Why the Sean Combs trial is about greater than ‘Diddy vs. Cassie’ : NPR

Advisory: This report comprises descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.

Over its first two weeks, the highest-profile witness to testify within the legal trial of hip-hop tycoon Sean Combs has been his ex-girlfriend, singer and mannequin Cassie Ventura. In often-intense moments on the stand, she informed the jury that he raped and abused her. As a end result, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial to this point has ceaselessly been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”

And if folks know only one factor concerning the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is most likely a extensively seen video through which he may be seen attacking her in a California lodge in 2016. Combs was seen kicking and dragging her, and throwing a vase at her — footage that has been key proof to this point for prosecutors arguing that Combs used drive and worry as a way of management. (After CNN aired that video in May 2024, Combs printed a video apology that has since been faraway from social media.)

The authorities’s case is about way more than simply the video.

Because it is a federal trial, with expenses of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution — all of which Combs has pleaded not responsible to — the prosecutors have a really specific job.

“What they really need to show from a prosecution perspective is that there was a criminal organization in play here that committed a number of illegal acts over time,” says former prosecutor Jennifer Beidel. She now practices in Michigan as a authorities investigations and company compliance lawyer, used to work in the identical federal workplace that’s presently prosecuting Combs: the Southern District of New York.

“So simply finding that Cassie Ventura was the subject of domestic violence, while that’s obviously awful and a very important thing from a state court level, doesn’t satisfy the federal standard,” she says.

What are the fees Combs faces?

In the intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution expenses, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing girls into taking part in industrial intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse staff. He additionally allegedly organized for girls and intercourse staff to be flown to him throughout state traces. That’s an enormous a part of what Cassie Ventura testified about. She stated she felt compelled to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely go away. Combs’ protection group is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The authorities’s indictment consists of not less than one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards Combs underneath a pseudonym.

Racketeering is essentially the most difficult cost to know. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering expenses — often known as RICO — to combat organized crime.

“RICO is traditionally a statute that was designed to prosecute the mob and other organizations that were essentially hiding their conduct through legitimate organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been applied more broadly. Mob prosecutions were pretty effective, at least in New York, for example, and there aren’t as many today. So it’s expanded into other areas where you might have an otherwise legitimate business that is also engaged in criminal misconduct, and maybe using that legitimate business to hide that criminal misconduct.”

Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a reputable enterprise empire — spanning music, clothes manufacturers, alcohol and media properties — he was utilizing these companies to gas and conceal legal actions. Think of this cost as being like cash laundering, however as a substitute of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. According to the federal indictment, these included kidnapping, arson, bribery, compelled labor and abusing and coercing girls. The different authorities witnesses who’ve testified about these alleged actions embody the musician Scott Mescudi — higher often called Kid Cudi — who stated on the stand Thursday that he believes that Combs broke into his home and was concerned in setting fireplace to his automobile after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been courting.

Cassie Ventura’s story continues to be on the middle of the prosecution’s case

Beidel says the prosecution might need had no alternative however to current Cassie Ventura as a witness very early on — she’s eight and a half months pregnant. But it might have a broader strategic profit as properly, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.

“Ventura covers a pretty long time frame and wide range of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Somebody who testifies in that way is much more understandable to a jury than when you put on maybe 10 witnesses for the same amount of time, when each of them has one little nugget, and the jury has to put that together. So you have sort of a narrator to start out with where they’re getting the story in their head to some degree.”

The Southern District of New York has an especially excessive success fee for convictions — properly above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the lodge video, that’s viscerally affecting. But with expenses as broad as those aimed toward Combs, an enormous query stays: Will the prosecution be capable to persuade jurors that he was the top of a legal group? The court docket estimates that the trial will proceed till late June not less than.

This story consists of reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.