Brian Buckmire sits down with ABC’s Peter Charalambous for a deep dive into the evidence of USA v. Sean Combs. Over 200 exhibits have been entered into evidence and seen by the jury to try to bolster both the prosecution and defense’s cases. Plus, the biggest moments from court this week -- including the defense moving for a mistrial and testimony from former employees of Combs. One telling the jury she was kidnapped and another testifying that she couldn’t leave whenever she wanted, only when she had permission. To get access to all the trial updates in this case, follow "Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What updates are there in the Sean Combs trial?
Hi, I'm Brian Bachmeier, an ABC News legal contributor and host of Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy. You're about to hear our latest episode following everything going on in Sean Combs' trial from the prosecution and the defense. Remember, to hear all of our updates on this case, follow Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.
We're dropping two new episodes every week, including one that's not available anywhere else. Now here's our episode.
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In the last few days of USA v Sean Combs, we've heard from more former employees of Combs, as well as celebrity stylist Deontay Nash. But most notably, Diddy's alleged victim going by the pseudonym Mia. Mia worked for Sean Combs, first as a personal assistant and then as a director of development and acquisitions for his film business.
Chapter 2: Who is Mia and what did she testify about?
She said the highs were really high and the lows were really, really low. She testified that she often didn't sleep while working for Combs, including one stint where she was up for five days. Mia told jurors that Combs threw things at her, threw her against a wall, and he also sexually assaulted her. When prosecutors asked if she could leave whenever she wanted, Mia answered, I wasn't allowed.
I'd have to ask permission. Her testimony is meant, at least in part, to convince the jury that Combs used forced labor as part of his alleged criminal enterprise. Cross-examination is expected to begin late Friday morning. On Tuesday, another former employee, Capricorn Clark, testified that she'd been kidnapped while working for Combs.
She told the jury that Combs and a bodyguard showed up at her apartment with a gun and made her go with them to Scott Meschede's house, aka rapper Kid Cudi. On Cross, the defense tried to dispute it was a kidnapping, suggesting Clark had previously told defense attorneys she went with Combs to prevent him from doing something stupid and clarifying that he didn't point the gun at her.
Forced labor and kidnapping are both part of the racketeering conspiracy count Combs is facing. He's pled not guilty. At one point Wednesday, the defense requested a mistrial when an arson investigator from the Los Angeles Fire Department was testifying. While it's the first time the defense requested a mistrial, it probably won't be the last. This is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy.
I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an ABC News legal contributor and practicing attorney. This episode... That's right. Today, we're talking evidence. What the jury has seen so far, how it becomes part of the trial, and how both sides can use it to support witness testimony.
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Chapter 3: What evidence supports the allegations of forced labor and kidnapping?
My guest today is Peter Haralambous, a producer with ADC's investigative unit, and he also works with the visual verification team, which authenticates photos and videos from around the internet to make sure the news that you get is real and true.
Peter was a paralegal before going into journalism, and one of the things he did as a paralegal was preparing evidence for jurors at trial in the Southern District of New York. Yeah, the very same court where Diddy is being tried. And evidence has actually become Peter's expertise while covering the Diddy trial.
He collects exhibits filed in court and gets them ready for broadcast, making sure the right redactions are made for our audiences. He's the keeper of a giant spreadsheet where he logs all of the evidence publicly available from both the prosecution and the defense. Peter, let's take our listeners inside the courtroom.
You know, what strikes me when I enter federal courtrooms these days is that each of the jurors and the alternates have a very large screen in front of them. Peter, can you talk to us about how the technology in the courtroom works in terms of how the jurors are seeing the evidence, how the witnesses see the evidence, and how even the defense attorneys and prosecutors marshal that evidence in?
Yeah, I think this is super fascinating because trials in the United States have been consistent for, at this point, centuries. But one area where things have changed pretty rapidly over the last 20 years is how technology has made its way into the courtroom. I used to be a paralegal before I was a journalist, and I dealt with this firsthand.
I was doing much more boring trials about white-collar criminals, But that same technology applied. I think I even worked on a trial that is in the same courtroom where the Combs case is currently happening. It's a magnificent, it's this large room. You've been there plenty of times. Tall ceilings. It's got this sweeping view of Midtown kind of rising up from Chinatown.
And it's speckled with technology. There are kind of computer screens in front of every chair for the defense table and the prosecution table. The witness box has a screen. The jury each has a screen in front of them. The gallery also has at least one screen to see what's being presented to the jury.
Basically, as they're kind of hearing this evidence being described by the witnesses, the jury gets to see this immediately in front of them. They get to see it with their own eyes. And when it comes actually to the point of deliberations, they get to see this all over again.
The jury will be sent into the deliberations room with a binder full of evidence or a laptop full of every single exhibit that's been admitted over the course of the trial.
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Chapter 4: How has technology changed courtroom evidence presentation?
They found substances that were allegedly used for freak offs like baby oil and Astroglide. Guns, drugs. Oh, yes. Yeah. Basically everything you could want to run a criminal enterprise, allegedly. They alleged that they, over the course of these raids, found thousands of bottles of baby oil. The jury saw upper and lower receivers for assault weapons, which had their serial numbers defaced.
They saw a loaded handgun that was found in a suitcase in Combs, Miami home. I think we're also going to hear a bit more about this when we learn about the raid done on his Los Angeles home. We haven't seen that material and evidence yet. Certainly, there's been a lot of material about this Kid Cudi firebombing incident. They've seen plenty of photos showing this charred Porsche 911.
One piece of testimony that the jury heard a ton about and was kind of buttressed by evidence was this whole entire line of testimony about this 2011 freak-off where Combs learns that Ventura was in a relationship with Kid Cudi. He allegedly lunges at Ventura with a wine opener.
