Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy on Trial: Threats, Control, and a Bleeding Victim — Stylist Testifies

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Defense attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs asked the judge to declare a mistrial in the rapper’s sex trafficking and racketeering case because of alleged mishandling of potentially key evidence. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber got all the details about what happened inside the federal courthouse from correspondent Elizabeth Millner.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you received Depo-Provera birth control shots and were later diagnosed with a brain or spinal tumor called meningioma, you may be eligible for a lawsuit. Visit https://forthepeople.com/lcdepo to start a claim now! HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. The Sean Diddy Combs' federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial took quite a turn today, as celebrity stylist Deonté Nash testified that the music mogul allegedly beat his former girlfriend Cassandra Ventura until she bled, controlled every aspect of her life, and even made chilling threats. He even testified he jumped in and tried to stop one of these attacks. And by the way, that's only part of the testimony from today.

There was a lot more we got to get into. I'm going to be breaking it down with our law and crime reporter Elizabeth Milner, who is inside that courtroom for every minute of the action. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Everybody, this is another law and crime legal alert. If you received Deco-Provera birth control shots and were later diagnosed with a brain or spinal tumor called meningioma, you may be eligible for a lawsuit. Morgan and Morgan is investigating claims that patients weren't properly warned about this risk.

It's free to check. It just takes a few minutes and you don't pay unless they win. So scan the QR code on screen, click the link below or head over to 4thepeople.com slash LC Depot to see if you qualify. The federal trial of Sean Diddy Combs took another dramatic turn today, day 11 of testimony. And what testimony we had, explosive testimony, from this celebrity stylist, Deonte Nash, who described alleged threats, physical abuse, controlling behavior by the hip-hop mogul toward his former girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura, even himself. And I think, by the way, this was brought up during our live show on Long Crime's YouTube channel. I think this was brought up by Ashley Banfield quite well, that Nash might be the only person who's testified so far that he actually intervened in the alleged abuse of Sean Combs. We're going to get into that, but that is definitely something to make note of.

And by the way, he's not the only person who testified. We heard a lot of testimony regarding the circumstances of Kid Cuddy's testimony from last week. Remember that? Kid Cuddy testified that he was a victim of his house being broken into, his car. car being set on fire, that he had been dating Cassandra Ventura, seemingly during this breakup that she had with Sean Combs, that he was the victim of retaliation at the hands of Sean Combs. And this is all important for the racketeering charge, right? The more that the prosecution can make the point that Combs was this essential mafia boss,

that he was heading up this criminal enterprise that was involved in a whole series of crimes, that's how you get to racketeering, a criminal enterprise that has all of these underlying crimes forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, sex trafficking. Kid Cuddy, pivotal witness for what I would say is multiple predicate crimes. And then we heard from officials today regarding these specific events surrounding Kid Cuddy. So we have a lot to get into, a lot of dramatic testimony. For that, I want to bring on Long Crimes Reporter Elizabeth Milner, who has been inside that courtroom

every day of trial. Elizabeth, so good to see you. Thanks for coming here. Yes, I'm set. I know. I'm in studio today. Can you believe it? I love it. I love it. I always see you across right. Right. I'm happy to have you here. Yes. Now, before we even get into the testimony today, including of Deonte Nash, there was something that happened before the jury was even brought in. Before testimony even began, what happened? Yeah, so I feel like some of the most interesting things that

happen in this trial are always the arguments outside of the presence of the jury. That's really when you see the attorneys in action and really, honestly, when they're showing kind of their person not playing it up so much to the jury. And so there was kind of a big ruling that was made outside of the jury presence before testimony had started today and it regarded Kid Cuddy. So there was this defense motion that they were trying to strike this last little bit of testimony where Kid Cuddy essentially implied that he had believed that he was lying about having anything to do with the Molotov cocktail that was lodged into his car, having anything to do with the break-ins in his home. And so there was this moment at the Soho House where they had a meeting. They met

They shook hands. The prosecution had asked Kid Cuddy, what did you make of just this meetup and what did you think that Diddy was implying when he had said that he didn't know what he was talking about when he was asked straight up just about the Molotov cocktail in that Kid Cuddy had believed that Diddy was lying about this. And it was kind of a moment towards the end of his testimony because this was a moment that we got to at the redirect. So this was after the cross-examination where a lot of people were just like, oh, wow.

So he definitely believes it was kind of another aha moment, if you will. And so the defense objected to this. The defense wanted this little piece that Kid Cuddy was talking about just struck from the record. They didn't want this to go to the transcript when the jury goes into deliberation. And so the judge actually denied the defense's motion and he had said that the door was actually opened

for this line of questioning, for this type of response under the cross-examination. And so that was a big ruling that he had made earlier this morning. A little inside baseball, as much as they tell a jury to disregard a comment, Once it's made, you can't ring the bell, it's very hard to tell the jury not to consider that. Which, by the way, we have something to talk about when it comes to a specific piece of testimony that the judge instructed the jury today to disregard. We'll get to that in a minute.

But we had Officer Christopher Ignacio of the LAPD testify, and he was the one who responded to the alleged break-in at Kid Cuddy's home. And this is somebody who's a veteran. So he'd been with the department about 16 years when he responded to Kid Cuddy's home. What was that response like? Yeah, so this response happened on December 22nd of 2011. This is a couple of days before Christmas around the holiday time. And so he was responding to a home up in the Hollywood Hills. The address was an address we were all very familiar with.

