The sex trafficking and racketeering trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs ended its third week with a star turn for Brian Steel, the lawyer lately famous for his defense of Young Thug in the YSL trial.
Steel joined Diddy’s defense team right before trial, and spent most of Friday cross-examining a former assistant of Diddy’s who, when on the stand the day before, had accused the mogul of repeatedly sexually assaulting her.
The woman, who is remaining anonymous and testifying under the pseudonym “Mia,” was presented by Steel with a number of Instagram posts she made during her time working with Diddy in which she praised the mogul.
There were multiple posts from Mia wishing him a happy birthday. In them, she thanked him for “being the good kind of crazy,” for being “one of my greatest friends,” and for “letting me give birth to my dreams.”
In addition, there were positive posts from three separate years about her experiences with Combs at Burning Man. This was notable because, in her testimony on Thursday, she testified about an incident at the festival where, she said, Combs made her take ketamine against her will.
Steel spent a great deal of time on the birthday posts. He made the point that Mia had accused Combs of sexually assaulting her during his 40th birthday party in 2009. So, Steel said, the mogul’s birthday was also the anniversary of that alleged assault.
Referring to her 2014 birthday post for Combs, Steel said: “On the fifth anniversary of the sexual abuse, you’re saying, ‘You continue to inspire me every day.'”
“I didn’t celebrate it as an anniversary,” Mia said at one point. “It was his birthday to me.”
She responded to the fact that her posts showed a highlight-filled, positive version of her employment with Combs by pointing out the nature of social media.
“Instagram was a place to show how great your life was, even if it wasn’t true,” she said. “All these postings were the good moments.”
Mia said that her tenure working for Combs, which lasted from 2009 to 2017, has left her with complex severe PTSD, and that she is unable to work due to it.
After going through numerous IG posts, Steel turned to what, to him, seemed to be the crux of the matter. If Combs really did all of the things to Mia that she is claiming, why is she praising him? And why did she remain in his orbit for eight years?
“It’s called psychological abuse,” she explained. “Nobody was there to say that these things that were happening were wrong. Nobody flinched at his behavior.”
She admitted that, in retrospect, she shouldn’t have needed outside assurance that Combs’ alleged abusive behavior towards her and Cassie (who, Mia said, was like a sister to her) was wrong. But in the moment, it was a situation she felt was impossible to escape from.
“[Between] my logic brain and my trauma brain, my trauma brain wins all the time,” Mia explained. “I wanted to make everybody happy all the time… I would make excuses to myself.”
At this, Steel reached what seemed like a climax of his questioning. He asked her if it was true that Combs’ abuses, while horrible, “did not happen as many times as you said to this jury?”
After Mia denied that, Steel asked her if she was lying about whether any sexual encounters with his client were unwelcome.
“What if you’re not a victim? Then what?” he asked.
Mia reiterated that everything she had said in her prior testimony was true.
Steel then showed the jury a scrapbook Mia had created for Diddy as a present for his 45th birthday. It consisted of press clippings of his between 1991 and 1999. He called the present, and the note that accompanied it, “loving.”
“I’m a very loving person,” Mia replied.
“To the person who sexually abused you?” Steel countered.
“Yes,” Mia said.
After that, Steel introduced texts from December, 2016, when Mia was informed that her time under Combs’ employment was coming to an end (as it turned out, she actually worked there for several more months).
Upon receiving the news, Mia texted a member of Combs’ staff, “I’m going to kill myself. My life is over.”
In the courtroom, Mia explained her dramatic reaction to losing her job, despite the treatment she said she was subjected to from Combs.
“This was all presented as if it was a job,” she said. “This was not a job. This is all I knew. I’d worked so hard and gone through so much [and] I was cast away without an explanation.
“In hindsight, [leaving] was fantastic. At the time, the worst thing ever.”
