Brian recaps key moments in court this week, including Kid Cudi taking the stand. Then, a conversation with former prosecutor Moira Penza who won a conviction in the high profile RICO and sex trafficking case against Keith Raniere of NXIVM. Diddy faces those charges as well, and two of the defense attorneys Penza went up against in that 2019 trial are now representing him. If you have questions about the case, leave us a voicemail at 929-388-1249. 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 are the key updates from Sean Combs' trial this week?
In her civil lawsuit, Cassie alleged that Combs threatened to blow up Kid Cudi's car after finding out that she and Kid Cudi were dating. Well, Thursday, we finally heard Kid Cudi's version of that story. Kid Cudi walked towards the witness stand, wearing a black leather jacket opened with a white t-shirt underneath, blue jeans, and crisp white sneakers.
Chapter 2: What did Kid Cudi testify about in court?
A cross earring dangling from his right ear. He testified about a break-in at his home in December of 2011. While he was with Cassie, he says he got a call from an assistant to Sean Combs, who allegedly told him Combs was in his house. Kid Cudi told the jury he returned home to find his gifts that he had bought for his family had been opened and its dog locked in the bathroom.
After the New Year, he testified he got a call that his Porsche was on fire in his driveway. Jurors saw photos of the blackened interior and the charred, melted driver's seat. Kid Cudi said a Molotov cocktail was dropped into the car through a hole cut in the roof. Arson is one of the underlying acts included in the racketeering conspiracy count Combs is facing.
And Cassie Ventura previously testified that Combs had threatened to have Kid Cudi's car blown up. Kid Cudi testified that he reached out to Sean Combs to kind of squash the beef.
He met Combs at the Soho House of Los Angeles, where he walked into a room with just Combs standing there, staring out of a window with his arms behind his back, looking like, as Kid Cudi testified, some kind of a Marvel supervillain. That line got a laugh from the jury.
Although Cassie testified she started seeing Kid Cudi when she and Combs' relationship was in a rough patch, Kid Cudi testified that Cassie told him they had been split up. On cross-examination, the defense said both Kid Cudi and Combs were played by the same woman. The person who played you, the person who played Sean, was Miss Ventura, true? One of the lawyers asked. Yeah, Kid Cudi replied.
And this week, the jury saw other photos too, including pictures of baby oil, lingerie, platform heels, and sex toys. You'll recall Diddy's Los Angeles and Miami homes were raided by federal agents back in 2024.
Special Agent Gerard Gannon testified that the feds recovered the parts of two AR-15 assault-style rifles with defaced serial numbers only feet from where Combs allegedly stored supplies for freak-offs. Prosecutors have argued that the threat of violence allowed Combs to coerce his alleged victims to participate in freak-offs.
Jurors also saw baggies of colorful pills and other drugs allegedly found in Combs' home, including marijuana, powders, and other drugs that prosecutors have alleged were used to make participants compliant during freak-offs and would allow them to perform well past the point of exhaustion.
Thursday afternoon, a makeup artist who worked with Diddy and Cassie testified that she saw Cassie with a swollen eye and busted lip and knots on her head after the Grammys in 2010. Altogether, this week, it felt like the prosecution was really beginning to build support for its racketeering conspiracy charges. This is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy.
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Chapter 3: How is the prosecution building its case against Sean Combs?
We have incident after incident of physical violence against Ms. Ventura surrounding these freak-offs. We also have strong evidence of coercion. So where you have an individual who is... in a dynamic with an abuser, where that abuser really has control over every aspect of her life.
So her career, all the way down to what color she's painting her fingernails, that's going to take away an individual's agency. And so in that situation, it is much easier for somebody who intends to hurt somebody to do so. We also have the government introducing evidence of the threats against Ms. Ventura that the tapes of the freak-offs would be used if she were to leave him.
And so that's another really strong piece of evidence that we see as to the sex trafficking elements.
Now, we've been getting a lot of questions from listeners about the RICO charges Sean Combs is facing. When people hear RICO, they might think of a criminal organization, like a mob or a gang. I've also heard people talk about that the RICO statute being applied here is overly broad. So can you help our listeners understand why the government is using RICO laws to prosecute Sean Combs?
Chapter 4: What insights does Moira Penza provide on prosecuting high-profile cases?
Absolutely. So racketeering laws do prosecute criminal organizations. That's absolutely true. And that's what the government is saying here. The government is saying that Sean Combs was able to operate the way that he did because he was in fact part of a criminal organization. that there were other individuals who helped facilitate the crimes that he is charged with.
And that expansion of the racketeering laws to prosecute crimes other than mob cases has been going on for a long time. So in the Eastern District of New York, you had the prosecution of soccer corruption under the racketeering laws. We've seen various opioid cases that are brought under the racketeering laws.