Why? Because it was Kid Cutty's address. So he said that he was dispatched around 8.20 in the morning about a possible suspect stare down. And Ignacio had said that he had responded with police lights, with sirens, just kind of the whole shebang. And so then we see an exhibit photo of Kid Cutting. his front door, so then we know, of course, he had been responding to Kid Cuddy's house. And Officer Ignacio was explaining that the neighborhood that Kid Cuddy had lived in at the time, it was kind of situated above the Hollywood Hills, it has narrow views and kind of windy roads.

But he said that he had noticed a black escalate. And that, to me, really stuck out, because this is kind of towards the beginning of his testimony, that stuck out to me because yesterday when Capricorn Clark was testified, She was testifying that, or she testified that Diddy, Rubin, Diddy Security Guard, and Capricorn, Clark all went to Kid Cuddy's home in what? A black escalate and that they proceeded to even chase down Kid Cuddy when he had been responding to this break in that had happened at his home. But Officer Ignacio, while he testified today, said that he didn't notice any of the passengers inside the vehicle because the windows were heavily tinted, kind of like a limo would be tinted, just very dark. dark so he couldn't see inside. But he said that he did catch a license plate number. And this license plate was for 6LK and 013. He said he didn't pull the car over at this particular time because there

was no crime at the time. But then he starts to kind of get into just what had happened once he's on Kid Cutty's property, that his partner jumped over a fence, let him in. He noticed the door was open, but no one was home. Then he had noticed some unwrapped gifts, which I thought was pretty interesting because Kid Cutty had testified that these gifts were wrapped when he was testifying last week that these gifts were wrapped. And then when he came home, that these gifts were unwrapped. They were in the kitchen area. And then more detectives kind of arrived. They searched the area. But I think one thing that was pretty interesting that stood out to me during Christopher Ignacio's testimony is that he didn't mention the dog. And I think the dog was kind of a big thing,

according to Kid Cuddy, because Kid Cuddy had explained that he normally lets his dog kind of roam around. However, when he returned home for this break-in, that his dog was locked in the bathroom and his dog was jumpy and nervous after this incident. And so that was one point that just didn't, wasn't discussed today during testimony, which I found pretty interesting. So as far as Officer Ignacio, he had said that they had exited the home and noticed that same black escalade coming back down the hill. It was driving a lot slower around 10 to 15 miles per hour, which I think also kind of goes to Capricorn Clark's testimony, right? because she was explaining that while in that escalade with Diddy and with Rubin, the security guard, that they had chased down Kid Cutty once they saw that he was coming back down to his home. And I think this kind of helped verify a little bit that possibly maybe this did happen.

And obviously during the cross, there was kind of holes poked into that specific aspect. But later Kid Cutty arrives through the home. Officer Ignacio under Cross kind of explained that Kid Cutty was pretty flustered by this incident. But I think kind of the biggest moment where there were two big moments, one, that this was a trespass report. So it wasn't reported as a burglary. It wasn't reported as a robbery. It was just simple trespassing. But he said that he entered this license plate of the black escalate into the system.

So then we see an exhibit photo, and this is where the direct examination kind of ends. We see this DMV vehicle registration information for that same license plate number that I had just said. And it was registered not to Sean Combs, particularly not to Capricorn. Clark not to Rubin but it was registered actually to bad boy productions and then the direct examination and so I think a lot of people including myself were just kind of like wow this car was registered to bad boy that's a bomb shot yes that's a bomb shot because to make the allegation that Sean Combs or his team of associates particularly when you're talking about a racketeering

conspiracy he can't do it alone the allegation is is that he used his associates and bodyguards to facilitate crimes and cover them up if they have a car that's registered to bad boy at the scene of a break-in, burglary trespassing, what you want to call it, that corroborates Kid Cuddy's account and makes this a lot more digestible for the jury. So it's a big, big moment. And by the way, Capricorn Clark being in that car goes to the kidnapping, which is one of the predicate crimes that the prosecution is hoping to prove in order to convict Sean Combs of racketeering conspiracy.

So obviously a big witness, Mr. Ignacio. The cross-examination by the defense was interesting. Talk to us about who conducted the cross and where exactly were they going. What did they say? Oh, yeah. Well, who conducted the cross. It was none other than Brian Steele himself. So he was really kind of back in his element, really cross-examining Christopher Ignacio.

And so right off the bat, Brian still goes in and is like, well, this incident happened 13 and a half years ago. You need your memory refreshed, right? Officer Ignacio responds, yes, this case had no value to you until you was. appeared in court. Officer Ignacio agreed. And then later they kind of talk about the report that the report was made by his partner, which Ignacio kind of verified. So he still was coming off just a little bit aggressive during this cross-examination. Or maybe he was just truly in his element kind of coming off super confident while cross-examining this police officer. And so then we get into a map of Kid Cuddy's home. And this is kind of like a generic Google map exhibit. And I think

it was interesting that the defense was kind of trying to point out just where Kid Cuddy's home lied in the Hollywood Hills just as far as the route that people would take kind of implying that maybe this escalade just got caught at a dead end because there were a lot of dead ends over there according to the defense and so I think the defense was definitely trying to play up that it's possible that this black escalator who might have allegedly been inside this car caught at a dead end and maybe that's the reason that he had seen the black escalate once again but yeah which by the way is something to say yes exactly so a car a car registered to Sean Combs.

