Just hours after arriving at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial, jurors had already watched graphic footage of domestic violence and heard salacious testimony about the rapper’s sex life.
Monday marked the first day of hearing evidence in the hotly-anticipated trial. It was also the first time Diddy faced the 12 jurors who will determine his fate. The courtroom was stuffed with crowds of people, anxiously awaiting more context to the indictment’s bombshell accusations. In that sense, opening statements and testimony did not disappoint.
The first day already exposed shocking material, including frequent mentions of baby oil, allegations that he made a male sex worker urinate in his girlfriend’s mouth, and the hotel surveillance footage from 2016 capturing Diddy assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
Attorneys for the government argued that the 55-year-old music mogul ran a decades-long “criminal enterprise” and engaged in sex trafficking and prostitution to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and maintain power. He has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys argued he is a “flawed individual” who came from little wealth to build “lawful businesses,” which his sex life has nothing to do with.
Jurors had to watch the 2016 video filmed in the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, California multiple times on Monday, which captured the music mogul kicking Ventura before dragging her across the sixth-floor hallway. Ventura used a hotel phone to call for help.
Israel Florez, the prosecution’s first witness, was working as a security officer at the hotel and responded to her call. When he reached the couple, Florez testified that Diddy — only wearing a towel and colorful socks — had a “devilish stare” while Ventura — burying herself in a hoodie — cowered in the corner looking “scared.”
After de-escalating the situation, Florez informed Diddy that his room would be charged for the damage to the hotel, including a broken vase. He remembered Diddy handing him a “stack of cash” and told him: “Take care of this. Don’t tell anyone.” The defense later suggested Diddy had offered the wad of cash to pay for the damage.
In opening statements, the defense team admitted that the defendant committed domestic violence. Teny Geragos, one of Diddy’s attorneys, said her client has a “bad temper” and takes “full responsibility for domestic violence in this case.” She noted he’s “not proud of that.”
The 2016 incident at the InterContinental, Geragos said, stemmed from “jealousy,” noting that the argument was over Ventura’s phone due to his suspicion of her infidelity. “Jealousy was on full display” in the footage, she said. Diddy’s actions are “indefensible, dehumanizing, violent and terrible,” his attorney argued, but they are not evidence of sex trafficking.
The footage was not the only time jurors learned about Diddy’s violent tendencies. Daniel Phillip, a manager at a male revue show who was paid anywhere from $700 to $6,000 to sleep with Ventura in 2012 while Diddy watched, told the court about seeing the music mogul assault his then-girlfriend on two occasions.
Phillip first encountered the pair after his boss asked him to dance at a bachelorette party at the Gramercy Park Hotel, in New York City, because none of their Black dancers were available. But he didn’t do a strip tease at a bachelorette party; instead, he was greeted by Ventura wearing a red lace outfit, high heels, and a red wig. She then handed him $200 to sleep with just her while her partner watched.
The hotel room was dotted with velvet couches, lit candles, and a table holding baby oil and lube. Although Diddy was sporting a white robe, a baseball cap and a bandana that covered his nose down — and said he worked in importing and exporting — Phillip said he recognized the music mogul’s voice immediately. Diddy sat in the corner watching as Ventura and Phillip had sex, the male escort told the court. Ventura gave him thousands after the encounter, which kicked off a series of similar encounters at ritzy hotels across the city.
At times, Diddy directed Phillip and Ventura to “slow down” or to “separate” or even where Phillip had to ejaculate, he testified. These encounters lasted anywhere from one to 10 hours and Diddy would record some of them. At one point, Diddy asked Phillip for his driver’s license, “just for insurance” — a move that Phillip understood to be a threat, he told the court.
Another time, at Ventura’s apartment, Phillip saw a liquor bottle fly by her after she told her then-boyfriend to wait a minute before she went back to bed with him. Diddy, according to Phillip, then grabbed Ventura by her hair and dragged her into her bedroom. “B****, when I tell you to come, you come now, not later,” Phillip recalled Diddy saying.
Philip then heard what sounded like Diddy slapping Ventura in her bedroom.
But the male escort didn’t intervene. Pressed as to why he didn’t contact law enforcement, Phillip told the court that he feared he would lose his life, figuring Diddy had “unlimited power.” Phillip started experiencing erectile dysfunction after that incident, he testified.
Elsewhere in Phillip’s testimony, he was asked if he had ever urinated on Ventura, and who directed him to do so. He told the court that Ventura asked him to, and told him he was doing it wrong because he was “supposed to let out a little at time.”
Despite the salacious first day of testimony, Combs’s family presented a united front.
Janice Combs, the music mogul’s mother, walked with her two grandchildren, Quincy Brown and Justin Combs, while his other four children, Christian, Chance, Jessie and D’Lila Combs held hands in and out of the courthouse, maintaining straight faces and refusing to engage with the media.
Even some of Combs’s fan base turned out for the first day of trial.
Roza Leonora, a longtime fan from the Bronx, said she was “heartbroken” for the Victory singer when she saw him appearing greyer and thinner in court than his usual “glitz and glam” self.
“I hope Diddy beats this,” Leonora, 47, said sullenly.
Kiara Williams used her day off from work to attend the first day of the trial – she did the same thing last week for the first day of jury selection.
Although Diddy is now in a much different venue than he once was, his presence still compels some to camp out overnight to try to see him.
Several people posted up in tents, sleeping in downtown Manhattan since midday Sunday, to try to get inside. Others held front-of-the-line spots only to offer to sell them to journalists and members of the public waiting in the lengthy queue, with one man making $300 for his spot.
Diddy’s name recognition, combined with the startling allegations, has made the sex crimes case an international headline.
The trial is just kicking off but one verdict is already in: Diddy still seems to be the hottest ticket in town.
