Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering trial is entering its third full week, and the pace of news has been dizzying. Every day, headlines share the latest stories about abuse, escorts, baby oil, beefs, and more.
But in some ways, the stop-the-presses moments are secondary. This trial—like pretty much all trials—is primarily a battle of stories. The government in their indictment, and in the trial thus far, are painting Diddy’s behavior in one light. His nine attorneys are doing their best to give an alternate explanation—one that fits some of the same facts concerning Diddy’s freak offs, violence, and drug use.
The government still has about four weeks’ worth of evidence left to present, and Diddy’s side has so far been limited to cross-examinations of prosecution witnesses. But even with that, the outlines of each side’s argument are starting to come into shape.
Prosecutors have three crimes to attempt to prove: racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Racketeering
The crux of the racketeering charge is that Diddy used “the employees, resources, and influence” of his businesses to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his wrongs. In the process of doing those things, the government argues, he and those around him committed crimes like sex trafficking, arson, kidnapping, and forced labor.
In an attempt to prove this, prosecutors have brought up several key employees repeatedly. These fall into three main buckets: security, high-ranking loyalists, and assistants.
Prosecutors have repeatedly elicited mention of security personnel like Damion “D-Roc” Butler, Roger Bonds, and Uncle Paulie. They have been repeatedly painted as people whose presence was meant to intimidate (as when Cassie Ventura testified about Paulie being at a dinner with a promoter who she believed had possession of a freak off video and threatened; or when an assistant claimed Bonds was right by Diddy’s side as the mogul demanded his underling take a lie detector test), and as loyal employees who repeatedly witnessed Diddy’s physical abuse of Cassie without intervening.
Then there are the loyalists. The main names mentioned thus far have been Capricorn Clark and Kristina Khorram. Clark, whose name was brought up by both Cassie and Kid Cudi, is expected to testify on Tuesday. She was, Cudi said, forced by Diddy to accompany the mogul during his alleged break in of Cudi’s house.
Khorram, or “KK” as courtroom habitués have repeatedly heard her called, has thus far been portrayed in testimony as a witness to Diddy’s abuse, and as someone who would track Cassie down when Diddy was looking for her.
“She knew a lot of my personal things,” Cassie said of Khorram. “Doctor’s appointments, everything.”
Several of Diddy’s former personal assistants have testified so far as well. In many ways, they have so far done the most damage. On Thursday, George Kaplan testified that he used his corporate credit card to buy ingredients for an “anti-swelling agent” for Cassie to use on one occasion when she had bruising on her face.
Assistants testified to buying drugs for Diddy and his friends, carrying drugs for their boss, buying freak off supplies, and cleaning up hotel rooms after freak offs.
All these roles tie together in the government’s telling. Where did people usually get the money to buy freak off supplies, or to pay escorts? Cash, given to them by security.
The defense, of course, has a different spin. When it comes to corporate cards being used for unsavory things, they say that didn’t prove the business existed only to prop up Diddy’s crimes. Instead, they introduced the idea that Combs paid for everything that way. Kaplan testified, after all, that the Bad Boy head’s wallet only ever contained a license and an Amex black card.
Diddy’s lawyers, again and again, painted their client as a successful businessman running multiple companies. Even the same assistants who said they witnessed his violence and bought or transported drugs and cash for him, gushed about his accomplishments and what they’d learned from him.
Sex Trafficking
The sex trafficking count, as mentioned, is tied to whether Diddy used “force, fraud, or coercion” to cause people to engage in commercial sex acts. Cassie is one of the alleged victims of this in the indictment. The government used her testimony to tell a story of a young woman terrified of Diddy’s violence, under his financial control, desperate for his love and approval, and plied with drugs. She described Diddy making her have sex with male escorts against her will hundreds of times, in elaborate scenarios that could sometimes last for days.
Diddy’s team, as has been clear since shortly after his arrest, is portraying things very differently. If the prosecution shared a version of Cassie as innocent and naive when she signed to Bad Boy and began dating Diddy, the defense elicited testimony about how she had been a successful model since her mid-teens, and how before being with Diddy, she had already dated Ryan Leslie, a successful musician and producer a decade her senior.
When it comes to the freak offs, Diddy’s attorney Anna Estevao portrayed Cassie as a willing participant—and sometimes as an initiator. The lawyer spent a large part of the singer’s cross-examination simply having her read texts she had sent to Diddy saying things like, “Going to FO on Tuesday!!” and describing a freak off, apparently without judgement, as “A lot of dicks, a lot of partying.”
Diddy’s violence is likewise being portrayed two different ways. The prosecution paints it as a way of controlling Cassie and keeping her in fear and pliable (or “moldable,” as one former Diddy assistant says he heard the mogul refer to her in a conversation with the late Chris Lighty).
The defense has thus far thrown out a number of explanations for Diddy’s violence, none of which are connected to intimidation: He has a bad temper. He frequently blacked out due to drug use and wouldn’t remember the violent incident. He was irritable due to opioid withdrawal. And, in the case of the infamous Intercontinental Hotel incident, the violence may have been due to a bad batch of drugs.
Prostitution
There is no doubt, from either side, that men were given money in some connection to their participation in freak offs. The government is saying that the men were paid to have sex with Cassie—and that Diddy sometimes paid for them to travel to different cities where the freak offs occurred.
Diddy’s team has been leaning on the fact that some of the men were in fact not escorts, but male exotic dancers—and that those men worked for agencies that specifically prohibited prostitution.
One of those dancers described the aftermath of his first encounter with Diddy and Cassie. He said that he was handed $2,000—by Cassie, another fact meant to distance the defendant from the crime of prostitution—and had sex with the singer in front of Diddy. The man described being in “complete shock” afterwards, and said on the stand, “I wouldn’t have thought twice to think that that was prostitution.”
The Bad Boy head’s team has also thrown out the possibilities that the men were paid for their time, or to create what one participant called a “sexy scene,” rather than for intercourse.
What we can expect
Diddy’s team has repeatedly brought up that government witnesses sometimes give statements on the stand that differ in some respects from notes taken during one of their meetings with the government. (Prosecutors point out that witnesses don’t actually look at those notes either during the meeting or afterwards, so there’s no way to tell if those notes are accurate).
While defense lawyers haven’t yet said why they’ve pulled this move, one possible implication is that they will accuse, overtly or implicitly, the government of coaching witnesses to tell a version of Diddy’s behavior that fits the criminal charges.
When it comes to Cassie, since she’s off the stand, the battle over her portrayal will largely be fought by experts. The government has called a psychologist, Dr. Dawn Hughes, who is an expert on sexual abuse and trauma. She described, in a general way (she hadn’t interviewed anyone involved in this case), victim response to sexual and physical abuse, and explained why victims often stay in abusive relationships.
This was done by the prosecution in the hope that jurors would connect this information to the nearly 11-year relationship between Cassie and Diddy. Dr. Hughes was aggressively cross-examined by Jonathan Bach, an attorney who was added to Diddy’s team the evening before she took the stand.
Diddy’s side, too, will present their own expert: Dr. Alexander Bardey, who is set to testify that one cannot generalize about response to sexual abuse, in an attempt to get the jurors to disregard Dr. Hughes’ testimony.
Each side of the case will present testimony and exhibits to back up their story as the case wears on. Narratives will be argued about on social media, in the press, and on the streets. But in the end, only twelve peoples’ opinions will matter, and which story they believe will determine Sean Combs’ fate.