Oh, it wasn't stopped there. It just happened to be in the neighbor at this time. Yes, exactly. Maybe got caught at a dead end. And then it was interesting too, because even when Brian Steele was on the stand, he was like, did you see a black Porsche? Because he calls a Porsche Porsche

next to an escalate and Ignacio response, I don't remember, did you see a car chase? Or you didn't see a car chase, did you? And Ignacio responded, no, he didn't. He asked if a gun was involved, would you have included that in your report? Ignacio responded, yes, no one told you about a firearm in. Ignacio responded true.

The homeowner didn't mention a gun, the owner obviously being Scott Mescotee, aka Kid Cuddy. And by the way, this is all because these are things that Capricorn Clark and Kid Cuddy had kind of testified to, right? Yes, exactly, and especially with Capricorn Clark's testimony specifically, but I think, you know, just kind of thinking about it, possibly from a juror perspective, that if there was kind of this discussion on not to report it to police, not to say, who was behind this. Maybe that kind of may have explained why there was no talk about a firearm. But according to Ignacio, if there was a firearm that was mentioned, it definitely would have been included in the report. But again, Officer Ignacio wasn't the one who completed the report.

It was actually his partner. He was asked whether or not he had heard about a kidnapping in the matter, and he said that he didn't hear about this kidnapping and that no one disturbed the property, and he responded know, which I think is interesting too, because if you talk about the dog, the dog being locked in the closet, I think that's kind of a disruption of the property, but that's neither here nor there. And then Steele was asking, you know, there are no bullet holes in the wall, and he responded yes, and asking whether or not that he could have put out a Bolo report to be on the lookout for this black escalate, and they didn't do a Bolo alert. There wasn't any mention of threat to kill, and Ignacio confirmed that's true. And as far as mentioned, just of security cameras, obviously, this is a big rap star at the time, still a rap star, even today. And even Kid Cuddy was talking about how his cameras were repositioned during this break-in.

But Ignacio had said they had asked actually Kid Cuddy to provide this footage. They saw the cameras, but there was no filming of this incident. And so Ignacio explained that Kid Cuddy when he was responding to his home break-in, that he was a little flustered. And then they ended the cross-examination with just the time frame of when this dispatch call came in. So as we know from Kid Cuddy's testimony, he explained that Cassie had called him around 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. And the call for the dispatch for police didn't come in until 8.20. And so they ended the cross-examination there. There was no redirect and the witness was off the stand.

It seems like they're trying to downplay what the severity of it, trying to get into inconsistencies about what was happening. It's an interesting level of cross-examination. And then we went into something else. So you move on from the break-in or the alleged break-in to now the alleged arson, right? This is Kid Cuddy's car being set on fire again as a form of retaliation against Kid Cuddy by Sean Combs. And by the way, just as a point of mention here, and I said this on a live show, and I'm going to say it here, if you're dealing with racketeering conspiracy, prosecution doesn't have to prove that Diddy's literal or figurative fingerprints are in any of this.

The Mafia Don is not going to have his fingerprints on the gun. It doesn't even necessarily be, it has the Combs has to be there during the break. It's did he order it? Did he aid and abet it? Was there an agreement to move forward with this? That's what we're talking about. So we'll keep that in mind as we talk about this, which is now Lance Jimenez, this Los Angeles Fire Department investigator, responded to Cuddy's

home about a fire right a fire is car being set on fire talk to us about that response yeah so the response for the Molotov cocktail lodged into Kid Cutty's Porsche happened on January 9th of 2012 so this was a couple of weeks after the break-in and arson investigator Lance Humana said that he responded to a call of an auto fire essentially and it was around 11 o'clock that day and then dispatch told him that there was an auto fire in the driveway of the we see that it's Kid Cutty's address. We know it's Kid Cutty's home. And so while Jimenez is on the stand, he's kind of describing kind of the same way other witnesses have described Kid Cutty's

neighborhood around that time, that it was an affluent area. It's not necessarily a place where you see a Molotov cocktail, let alone even a car bomb, essentially, going off in just this quiet family neighborhood. And so he says when he observed, once he had arrived on scene, that he observed a car parked pretty close to the garage in that. car was the black Porsche 9-11 he said that when he arrived he saw that this roof was cut out essentially and then inside the Porsche was this burning pattern on the seats on the interior and then he saw the bottle in the front seat and this was a glass bottle he said that there was a burned handkerchief on the console and

his initial hypothesis was that the engine wasn't damaged the back seats weren't damaged the weather was good that day so he didn't believe that this was something that was natural and then he said that he had smelled gasoline coming from that glass bottle, so he believed it to be a Molotov cocktail. He said he didn't observe any type of windows being broken, and so he believed that the burn powders kind of pointed to one that being lodged into the roof, but also that the roof was cut out, making this a little more intentional. And so he believed that as far as just how this all came about, that someone took this glass bottle, it was this malt liquor bottle, it was glass,

put gasoline into this bottle, put cloth over this bottle, and it was kind of that this silky designer handkerchief that he had pointed out, cut the roof open, the cloth fell out, and the fire was essentially contained to the car, and it could have been a lot worse. But we saw just a number of exhibits where we see everything from Kid Cuddy's front door to his driveway. We see where the black Porsche was burned. We see the car roof. And again, Officer Jimenez, or investigator Lance Humanez, saying that he believed that this cut was intentional out of the roof. We see the glass bottle, we see the handkerchief out of this clothy material. We see smoke and soot damage. We see looking kind of at the roof from the interior. We see minor burn patterns. We see a splash

pattern from the bottle. The bottle was a 40 ounce malt liquor old English 800 bottle, which I thought was pretty interesting. And this glass bottle still had gasoline in it. And so we see a close-up of the bottle, we see the container where they had poured the gasoline into it with the fluid in it because the container wasn't at the scene and so they had to transfer it to preserve it to test it, that type of thing. We see a lighter on the scene and that was adjacent to the Porsche and it was this kind of red disposable lighter. We see the handkerchief material and I thought it was interesting.

