Recap on Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: Day 17 as Trump considers pardoning Combs if unfairly treated
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs witnessed the end of the third week of his federal trial on Friday.
Amidst the trial, the ex-personal assistant to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who is now on trial, after testifying against the Hip Hop icon about the abuse she endured in his hands, made a dramatic return to the witness stand on Friday to be questioned by defence lawyers seeking to undercut her testimony of abuse and rape.
Recalling through years of social media posts, attorney Brian Steel made efforts to propose that the woman−testifying under pseudonym “Mia”−failed to correctly interpret her emotions while working for Combs amid moments of raw and emotional testimony on Thursday.
Mia had recently told the jurors that the rap legend threatened her for years, sexually molested her three times while asleep in his Los Angeles home and wanted to injure her by violently throwing objects at her
Regarding a series of past social media posts by Mia, Steel attempted to show the jurors that Mia’s claim on the witness stand is different than the feelings she expressed.
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
“Thank you for being the good kind of crazy,” she wrote in one post on Combs’ birthday.
“Thank you for being a friend and bringing friends into my life.”
While admitting earlier that her post were true, Mia refuted Combs’ lawyers’ effort to made her contradict her testimony.
“It’s called psychological abuse,” as Mia told jurors why she would not write anything negative against Combs in the past.
Rounding off the third week of testimony in Combs’ sex-trafficking and racketeering case, Mia stands as a key witness for prosecutors as they move to prove that Combs had utilised his riches and influence to run a criminal enterprise, which includes forced labour and sexual violence.
However, Combs has pleaded not guilty and refuted that he sexually assaulted anybody.
In a bid to oppose days full of testimonies from multiples witnesses about violence allegation, sexual escapades and use of illegal drugs, Combs’ attorneys argued that Hip Hop icon might have committed other crimes, but insisted that their client was not guilty of crimes he is in custody for in Manhattan−Combs could bag life imprisonment if found guilty of crimes accused of.
Defence Attorney Moves To oppose Mia’s Past Social Media Posts
Combs’ lawyer Brian Steel seen spent most Friday afternoon confronting Mia’s illuminating social media posts about Combs and insisted that he was casting doubt on her claim that the rap legend traumatised her.
The post, which encompasses emphatic phrase and many exclamation points, depicted Mia posing with Combs, describing him as a legend, and thanking him for being a friend.
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
Showing her several posts, Steel highlighted how Mia still greeted Combs with effusive praise, but Mia reacted−more lively and amplified than her testimony on Thursday−by admitting that the words used were right but insisting that the view was not.
“That’s the person who has traumatized you?” Steel asked, underscoring his theme.
“Yes,” Mia answered.
“Physically?” Steel asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Sexually?” Steel continued.
“Yes,” Mia replied.
“That’s the legend?” Steel said, quoting one of Mia’s posts back to her.
“Yes,” Mia responded.
In a post on 4th November, 2014, on Instagram, five years after Mia said Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs first sexually molested her, Nia appeared to put up a birthday wish to Combs.
“Thank you for being the good kind of crazy,” the message said.
“Thank you for being a friend and bringing friends into my life.”
“At this point, you have taken in so much trauma from him, that’s what you told the jury, right?” Steel asked, highlighting his own effort to discredit the woman.
“Yes, I have, but again it was, when the highs were high, the good was good,” Mia explained, adding that her posts on social media – including promotional and sponsored posts – did not necessarily reflect her feelings at the time.
“Why would you promote the person who has stolen your happiness in life?” Steel asked.
“Those were the only people I was around, so that was my life. You had to promote it,” Mia said. “It was a very confusing cycle of ups and downs.”
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
Combs’ Attorney Unravels Past Scrapbook To Interrogate Mia
Lawyer Steel utilised a similar strategy, recalling a scrapbook and birthday card that Mia prepared for Combs, proposing to the jury that her relationship with the defendant was more positive than she described on Thursday.
“Happy 45th birthday, Puff Daddy” the top of the page said in bold red letters. The text continued in black pen.
“Puff! Sometimes life goes by catastrophic speeds where you never get to live in and enjoy ‘now,'” the note read.
“I hope on this day you get to sit back and take it all in.
“The man who you say has ruined your life, this is what you write to him?” Steel asked.
“It’s called psychological abuse,” Mia shot back.
