NEW YORK (AP) — On the verge of resting their sex trafficking case against Sean “Diddy” Combs, federal prosecutors on Monday showed jurors more videos of the drug-fueled sex marathons at the center of allegations that could put the hip-hop mogul behind bars for life.
The clips, totaling about 20 minutes of footage of so-called “freak-offs” or “hotel nights,” bookended a prosecution case that began seven weeks ago with jurors seeing security camera footage of Combs brutally beating his former longtime girlfriend Cassie at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
Prosecutors are set to rest their case on Tuesday once Combs’ lawyers finish cross-examining the final government witness — Joseph Cerciello, a Homeland Security Investigations agent whose testimony included spending hours reading aloud text message exchanges, some of which involved Combs or other people in his orbit.
As they questioned Cerciello, Combs’ lawyers played excerpts from the videos, which were shown only to the jury and the parties — not reporters or public observers of the trial — because of their graphic nature.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey sometimes referred to the mostly 1- or 2-minute clips filmed by Combs as “explicit” videos, a signal for jurors to put on headsets that enabled them to hear and view the recordings without them being seen or heard by spectators in the Manhattan courtroom.