He was pointing out that this handkerchief particularly was a kind of a designer handkerchief. And then he was talking a little bit about the DNA results. And so he was saying that there were no results on the lighter, the cloth, but there was partial DNA found on the bottle. And this partial DNA, as they kept kind of pointing out, was the DNA profile of a female. And when they talked about the female DNA profile being on this bottle, Diddy was actually kind of nodding his head along, I think, also kind of verifying, okay, it's not male DNA. So people can't think it's me, it's female DNA. But the thing is, the report ended up coming back that the liquid was gasoline and that they had requested fingerprints on both the bottle and the lighter. But they didn't take fingerprints on the scene. LAPD actually did.

So investigator Lance Humanez, he works for L-AFD. LAPD was the one who had taken the fingerprints. But it's interesting he had said that the victim in this case, the victim being Kid Cuddy, had someone do fingerprints after the break-in that he had at his home. And that was just a couple weeks earlier. He submitted this fingerprint card over to officials, and the fingerprint cards were destroyed, actually. And the investigator Jimenez didn't know why they were destroyed necessarily. And so the government asked, did you find this unusual? Has he seen evidence destroyed?

And then there was this huge objection. The defense did not like where this was going, because I think it kind of implied that maybe did he had somebody within LAPD, kind of get rid of this evidence, destroy this evidence. Then there was a huge sidebar. It lasted for a few minutes. Before we even get into that, I saw some reporting indicated that a LAPD officer had destroyed the fingerprint card. Is that inaccurate?

Yes, no, that's not inaccurate. And LAPD did destroy the fingerprint card. It wasn't ordered by Officer Humannis. We just don't know why that would have been. We don't know why it was. And so that was the big moment that they were talking about. Why was this evidence destroyed? Why did it go away?

Why was this so unusual? And have you seen anything like this before? And Jimenez said this wasn't his call to make. So now it goes into sidebar. Obviously, there's a big objection. What happened during the sidebar? Well, the sidebar. So meaning the jury's not there?

Yeah. Well, actually, the jury is there for the sidebar. So then we hear this, yeah. Yeah, we hear this loud kind of staticy noise going off. So we're not hearing what both parties are talking about. However, there's a court reporter over there kind of transcribing everything. And so the sidebar lasted for a few minutes. And I myself was wondering what's going on.

So I know the jury must have been wondering what is about to happen. what's going on. Then all of a sudden there's a break. They take pretty much like a nice long morning break, I should say, and then there were a lot of arguments outside of the jury. That's what I was going to say. I know they went to a break. Yes. And that's where it really heated up. And the judge wasn't happy. Oh, the judge was not happy at all. And so the government was trying to argue essentially that they were entitled to know what the steps were taken in this investigation because they knew the defense was going to kind of attack the credibility of the investigation. And essentially they were saying that the outcome of the destruction of

fingerprints means that no further steps were taken. The judge says that he didn't think it was necessarily that there was prejudice going on. However, Mark Agnifalo goes up there and he's giving his argument and he's saying it's absolutely prejudicial. He said what the government has done is outrageous. And he made a note to say that he doesn't call things outrageous very often, but he sounded very upset. He said that the government was implying that someone within the courtroom was essentially having something to do with the destruction of his fingerprints. I think he was kind of insinuating that he meant his client

for the most part in. The government kind of came back and they were like, the defense is gonna attack the credibility of the investigation. Investigator Humanez didn't authorize the destruction of the fingerprint card. This is an important fact for the jury to consider and it's absolutely relevant.

So then I think tensions were a little hot during this moment. So then we take another break and this is for all parties. defense the prosecution us in the gallery all that and so then they come back from this break the judge said that he will strike from the record the fingerprint card and the destruction of them and that the jury will disregard it but Shapiro stood up and it's interesting sometimes Jesse because sometimes it's not the same attorney always making these arguments outside the presence of the jury sometimes you have Esteveo chiming in or Esteval chiming in you have Donaldson chiming in you have Shapiro chiming and you have

Agnifalo chiming and sometimes you just never know where it's going to go but this case, Shapiro stands up, Alexander Shapiro stands up and she says, we're moving for a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct. And I was just like, oh my goodness. And so she was explaining there's this conspiracy theory that Mr. Combs can buy his way out of charges. So they were kind of even taking it back to jury selection. Right, because that's what prospective jurors had said. Exactly, exactly. And so she had said that the government asked questions about authorizing destruction of fingerprints. She said there's no way to unring this bell. Even if the record is struck because the jury might still remember it even now. I remember it very clearly,

very vividly. And so the defense is kind of arguing that the government should have stopped when they just said that the fingerprint cards were destroyed. They should have just stopped there. They shouldn't have continued insinuating in a way that they were ordered to be destroyed by a particular someone. And so the government comes back. They say no prejudice or excuse me, there was no prejudice that should cause or would cause a mistrial and that the government needed to elicit this testimony about the fingerprints and they said that they came to a resolution that they're okay with it just being struck from the record. And so the judge denied the application for a mistrial and said that the jury will just disregard the statements from the attorneys as

evidence and will disregard the statements made by Officer Lance Jimenez or excuse me, investigator Lance Jimenez. And that's what he did. He told the jury to disregard it. Easier said than done. We'll see if they disregard it. But also you have to wonder if the jury will make that connection that the defense made about, you know, who might have been responsible or behind the evidence being destroyed. And by the way, there might not be anything nefarious about this. Pometez was cross-examined, though, by the defense. What were some of the highlights there?