Reacting to Steel’s hard questioning, Mia appeared composed and lively, stating to the jury that she was “young and manipulated and eager to survive” at the time, and insisted that her testimony against Combs was true.
“Then why, if you’re being sexually assaulted and your sister is being brutalized physically, are you making a scrapbook for Mr. Combs?” Steel asked.
By “sister,” Steel said he was referring to Combs’ ex-girlfriend, the singer Cassie Ventura, with whom Mia said she had a sister-like relationship.
“It’s a lot more complicated than the way you framed that,” Mia shot back.
“Ask any abuse victim’s advocate, and they could explain it to you much better than I could.”
‘The Only World I knew’ Was Combs’ Alleged Abuse – Mia
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
Steels confronted Mia with several texts in which she threatened to commit suicide after she knew that Combs wanted to dissolves the movie company she had been working for.
“I’m going to kill myself. My life is over,” she texted Combs’ chief of staff, Kristina “KK” Khorram.
“You can’t make a statement and then not answer your phone,” Khorram replied in a series of frantic messages.
“I can’t sleep and I’m not ok. I don’t understand how to make this pain go away. It hurts so f****** bad,” she wrote.
Steel claimed that he was using emotional texts to cast doubt on Mia’s stand that she was planning to elude violence and trauma as the hands of Combs.
“Isn’t this great? You’re away from your abuser?” Steel asked.
“In hindsight, fantastic, but at the time the worst thing ever,” she said. Working for Combs represented “the only world I knew for 24 hours a day for 8 years.
“It’s like dog years. That’s all I knew. So, it was very overwhelmingly horrific,” she said.
She said she felt it “being ripped away without explanation.”
Mia Reveals That Combs Bade To Contact Her After Ventura’s Case
Several years after she had stopped working for Combs, Mia revealed that Combs’ bodyguard contacted her days after Ventura filed her explosive civil lawsuit against the Hip Hop mogul; a lawsuit that eventually metamorphosed into the federal prosecution of Combs which started in May 5.
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
Mia stated that Combs’ bodyguard−identified as “D Roc−made efforts to reach her before revealing how “crazy” the lawsuit was.
“Because, you know, Puff and Cass would just fight like a normal couple,” Mia recalled D Roc saying to her. Mia told jurors that his tone made her suspicious, adding that D Roc had “witnessed the violence” firsthand.
In Mia’s testimony, D Roc said Combs was trying to reach Mia directly. She testified that Combs eventually called her.
“I threw my phone as far as it would go, and I ran outside,” Mia recalled.
“It was just so triggering.”
Mia stated that she got another text from Combs asking requesting talks on 14th February, 2024 but she ignored the text and Combs texted after three days.
“Hey. I don’t want to be blowing up your phone. Just needed to talk to you for 10 minutes. Just need my memory jogged on some things.
“You were my right hand for years so I just need to speak to you to remember who was even around me. And it would be good to hear your voice.”
“I knew it was a front,” Mia told the jury to explain why she ignored the message.
Prosecutors said they plan to introduce evidence that Combs did, in fact, use similar techniques in trying to influence the testimony of another woman – going by the pseudonym “Jane.”
The authorities also alleged that Combs called Jane after Ventura’s case was filed to “manipulate Jane into saying she wanted to have freak-offs.”
“You will hear the defendant’s thinly veiled references to continuing to pay for Jane’s home in exchange for her silence, and you will see the text messages the defendant sent to his chief of staff right after talking to Jane to make sure that Jane’s rent would still be paid on time,” prosecutor Emily Johnson told jurors on Friday.
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17
Trump Might Look To Pardon Combs
As the Comb’s trial reached third week, the United States President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington that he would not rule out pardoning the Hip Hop icon if found guilty.
“I don’t know. I would certainly look at the facts,” said Trump at the end of a week that saw a flood of presidential pardons for, among others, politicians, law enforcement officers and two reality TV stars serving time in federal prison.
“Nobody’s asked. But I know people are thinking about it. I know they’re thinking about it. I think some people have been very close to asking.”
Trump noted that he could consider pardoning Combs if he perceives that he was treated unjustly.
Recalling that Trump and Combs are both from New York, ran business ventures and also featured in reality-television shows in the 2000s.
Regarding Trump’s statement, combs used to like him “a lot” before he got into politics.
“He used to really like me a lot, but I think when I ran for politics, he sort of−that relationship busted up from what I read, I don’t know,” Trump said.
Recap On Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Day 17