Sean Combs, one in every of America’s most influential music moguls, was accused by federal prosecutors on Monday of main a felony enterprise that enabled his abuse of ladies and labored to cowl it up.
As his trial received underway in Federal District Court docket in Decrease Manhattan, prosecutors painted him as a serial sexual predator who orchestrated drug-fueled intercourse marathons with prostitutes. Mr. Combs’s attorneys acknowledged that he was accountable for home violence however denied that he had dedicated intercourse trafficking or run a racketeering enterprise.
In lurid element, Emily A. Johnson, the prosecutor who delivered a 50-minute opening assertion for the federal government, portrayed Mr. Combs as a person who ordered the efficiency of intercourse acts and “referred to as himself the king.”
“To the general public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Ms. Johnson stated. “A cultural icon, a businessman — bigger than life. However there was one other aspect to him, a aspect that ran a felony enterprise.”
One of many authorities’s first witnesses was a person who stated he been paid as a lot as $6,000 to have interaction in prolonged sexual encounters with Mr. Combs’s girlfriend Casandra Ventura whereas the music mogul watched. He stated he additionally overheard what he believed to be Mr. Combs placing Ms. Ventura in an adjoining room.
Mr. Combs, 55, one of the profitable producers and entrepreneurs within the historical past of hip-hop, faces prices of intercourse trafficking, transportation to have interaction in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy, a federal crime finest recognized for its use in prosecuting organized crime syndicates.
If convicted, he might spend the remainder of his life in jail.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not responsible to the costs. “The proof goes to point out you a really flawed particular person,” Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, stated in her opening assertion. “Nevertheless it is not going to present you a racketeer, a intercourse trafficker or anyone transporting for prostitution.”
The trial of Mr. Combs is being intently watched by his legions of followers and the celebrities and stars who as soon as turned in his orbit, attended his extravagant events or listened to the hit music he helped to provide.
The costs towards Mr. Combs introduced into the favored lexicon “freak-offs,” which Mr. Combs used to explain the drug-fueled intercourse bacchanals he organized that would final for days. On the core of the case is the federal government’s competition that Mr. Combs, appearing like royalty, dispatched a crew of staff to abet his habits and resolve any issues that it precipitated.
Within the packed courtroom on the twenty sixth ground of a Southern District of New York courthouse, the mogul’s mom, Janice Combs, sat within the second row of the gallery, wearing black-and-leopard print, and surrounded by members of the family.
Her son, who has been in custody since his arrest in September, wore a sweater, a collared shirt, slacks and lace-less sneakers. He sat on the protection desk, studying a Bible, his graying hair and beard revealing his months in detention, the place he can not dye it.
Ms. Johnson advised a jury of eight males and 4 girls that the case would heart on the testimony of three girls, together with Ms. Ventura, 38. Higher referred to as Cassie, she was additionally a singer previously signed to his label. As well as, Ms. Johnson stated, the jury would view movies of events the place Mr. Combs directed sexual encounters.
“You will note for your self the defendant’s violence and its aftermath,” she stated.
In a single significantly graphic element, Ms. Johnson described a celebration at which Ms. Ventura “felt like she was choking” when Mr. Combs “made an escort urinate into her mouth.”
Ms. Ventura, who was a 19-year-old mannequin and aspiring singer when she met Mr. Combs within the mid-2000s, was bodily abused early on within the relationship, Ms. Johnson stated, describing how in 2009, Mr. Combs threw Ms. Ventura to the ground of an S.U.V. and stomped repeatedly on her face.
When it was their activate Monday, Mr. Combs’s authorized workforce portrayed their consumer as a “sophisticated man” who rose from humble beginnings and constructed an leisure empire. They acknowledged violent tendencies, jealousy-fueled disputes with former girlfriends — and that he was accountable for home violence.
However regardless of his “dangerous mood,” he was being wrongly prosecuted for his “non-public, private intercourse life,” Ms. Geragos stated.
She advised the jury that there is perhaps a number of factors in the course of the trial, which is anticipated to final about eight weeks, “the place you suppose he’s a jerk, he’s imply.”
“However he isn’t charged with being imply,” Ms. Geragos stated. “He’s not charged with being a jerk. He’s charged with operating a racketeering enterprise.”
Ms. Geragos described the witnesses testifying towards Mr. Combs as “succesful, sturdy, grownup” girls who have been in love with Mr. Combs and who at the moment are taken with monetary achieve. Ms. Ventura stayed within the relationship with Mr. Combs for over a decade, Ms. Geragos famous.
Over his three-and-a-half decade profession, Mr. Combs helped make artists just like the Infamous B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into family names. Underneath the title Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his personal in 1997 with “I’ll Be Lacking You.” Mr. Combs’s lavish White Events, held within the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and different playgrounds of the wealthy, have been magnets for celebrities and music stars.
The road to enter the courthouse on Monday morning was crammed with reporters, podcasters, TikTok influencers and curious members of the general public. Inside they discovered a conflict of high-profile attorneys. Mr. Combs’s eight-person authorized workforce is led by Marc Agnifilo, maybe finest recognized for representing Keith Raniere, the chief of the Nxivm intercourse cult.
Among the many six prosecutors on the case is Maurene Comey, who has expertise with complicated felony issues, just like the 2021 intercourse trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. She is the daughter of the previous F.B.I. director James Comey.
Mr. Combs has had different brushes with the legislation, together with allegations of assault and a 1999 capturing inside a Manhattan evening membership that left three individuals injured. He had been on the membership together with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and was finally acquitted.
However essentially the most broadly seen episode of violence involving Mr. Combs got here final Could when CNN aired surveillance footage of him attacking Ms. Ventura within the InterContinental Lodge in Los Angeles in 2016. In that video, Mr. Combs, carrying solely a towel round his waist, is seen brutally kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura. On Monday the jury was proven the footage but it surely was slowed down — Mr. Combs’s attorneys had stated the tape had been sped up and made the actions appear sooner than in actual life. A authorities knowledgeable corrected the velocity.
The prosecution’s first witness on Monday was Israel Florez, a Los Angeles police officer who had been a safety guard on the InterContinental Lodge. He testified that he responded to a girl in misery on the sixth ground and located Mr. Combs seated in a towel, immobile however with “a devilish stare.” Huddled within the nook was Ms. Ventura, who had a “purple eye,” Mr. Florez stated.
Mr. Florez stated Mr. Combs provided him a stash of money that he understood to be a bribe. “He was telling me, ‘Don’t inform no person,’” Mr. Florez stated. The prosecution has stated that Mr. Combs purchased the surveillance footage from resort safety for $100,000. However copies apparently remained.
The prosecution’s second witness was Daniel Phillip, the male stripper who stated he was invited a number of occasions by Ms. Ventura to have intercourse together with her whereas Sean Combs watched and masturbated.
Throughout greater than an hour of specific testimony, Mr. Phillip stated he noticed Mr. Combs as soon as threw a liquor bottle at Ms. Ventura when she didn’t instantly go to him when referred to as. He then dragged Ms. Ventura to a different room, testified Mr. Phillip, who stated he heard what appeared like Mr. Combs smack her. “Bitch, after I let you know to return right here, you come right here now, not later,” Mr. Phillip testified he heard Mr. Combs say.
Throughout his testimony, Mr. Combs’s three teenage daughters left the courtroom.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