Yeah, so he was cross-examined by Mark Agnifalo. And so starting off the bat, we kind of see the inside of the porch where you can see the bottle. They, of course, are going to touch upon the fact that this DNA profile came back as a female, in, that's what Agnifalo went with. The report says it's female DNA on the bottle. Jimenez says, yes, you sent the glass bottle for DNA testing. He said he didn't.

Jimenez didn't know who had actually sent this report in and maintains that it was just a partial DNA profile that was found, and obviously that's kind of above me as far as DNA and just everything that works with that. But then the defense is asking whether or not they reached out to Capricorn Clark, and I thought maybe this was a moment they were going to try to insinuate that maybe she was the one who was behind or maybe she was the one who had the partial DNA female DNA profile on that bottle and so then Jimenez said that he

didn't recall when the report came back we see another exhibit photo of the glass bottle inside the Porsche and Agnifalo is asking about his opinion on whether the glass bottle was the cause of the fire and Jimenez had you know verified yes and so there were other moments where you had seen a glove even in the back seat of the car. And it was interesting because I think the defense was implying that why didn't you test this glove for DNA? Jimenez had said that he believed that the glove belonged to the owner of the vehicle. Obviously, the owner of the vehicle being Kid Cutty, so didn't think it was relevant or necessary to turn it back for evidence. But Mark Agnifalo was really like,

well, where's the other glove? Do you know where the other glove is? And if a bottle is super hot, wouldn't you be the one using a glove if you were going to do something like this? And Jimenez kind of came back and said well not really and Agnivolo was like well wouldn't the bottle be hot and he said no because the cloth would be on fire and I felt like Agniflo was trying to argue with a fire expert an arson investigator. Basically trying to make the idea that was a sloppy investigation you don't really know who set fire to this car and let alone Sean Combs are an

associate of his yes exactly and so we're seeing more exhibit photos kind of the same photos that we were seeing under direct the roof cut out Kid Cuddy's portion number of times just whether or not if if he could tell that the damage was from the heat and the heat actually rose from the vehicle, then the defense kind of gets into Kid Cuddy's other portion, whether or not the portion should have been, the other portion should have been included in the report. And he said it wasn't relevant because this particular other Porsche was in the garage. And he said that it's like adding furniture in the home in the report.

It wasn't necessary for him to include that. And so I think as far as the cross-ending, Ignifalo was really kind of honing in on who he, who Investigator Humanez had spoken to as far as just reaching out to as far as potential witnesses or suspects and that type of thing. And so Investigator Jimenez did say that he had reached out to both Cassie and Capricorn Clark because when Capricorn Clark had testified, she had said that she didn't respond to investigators call, something that Humanez verified, that he called a bunch of times. He went over into door knocking to her house. He had got

a hold of her in quotations one time. And it was actually her brother who answered the phone and her brother told Investigator Humanez to leave her alone, and that was just kind of where we got to just as far as Capricorn Clark is concerned. But as far as Cassie is concerned, it was the same thing, reaching out to her, trying to find her address. She said, or excuse me, Investigator Humana said that he even got in touch with Cassie's father, and that Cassie's father was going to try to get her in touch with the investigator. But I think it also goes to show that no one was very cooperative in this investigation, something that I think also was verified under Capricorn Clark's testimony, Kid Cuddy's testimony, where it was just kind

of like, we're not going to talk about this with investigators. We're not going to talk about this with officials. We're going to keep our mouth shut and not cooperate with this investigation. You also wonder if that helps the prosecution because a big theme of this is why didn't Cassie step forward? Why didn't she speak? Why didn't she report anything? And the idea is the power, the control, the influence, the resources of Sean Combs, are you really going to go after him? I've said it before. I said again, I think the testimony from Don Rashard about how her witnessing Cassie being beaten by Combs in front of high-powered celebrities and no one steps in, that's an important consideration if you think about, well, what could Cassie do in that position,

the power dynamic? So I wonder what the jury takes away from that. But, okay, so it was a lot about Kid Cuddy. Yes. But then, then we go on to another witness. We go on to this celebrity stylist, Deante Nash, okay, had been a stylist for Cassie and Combs. Now, here's the thing. I'm reading the reporting of his testimony.

And just me reading the transcript of the testimony, I can tell this guy has a ton of personality. Yes, absolutely. So what was his connection? What did you take away from his testimony? What was he like what? Like, what was his vibe like? Oh, his vibe was awesome, I think. He really, for the most part, he started off pretty funny.

He makes this joke because we see this exhibit photo of Deontes head shot in. Deontes explaining, yes, that's me, and that I look amazing. And this photo, the courtroom erupts with laughter. I think I even spotted Diddy kind of chuckling along, too. It was a funny moment. But then it kind of got a lot more serious. And obviously, there were moments where they were talking about domestic violence or physical violence, from Diddy to Cassie, just the names he would call her. And so after we had this funny moment in court, Deonté Nash was explaining just his work history that he had styled Diddy.