And in fact, I used the racketeering statute when I prosecuted Keith Raniere, who was the head of the NXIVM, what's colloquially called a sex cult. But there— My argument was, in fact, that Keith Raniere was running a criminal organization. He wasn't a cult leader. He was a crime boss. And that's really what you hear the government doing in this case as well.
And that's why we're getting testimony from assistants, other people in his entourage, other people who were employed by him, who saw what was happening and helped facilitate it, including by covering up his crimes.
So I'm actually curious about this because I've tried to have this conversation with my friends and they're always saying Sean Combs made music. He produced music. He had a whole fashion line, alcohol, everything. His organization isn't criminal. He's a business person, but then he did freak off. So like only a percentage or a small part of it could be considered criminal.
So how are you calling what he's doing a criminal enterprise? Can you make sense of that?
Yes. So when the government is charging racketeering, they can say that an organization is entirely criminal or they can say that there is an association of individuals who together are committing crimes. And sometimes... an organization or the way that somebody is operating their businesses can help facilitate crimes.
So again, similarly in the case that I prosecuted, even though we talk about it as the NXIVM case, I did not charge NXIVM as a criminal organization. I charged Keith Raniere and his associates together as a criminal organization who were using NXIVM classes, the individuals who were taking NXIVM courses. to commit these crimes, sometimes as participants in the crime, sometimes as victims.
And so just because there can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, same thing with the FIFA case, right? There can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, but where an individual is working with others to commit crimes, even if they are also doing things that are legitimate, that can still be racketeering.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the RICO charges against Combs?
Chapter 6: How do the defense strategies impact the trial?
So there can be additional nuances to that as well, but I think the government's going to want to make it easy for the jury and say, here are all these instances where the crime that... Mr. Combs committed required other people's involvement. So that's, I think, the way that the government is going to lay it out. And in terms of whether they're there yet, I think they're getting there.
I think we've heard testimony. that showed the involvement of other individuals. We also had testimony from one of Mr. Combs' assistants, and he was going to take a fifth, so he was not going to testify, saying that he would be incriminating himself if he took the stand. And so he was actually granted immunity so that he would, in fact, testify.
And so having individuals who the government is actually saying were were part of this conspiracy testify about what they saw, what they did, that's going to be powerful evidence. And we still have weeks of trial to go.
It's interesting that you bring up granting an individual immunity because George Kaplan, one of Sean Combs' personal assistants, we saw him on Wednesday take the fifth and be granted immunity and then testify. So what goes into an AUSA's mindset as to we need to give this person immunity in order to testify and how do you get to that conclusion and what do you do with them?
Well, I think this is one of the toughest parts of the job as a prosecutor is really exercising that prosecutorial discretion. So just because somebody did engage in criminal conduct, just because somebody may have been a lower ranking member of a criminal conspiracy, you may choose not to charge them with crimes, right?
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Chapter 7: What evidence is being presented regarding sex trafficking?
In other situations, you might actually charge somebody with a crime and then they cooperate with the government and testify in exchange for the government eventually seeking leniency on their behalf. In other situations, and I can't speak to the exact specifics of how the government made the decision that they made, but in other situations,
what you're going to say is, this isn't necessarily somebody who I think should be charged for a crime, or there may be other reasons why you don't want to charge them with a crime. But they themselves might say, or through their lawyers, I'm not going to testify because what you want me to say is going to incriminate me.
And so in that situation, the government makes a calculus that you don't want to prosecute the person, but it is also worth having them testify. And you always want to be doing that when it is helping you get the person who is significantly more culpable. And here, there's clearly no dispute that the defendant, Mr. Combs, was the head of this organization.
So the government is going to make certain decisions to make sure that they can hold him responsible.
So sometimes people ask me in just a layperson's term, and so I'm going to ask you in this term. Sure. Is it sometimes that you're just going after the big fish and you let the little fish go?
I think that's totally fair, and I think that's the way that the system should work. I think that prosecutorial discretion is a very important part of the system. And certainly there can be cases where for a variety of reasons, maybe because somebody was such a victim him or herself that you choose not to prosecute them.
Just ahead, former prosecutor Moira Penza has faced some of Combs' defense team in court before. And she says they're making some new moves in the Combs trial.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of immunity in the prosecution's case?
Moira, thank you so much for your time.
No problem. Thanks for having me.
Court's taking somewhat of a longer break for Memorial Day weekend. They're off today on Friday and resume on Tuesday, May 27th. We'll be back in your feed later that day with the latest from ABC News Live's Burden of Proof. If you have any questions about the case you'd like me to answer, call and leave a voicemail at 929-388-1249. Thanks to everyone who's called.
We love hearing your questions and we'll answer as many as we can on future episodes. Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. Our 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. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.
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This is the next phase in my therapeutic work. Nicole Kidman returns for the Hulu original Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2.
Breathe in. We take you back to a core trauma. She is manipulating us. Why are you resisting? Is it too late to get a refund?
The all new season of nine perfect strangers is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu and Disney plus new episodes Wednesdays.
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