Jurors in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking case were again forced to watch more videos of the mogul’s drug-fueled “freak-off” sex sessions.
The rapper’s defense team played seven clips — spanning between 22 seconds and four minutes — for the panel. It is the second time in two days they have been asked to watch them, six weeks into the eight-week-long trial.
Screens to the gallery were turned off and headphones were required to watch the videos.
If jurors were disturbed by the footage, they didn’t show it. Just like on Monday, when they were first shown the explicit videos, the jurors once again remained expressionless, with a few furrowing their brows as if concentrating. Some fiddled with their headsets. Others tapped their pens against their fingers. No one turned their head away from discomfort; all appeared to be watching intently.
Before Monday, the panel had only listened to audio recordings and seen still images of the “freak offs.” On Tuesday, jurors watched additional clips from the same footage they watched Monday, in addition to a series of other explicit clips. These clips stemmed from encounters from October 2012 to December 2014.
Federal prosecutors have accused the music mogul of five counts of sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution, and racketeering conspiracy. He’s pleaded not guilty. The “freak off” footage was one of several memorable moments during Tuesday’s proceedings.
- Diddy blew a kiss to his mother, who once again attended her son’s trial.
- Prosecutors walked through a comprehensive timeline of events surrounding the InterContinental Hotel attack, from the evening of March 4 through March 25, when Diddy called a security guard about the footage.
- The timeline showed that members of the mogul’s staff, namely Kristina Khorram and D-Roc, reached out to Ventura multiple times in the wake of the incident.
- Records revealed that Diddy was charged $46,786 for damages to the penthouse at the InterContinental Hotel in New York in October 2012.
The defense showed the clips after circling back to texts between Diddy and Cassie Ventura planning the sexual encounters that the jury first saw when she took the stand in May. These texts included several sexually explicit messages that Ventura sent to her then-boyfriend as well as some in which Ventura sounded like she was looking forward to “freak offs.” In one August 2009 text, for example, Ventura texted Diddy that she was “always ready” to “freak off.”
The defense also pulled up a text from March 4, 2016, in which Ventura texted Diddy: “Baby, I want to FO so bad.” She sent the text just one day before the now-infamous InterContinental Hotel incident in which Diddy assaulted Ventura for allegedly trying to leave a sex marathon early. Ventura testified in May that she didn’t want to do a “freak off” but instead sent the text suggesting one for “damage control.”
During the redirect examination, prosecutors tried to remind the jury of the violent incident by pulling up a text that Diddy sent five days later. “Baby I can’t say it enough I’M SO SORRY!!!!!” he texted Ventura on March 10, 2016.
Later that day, Ventura texted Diddy that she still has “crazy bruising,” referring to bruises on her body and lip. “When you get f***ed up the wrong way, you always want to show me that you have the power and knock me around,” she wrote. “I’m not a rag doll. I’m someone’s child.”