Cassie starting in 2008 all the way up until 2018 he started off as an intern for Derek Roche who was actually Diddy Stylist while Deontay Nash is on the witness stand he actually refers to Diddy not as Sean Combs or Sean or anything like that he refers to him as Puff or Puffy one of the many names that Diddy has gone by in the past and so he worked with Diddy and Cassie from 2008 to 2018 and then from 2009 to 2018 he said he spent a lot of time with Cassie particularly that they went everywhere together, that he actually is Cassie's best friend, and that they even talk to, or they even talk to one another to this day. And so he testified that he saw Diddy and Cassie together at least once a week, so pretty frequently, but then he was asked some of the names that Diddy called her.

And so he starts off with, you know, baby girl, Cassie, but then he says that Diddy would refer to her as the B word, an S-L-U-T, and sometimes a hoe, and that he used the B-word often when describing. Cassie. Deonte had said that was his favorite word to use. And so Deonte said that Cassie would get pretty sad and depressed about all the name calling. And then Deonte kind of goes into the threats that Diddy had made where he had threatened to send Cassie's sex tapes to Cassie's parents and not even just to Cassie's parents, but Cassie's parents' jobs. He threatened to beat Cassie's behind. And this drove Cassie crazy to the point where she was crying a lot. She would stay in the house for days, essentially cocoon up. He had said that Diddy had threatened to even do something to Cassie's parents.

One thing is they didn't elaborate what he threatened to do to Cassie's parents. So I'm wondering if it also kind of falls in line with threatening to report these things to Cassie's parents' jobs, make them lose their jobs. It was these types of really mean and horrible threats that essentially Diddy was doing to Cassie around this time. And so there were even points where Deontay and Cassie would go out partying together. like to the clubs and that type of thing. And by the way, just to interrupt, the reason this is all important other than establishing

this pattern of criminal activity is force, fraud, coercion, how he would induce her to engage in these freakoffs for purposes of sex trafficking and understanding the context of it and understanding what her environment was like, again, goes to the idea, why didn't she step away? Because that was a big point of cross-examination, why were you, why didn't you leave him, why did you keep coming back, even though she disputed coming back, why did you encourage freakoffs or set them up? This is just another witness who's testifying very consistently about that environment. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, no, no, not at all. Go ahead. But yeah, there were even

points to where there was this one incident that happened at 2014 Vanity Fair party. And it's interesting, too, because just hearing this trial, watching this trial, like live in action, they really kind of go into the behind the scenes of the celebrity life. So they do things like go to red carpets and photo shoots and editorials and vanity fair parties, which is like the huge party that they do after the Oscars. And so at this particular event, Diddy had told Deonti according to him while he was testifying that Cassie's hair was the wrong way, that Cassie's hair was supposed to be up. It looked better for her look and her hair was down. And it's interesting because Deonti on the stand said that Cassie's hair the way it was originally looked

bomb. And so Diddy, so Diddy picked up Deontay angrily and even expressed just kind of violence sometimes towards Deante and that essentially Derek Rose, that being Diddy's stylist, Diddy and Cassie all went to the bathroom and fixed her hair for the result to be that Diddy actually ended up liking Cassie's hair down a lot better, something that they had originally done after they put her hair up. So then we get into Cassie's music and just, she was in the studio a lot, she was working towards the album, but Diddy would threaten to not release her music. We go for a lunch break, I chat with you for a little bit, then we come back and then

they go more into the violence, just that Deonté had experience. By the way, financial control, also part of the indictment, right? That Combs would use that as a way to get what he wanted. Yes. Again, important for racketeering and second. And then obviously the defense was going to poke holes into that, being like, oh, you know, and we'll get into this more, but that Cassie's music was still fine, that she was still recording with these big-name artists, but we'll go more into that

in just a second. But as far as just more of the violence that Deonté experienced, he said that there was a particular time where Mia, who we know will be testifying very soon, Mia is a pseudonym, but used to work for Diddy under his employment as an assistant, but that there was this moment where Deonte, Mia, and Cassie were all in Cassie's Los Angeles apartment. Mia and Deonte were over kind of helping Cassie pack for this music festival that she was going to do called OVO Fest. It's a music festival by Drake. Cassie was asleep, and then all of a sudden and Deante heard a knock at the door.

And so he answered the door, and it's Diddy. And that Diddy said the B word to Cassie and said, didn't I tell you to answer the phone? Something that a lot of witnesses have testified to, saying that Diddy was very aggressive, essentially whenever Cassie didn't answer her phone, and then he would respond, have other assistants respond,

have security reach out to her, all of that. And so what Diddy did in response was he grabbed Cassie by the hair and hit her head pulling her off of the couch, a place where she was sleeping, and then Cassie, Deonte, and Mia ran into the bedroom, essentially trying to escape. Deante explained that he had jumped on Diddy's back to get Diddy off of Cassie, and that Diddy pushed him off, and the Deontie fell to the floor, then Mia jumped on Diddy's back.

