he meant, she testified, "I still have no idea." On cross-examination, defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland highlighted inconsistencies between what Bongolan has said in a $10 million lawsuit, in her interviews with prosecutors, and in her testimony. The defense lawyer also leaned into the defense contention that Combs' accusers have financial reasons to falsely implicate him. Westmoreland questioned Bongolan hard about her and Ventura's lawsuits against Combs. In one example, Bongolan's ongoing lawsuit accuses Combs of violent sexual assault, an allegation not made in her June 4 testimony — though Bongolan did tell jurors that Combs' hands cupped her breasts before he hoisted her up from under her arms.
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