Jurors in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial were shown videos of “freak offs” for the first time, six weeks into the eight-week trial.
While the panel has previously heard audio recordings and seen still images of the sex marathons, Monday marked the first time the jurors watched clips of the days-long drug-fueled sex marathons.
Jurors watched the footage after hearing weeks of testimony about the sex encounters in intensive detail, from planning them — assistants buying baby oil and lube, women coordinating with escorts, the cash transactions — his ex-girlfriend’s feelings about them, and how the encounters were recorded. But on Monday, jurors appeared almost desensitized, barely reacting to the clips at all.
Prosecutors played clips from three videos on Monday that only the jury, attorneys and court were allowed to watch using headphones. Even the defense team, seated closest to the gallery, didn’t have the clips on their screens for added privacy. The public screens were turned off.
The footage played after Special Agent DeLeassa Penland walked through hotel invoices, flight records and text messages from October 2012, in which Cassie Ventura, Diddy’s on-and-off girlfriend from 2007 through 2018, discussed meeting up with two male escorts at the Trump International Hotel in New York City.
The music mogul faces five federal counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty. The videos were one of several memorable moments during Monday’s testimony.
- The judge dismissed a juror over concerns that the juror exhibited a “lack of candor” with the court.
- At the end of the day, defense attorneys asked the judge what was said to the dismissed juror, out of concern about the impact to others on the panel.
- In February 2024, Diddy tried to get in touch with Mia, his former assistant who stopped working for him in 2017, to have his “memory jogged on some things.”
- The government expects to call Brendan Paul, Diddy’s former assistant and alleged “drug mule,” to the stand Tuesday.
Invoices showed Diddy and Ventura used the names “Frank Black” and “Janet Clark” for the hotel reservations. Texts captured Ventura talking to male escorts known as “Dave” and “The Punisher” to come over — one after the other — in the wee hours of the morning of October 14, 2012.
Earlier in the day, paralegal specialist Ananya Sankar walked through charts summarizing evidence from the trial, namely text messages.
In these exchanges, jurors saw text messages from Kristina Khorram, Diddy’s chief-of-staff, showing she seemed to be aware of his “freak offs” and drug exchanges. “Heads up, he’s probably about to do wild king tonight,” Khorram texted one assistant in June 2016; “wild king night” is another term for “freak off.”
In another exchange, Doe texted Khorram that she was through with the sex marathons. “Just keeping it real with you. I’m not doing anymore hard partying…no more ‘hotel nights’ and all that stuff,” she wrote in a November 2, 2023 text. The exchange occurred mere weeks before Ventura sued Combs on November 16, 2023.
In a scathing text five days after the lawsuit was filed, Khorram texted Diddy: “If you cannot be honest with me, this doesn’t work…We all know what your kryptonite is and where you don’t make the best choices.” In this same back-and-forth, Diddy asked Khorram to make sure Doe’s rent was paid.
The former chief-of-staff also seemed to know about Diddy’s drug transactions. In a message from March 2022, Khorram texted Jane Doe, the rapper’s girlfriend from 2021 through 2024, asking her to pick up a “Guido package” on her way to the airport. Witnesses have established that Guido was a drug dealer.
During cross examination, Teny Geragos, one of Diddy’s defense attorneys, pointed out that these charts — spanning eight years of text exchanges — only showed a select few messages regarding drugs.