And again, Mia's a, Diddy's assistant at this time. This is the first time that anybody's ever intervened, right? And all the testimony that you've heard about her being subjected to physical abuse is the first time anybody tried to do something, allegedly. Yeah, and not even beyond just stop, don't do this. I'm gonna call the, like, none of that. It was literally just like a physical, like, get off of my friend, get away from her,

stop beating her up, that type of thing. And so it was pretty bad this incident because Cassie ended up hitting her head on the edge of the bed frame. And we all know how just kind of just the imagination of that that the point where she hit her head, blood was drawn. You would think that Diddy would stop doing

what he was doing at this moment. But according to Deontay, Diddy just kept on hitting her during this. So Mia ran, she grabbed some towels, Cassie's head. Deonte said that he tried to call 911, but he said that someone had told him to hang up the phone. He wasn't sure who it was that had told him to hang up the phone, but I think that also kind of plays into just essentially people not going to the authorities out of fear that they'd be retaliated against or something would happen to them if they were

to report these incidents to police. So at the end of the day, DRock ended up to, and DRock is a name. We've heard about a lot of times. He's a security guard that DRock took Calais. to a plastic surgeon and the next day Deonte had FaceTime Cassie and Cassie had stitches above her forehead. There's a lot that he just testified to a lot of you know violence and the threats didn't he say at some point call Combs Bluff right regarding the threats the threats to release the sex tapes he talked about that right he did and another incident of violence where they Deonté was over and Cassie was cooking and they were having a good time and then

did he comes over did he said get the F out of my house because Diddy I guess was paying for that apartment and so he believed that this was his and so Diddy had even kind of taken his anger out on Deonté where according to Deonté he popped him in the back of the head and by popped he meant slapped Deonti in the back of the head and he said that he had no hair to grab and that's why he ended up getting smacked in the head and so Deontay goes downstairs Cassie ends up coming downstairs did he's berating the both of them and so Deonti and Cassie then drive off Cassie's explaining to Deontay that

Diddy was threatening to release sex tapes of her, sexually explicit videos of her to her parents and threatened their jobs, called Cassie's brother the B word, and Deante said, well, girl, just let him release it. And that's why I say like he kind of plays up into the sassy kind of nature sometimes on his testimony and his testimony. But he was like, girl, let him release the videos. He's on them too. Then Cassie responded, he's not on the videos. It's her with other men. And Deante said that Cassie told him in that moment that she didn't want to be having sex with these other men.

And I think that was kind of a big point to kind of drive home that this was forced or fraud or coerced for her to kind of be doing these freak-offs because this, again, was around the 2013-2014 time frame. And so essentially they hit out at a hotel and then did he had followed them to this hotel. And he ended up bringing other people like his chief of staff at the time, that being Tony Fletcher, another person named or another person that being D-Rock and Tony Fletcher at. actually helped Cassie kind of escape out because Cassie threatened to jump out of this hotel balcony essentially off of the, just off over her hotel rooms at the time. And so, Deonte was asked what floor this was on.

And he was like, well, it wasn't the first floor, but he couldn't recall what floor it actually was on. And so I think that was just another moment of just what he had experienced while, one being one of Cassie's very best friends, but also what it was like just seeing the inner workings of their relationship. Now, I also understand something happened at this 2013 music video shoot, too.

What happened there? Yeah. So, again, to your point, it was around the 2013 time frame. Cassie was filming this music video. Deante said he was outside smoking the cigarette. And all of a sudden, Diddy grabs him and chokes him out. That's what Deontes said. Diddy had allegedly told Deonti, I told you all about going out because

didn't like when Cassie and Deonti went out without his permission. And Deontay explained that he was scared of retaliation. from Diddy around this time. Again, he refers to Diddy as Puff. So he didn't report this particular incident to police, but he reported it to Derek and he reported it to Christina. And then we see an exhibit photo of Christina,

that being Christina Corum, aka KKK, as some of the witnesses have called her and that Christina said that she would talk to Diddy to stop him, but she didn't. And there was also something about a 29th birthday? A 29th birthday, yeah, and it was interesting because this particular birthday was also referencing Cassie's, now settled federal lawsuit, where Cassie just wanted to do karaoke with her friend.

She just wanted to go out with her friends for her birthday, but Diddy wanted to surprise Cassie for her birthday that day. And then Deonte said something to the effect of, girl, you can't tell that man, no, as far as why Diddy even showed up to that particular birthday, even though I don't think he was necessarily wanted. But Cassie told Deontay that Diddy wanted to do a freak off at a hotel, but she didn't want to go. Again, she just wanted to celebrate her birthday with her friends.

And so they end up going to a dinner, then later they go to this karaoke bar where even at the bar, according to Deonte, Diddy was yelling at Cassie, and then they later go to Cassie's apartment. It was Deontay, it was Bonna, another friend of Cassie that we presumed to be testifying in this trial sometime later on. And then another friend, we see an exhibit photo of Bonna. So Diddy all of a sudden comes over to Cassie's apartment and said, y'all are going to get some deed tonight. Cassie ended up packing a black duffel bag and according to Deontay this black duffel bag had cash, it had sex toys in it and Cassie said she didn't want to go to this. She didn't want to go to the hotel with Diddy and Cassie had to relate to Deontay that Diddy was making her do it.

Deante said that Cassie was super high during this and that Diddy was also high during that night but was also saying that Cassie was more intoxicated than Diddy that night and so I think the government was trying to own up that Cassie might have been under the influence, either of drugs or alcohol that night, but also that did he was too. But I think kind of the essence that they were trying to drive home was just that this was another moment where Cassie just didn't want to do this. She was pretty much forced to do this, that her boyfriend was making her do this, that type of thing.