And then we hear a ton about kind of the aftermath of that, the threats, the violence allegedly that Combs reacted with after he learned about this relationship. And it's part of testimony that was kind of backed up pretty heavily by evidence. The jury saw the email that Cassie sent on December 23rd, 2011, kind of documenting this blackmail threat.
saying that, you know, the threats that have been made against me by Sean Puffy Combs are that he's going to release two explicit sex tapes of me. One on Christmas Day, maybe right before or after, and another one sometime soon after that. He's also said that he will be having someone hurt me and Scott Muscati physically. He made a point that it wouldn't be by his hands.
He actually said he'd be out of the country when it happened. So they saw that and they also saw the photos that Regina Ventura took of Cassie documenting the bruising on her back that she sustained allegedly because of combs. So that's just another example of basically how testimony can really be supported, be backed up by evidence.
Yeah, it's interesting, I would agree, how they put this case together, both in terms of the order of the witnesses and the evidence that they provided, when they had to get their star witness on, but also how they chose to build this case based on just the circumstances of it all. You mentioned the defense's exhibits. Can you tell me about that?
Yeah, there's certainly fewer defense exhibits than the prosecution, and that's because the burden's not on them here. But at times, they can be rather effective when it comes to these cross-examinations. Let's use one example of a piece of evidence that they used, and it relates to that 2016 incident at the Intercontinental Hotel.
There was a lot of testimony from Ventura about basically how she felt pressured into this, how she didn't really want to participate in this because she had an upcoming movie premiere, and how it particularly became a problem for her when she was bruised from that vicious attack and basically had to put on enough makeup to make sure that she went to a red carpet premiere and...
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Chapter 5: What types of evidence have been introduced in the case so far?
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Chapter 6: How do defense exhibits affect the trial?
I mean, even when you read the indictment in this case, they kind of left a question mark on that in terms of What is the arson here? What are the details here? It wasn't really particularly publicly reported at the time of the actual incident that Combs had any kind of connection to it.
And in this piece of evidence, the jury's really seeing the only piece of concrete material that ties Combs to this incident. And of course, the jury has seen a ton of photos of the aftermath of this. They saw the charred roof, the charred seats. During testimony on Wednesday, they saw photos where you could see the Molotov cocktail that sitting in the driver's seat.
You can see the handkerchief that was lit on fire. And through this kind of standard DMV report, the jury has seen this and we see it in front of us here. It's directly tying Combs to this incident.
Even if we don't necessarily know if Combs was there, we don't know how he was directly connected to it, but kind of gives some more credence to this suspicion from Kid Cudi that Combs was the one who was behind it.
Speaking of that arson investigation, one thing I'm really interested in your perspective as an attorney is we heard a bit from the Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigator Lance Jimenez, who kind of described whether or not it was unusual that the fingerprints were destroyed while the investigation was ongoing. The fence objected and asked the judge for a mistrial.
Why was that a big deal and why ask for a mistrial there?
So let's give it a little bit of context as to how this came about. There are no allegations that the person who committed the arson or allegedly committed the arson was inside the home, but it was explained to us. There was a prior event that had a burglary in the home and it took those fingerprints. They made fingerprint cards and they store them as evidence. Now,
Evidence gets destroyed all the time. A case gets resolved. The person's found guilty. The case is done. The lead investigator says this person is no longer a suspect. There are many reasons why evidence gets destroyed. But when a case or an investigation is still ongoing, that's supposed to be saved.
It's supposed to be saved for some 10, 20, how many ever years until the lead investigator decides that it no longer is necessary to keep. And the lead investigator who was on the stand is saying, I did not ask for it to be destroyed. No one contacted me saying it was supposed to be destroyed.
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Chapter 7: What is the jury's perspective on the evidence presented?
Yeah, and I really wish that the listeners could see this. Peter has about maybe 30, 40 different pieces of paper in about six or seven different piles. And it is so Peter to be like, let me pull this piece of information at my fingertips and explain to you what's going on. So Peter, please.
It looks a little chaotic, but here, this is government exhibit B247A. This came in during Ventura's testimony. She described this same incident that we heard about on Wednesday. And the jury saw what is one of the more graphic pieces of evidence in this case. You can see kind of the gash on her eyebrow.
And the testimony on Wednesday talked about how bloody this was, how Combs got frustrated and freaked out, if anything, after he realized how bloody he had caused by throwing Ventura into this bed frame.
And for the jury, again, to a jury that might be skeptical of victim testimony in a sex trafficking case, stuff like this, where you not only have one victim testifying about this, but you also have another person corroborating that account, and you have evidence that documents what exactly is being talked about, that can go a long way for the prosecution.
Chapter 8: How does the prosecution structure its case?
Peter, it is always a pleasure, whether I'm seeing you in the halls of ABC or reading an email. Thank you for taking the time to come and talk with us on Bad Rap. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Brian. That's it for this episode of Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy. If you have any questions for me, I'd love to hear them. So give us a call at 929-388-1249.
You might even hear me answer your question on the air. If you appreciate this coverage, please share it and give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening. And if you're looking for even more coverage of the Diddy Trial, you can check out our new daily show, Burden of Proof, The Case Against Diddy. The show streams weekdays at 5.30 p.m. Eastern on ABC News Live.
You can also find it on Disney+, Hulu, or on most of your favorite streaming apps. Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. The podcast production team includes Vika Aronson, Nancy Rosenbaum, Audrey Mostek, Amira Williams, Tracy Samuelson, and Sasha Aslanian.
Special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Caitlin Morris, Liz Alessi, Katie Dendas, and the team at ABC News Live. Michelle Margulis is our Operations Manager. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming. Lor Mayer is our Executive Producer.