Patrick Ryan

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Here in New York, he's been charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. But there are numerous lawsuits I hesitate to even try to put a number on it, but he's In civil court, I've faced sexual assault allegations from victims dating back to incidents from the 90s up until 2023.

But those are all related to sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, harassment, and so on and so forth.

Actually, last month, I went to the first pretrial hearing, and honestly, he seemed in very good spirits then. He had like a whole row of family and friends who were there supporting him. He was... smiling, waving, blowing kisses. He seemed, yeah, again, in very good spirits last month, which was a stark change to yesterday, where he appeared very solemn.

His son was there, Justin, and his mom, Janice, was there as well. But otherwise, there weren't many supporters. He looked a little more serious this time, maybe just kind of recognizing that this trial was It's happening. It's coming up in just a few weeks now. And maybe the sort of reality of all that kind of hit him.

Diddy and his legal team, they wanted a little more time to prepare his defense. So they requested earlier this week that the judge would push back the trial by two months. But basically, the judge ruled yesterday that the trial's still three and a half, almost four weeks away. And he thought that they had still ample time to prepare their defense and get all their ducks in a row.

Can you talk through those decisions? The judge granted three of the alleged victims that are named in the indictment the right to use a pseudonym throughout the trial, explaining that It's pretty common practice in terms of sexual violence and trafficking cases.

But the defense pushed back a bit saying that the three alleged victims have already been out in public giving interviews about Diddy and that essentially they waive their right to anonymity by doing so. But the prosecution argued that just because the victims have already given interviews, it doesn't mean that they've already

kind of gotten into the more like explosive kind of personal details of their allegations. So therefore, the judge sided with the prosecution is allowing them to use pseudonyms throughout the trial. The prosecution wanted to bring in an expert who could Talk a little bit about memory and processing trauma and coping strategies for alleged victims.

You know, the prosecutor said that potential jurors need a little more context about certain phrases and certain subjects about how perpetrators interact with victims and exert power over alleged victims. But the defense argued that the expert that the prosecution wants to call in has never interviewed the alleged victims in this case and therefore doesn't know the specifics of their experiences.

So there was, I mean, a lot of back and forth for probably about an hour about whether or not the experts could be called in. And the judge ultimately said that he needs a little more time to, I guess, sit with the decision and he will let them know, I believe, next week, whether those experts can run it.

The jury selection begins on May 5th and then opening statements are scheduled to start on May 12th. I mean, it's going to be a massive case. I mean, already, just from these two hearings that I've attended, dozens of reporters are already there. You know, lots of people with no involvement in the case, even just waiting outside the courthouse, I think, wanting to catch a glimpse of justice.

Diddy or his family. It's a pretty major case. I think there's a lot of different sort of threads to it and, you know, numerous allegations that I think are going to make it pretty complicated. The judge said yesterday that he estimates it'll take about eight to 10 weeks. For context, I covered the Harvey Weinstein trial a few years ago, and that lasted maybe about five weeks.

So again, there's a lot to this trial, and I think it's only just going to be ramping up from here.