So a constant state of threats and fear and violence. But the defense has always said that this is a case of a toxic relationship in domestic. violence and it doesn't amount to sex trafficking right is that what happened on cross-examination I mean what were they trying to hit upon when they had an opportunity to question mr. Nash well sometimes I'm not gonna lie when Xavier Donaldson does the cross-examination I never know kind of where we're going he is very kind of chauvinistic when he's in the courtroom and by the way it is very interesting yeah they choose to cross-examine each witness right

I mean you've talked about so many different attorneys today cross-examining different witnesses so he did the cross Yes. He did the cross on Deonte Nash. And even just starting off, there was kind of a little sassy moment where Donaldson asked Deonté, Deonte, good afternoon. And he just waits for a response. And then he says it again, good afternoon. And Deontay responds, how are you? And Donaldson says, I'm good. How are you? And Deontay response blessed. Then there was a little chuckle in the courtroom. And so you could see that there might have been some tense moments. But as far as where they really went with the cross examination is they right off the bat was asking, did you hire a lawyer to, file civil claims against Diddy. He was also asked about going to the government meeting with prosecutors and that Deonti had explained that he had went willingly and that he didn't hire a lawyer to investigate or to do civil claims against Diddy. And it feels like the defense is always trying to kind of claim that there might be civil litigation pending. But according to Deonti, that wasn't necessarily the case. So Deonti has shown this document that

we don't see in the gallery. It was just shown to the parties and the witness in this case. And so Donaldson asked, so as of March 10th, 2025, you didn't retain counsel for civil claims against my client, Sean Combs. And Deonté maintained that he only has legal representation, mainly because he was new, he was going to be testifying. He didn't even want to be testifying for the most part, Jesse, he told me, or not told me, but he had testified that he was subpoenaed to testify and he really just didn't want to do it. And so then Donaldson asked, well, did you tell Ms. Comey that you had civil attorneys to pursue claims against Mr. Combs? Again, Deonti Nash pushing back, saying no. Then all of a sudden, we're seeing an exhibit photo of Cassie. And I feel like sometimes that the defense kind of tries to throw in these exhibit photos of Cassie on video shoots, on red carpets, doing editorial shoots to kind of show that she was successful just in her own right sometimes.

But sometimes I never know just kind of why they bring it up in that particular instance. I guess they're trying to say he wasn't really controlling, derailing her career as much as the prosecution would say. And I think there was testimony earlier in the week as, was she a hard worker? Was she talented? You know, was he controlling her career? She wasn't a success because of him? Yeah. Just keep her as a sex slave or was it, you know, something of her own doing?

Exactly. And so there were times even that we saw exhibit photos of Cassie performing on stage and pretty recently around 2016-ish, Cassie even, posing with Usher at a bad boy reunion tour. It was the 20th anniversary, and Deonté was explaining that he had styled Cassie for this tour. And then Deonté, it was interesting because there were times where Xavier Donaldson would be like, so Ms. Ventura, and Deonti would be like, Miss Fine,

because that is now her married name. And so there was a little tense moments with that. But then all of a sudden, Donaldson's asking just how Deonté Nash became a celebrity stylist. You went from intern to styling these high-profile people, just how did that kind of come about? And so then they kind of get into, I think, what they were really trying to go for, where it was like, well, you would agree that artists of a particular label need to have their artists look their best at all times. And Deonte said yes. So you would agree that the label had interest on how their artists looked, because Cassie was still signed a bad boy at that time.

So Deonti said yes. And so, yeah, I think the defense was trying to say that Didi wasn't necessarily controlling her look if there were. was any type of feedback on what she looked or how she presented herself it was because it was coming from the label and not necessarily a controlling manipulative boyfriend. And so then they start to kind of get into Cassie's music career a little bit, talking about how much time that Deontay and Cassie spent in the studio together because there was a lot of studio time and that Donaldson was like, well, labels pay for the studio, right? Even though you said that you were there all the time, right? That means that Mr. Combs and bad boy were paying for this and Cassie didn't pay. because the label had interest in Cassie's music future, I think trying to point out that Bad Boy was still taking her music seriously. They were still in the studio a lot of times. Then they kind of get into Cassie modeling

for this line called Young and Rest Reckless, and that line is actually her friend Bonas clothing line. Deontes said that Did he, even though he had nothing to do with this fashion line, had to approve it, and still had to even approve her look as she was modeling for her friend's clothing line. And I thought that was interesting that he had said that because for the most part,

you know, we always help out our friends, especially with the business adventures, but even as somebody else is in control of their particular brand, their particular fashion business, that Diddy still had final say and approval just on how Cassie looked and represented herself. And so then right before we go to a break,

Deonte has asked just about Cassie's music and just all the names and celebrities that were on this mixtape that was published, but not published on streaming, meaning that it didn't make any type of money. But there were high power artist on there, like Lil Wayne, Pusha Tea, French Montana, Jeremiah, Meek Mill, all on Cassie's mixtape. And then we kind of go into a break and Donaldson was like, well, there was this

whole discussion on whether or not that we would end at 3.30 today or 4 o'clock today. Donaldson was like, well, I at least have another hour. And then the judge got a little mad at him because he's like, well, why didn't you tell me that you had another hour of cross? I would have let the jury go home earlier. And so they try to make use of those last 30 minutes of the cross-examination, but Deontay is still in it for tomorrow morning. Still in it. Wow. So we'll see the continuation of that as we talked about. Mia is going to take the stand.

A lot happened today. Elizabeth Milner, thank you so much for being our eyes and ears in such detailed reporting. Always appreciate it. Thanks, Jesse. I appreciate it. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber.

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