The Ben Mulroney Show - The disturbing twists and turns of the Diddy trial

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Guests and Topics: -The disturbing twists and turns of the Diddy trial with Guest: Neama Rahmani, Legal Analyst, Former Federal Prosecutor, President of West Coast Trial If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Book, direct, and save at bestwestern.com. to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. We are going to move away from Canadian politics and go into the legal world, one of the most salacious, explosive cases

that I think any of us can remember. I'm talking obviously of the Sean Combs criminal case that is taking place in the United States right now. And we are now joined by Anima Ramani, legal analyst, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial for an update. Anima, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, Ben. Thanks for having me as always. So this is, I mean, listen, you cover these cases, you cover far more cases than we talk about on this show. But I have to believe that this is in

a league of its own, even by your standards. No question in terms of the graphic and explicit nature of the testimony, Cassie Ventura, the government star witness on the stand, and she has been telling an unbelievable story over the past several days that she was given drugs to the point where she would throw up, that city would pay sex workers to urinate on her, that she was forced to have sex when she was menstruating and bleeding and even when she had a UTI. And today the defense gets the chance to cross-examine her. I believe that today and tomorrow will make or break the case depending on how well Cassie Ventura holds up on cross-examination.

So do you have, do we have any sense on how long this case is supposed to go on for? Like and how long until it goes before the jury? The case is scheduled for two months. I don't think it's gonna go that long. I think we're gonna wrap sometime in June, but the judge in the case, Judge Supermonia, has told the jury they may be here through the 4th of July. The Canadian legal system, different than the American,

talk to me about the decision by a judge to either allow cameras in a courtroom, or in this case, deprive the viewing public of watching it in real time. What went into deciding that there would be no cameras here versus say the Amber Heard Johnny Depp trial that everybody was following with bated breath? You know, one big difference in the United States is you have different state courts, you know, federal courts, and unfortunately in federal courts there is a specific rule,

you can blame the United States Supreme Court for this, that prohibits cameras or any recording devices in any federal court in the country. So it was really out of the judge in this case's hands. It was really up to the chief judge, chief justice of the US Supreme Court. He hasn't been inclined to overturn this rule, which is why we see the courtroom sketch artists and not the cameras that we saw in the Johnny Depp emperor case.

Yeah, I don't know about you, there's a big part of me that's glad that I can't hear the words coming out of Cassie Ventura's mouth, because I need that distance. I need that buffer of hearing it from an interested third party. To hear it directly, I think, would be too much for a lot of people.

It wouldn't. The jurors are seeing images of the free cost themselves because Combs would record them reportedly for his own sexual pleasure and to maintain control over Cassie and other participants. So even the spectators in the courtroom, they're not seeing those explicit images. There are privacy screens set up, so just the jurors can see them. Anima Rani, at this point, do you know the list of people that are expected to take the stand or is that a surprise every day? It's a surprise every day.

Usually the parties will discuss it the day before. We know that Cassie's testimony is going to continue until at least Friday. There have been several other victims named, but I also expect former employees, members of Diddy's entourage to testify. What makes this case unique is there are a lot of people involved in setting up these free costs, procuring sex workers, getting the hotel rooms, getting the thousand bottles of baby oil and all the drugs that were involved there. So expect to see some of those employees as well. And that's what I was gonna ask as well.

Is there going to be a spillover effect from, because this is, again, this is a criminal enterprise, right, with Diddy at the top making the, calling the shots, but he had plenty of willful participants on his side, specifically members of his staff. We heard yesterday from Cassie Ventura that there were doctors that Diddy could rely on for prescription drugs that would be made out into the names of anybody he wanted so that he

could get a lot of them. Is there going to be any sort of legal effect on those people as their names are brought forth? Potentially, yes. I expect the government to lean on these individuals cooperate them flip them and say listen you're gonna come testify in the case or you're gonna be prosecuted that's what I did when I was a prosecutor and it worked almost every single time and look I don't want to assume anybody's guilt I would never do that but in the court of public opinion, there are some pretty big celebrity names that have been in the orbit of Diddy over the course of decades. And it has been assumed that because they knew him and because they partied with him, they could have had some

sort of association to these freak-offs. Is there an anticipation or an expectation that those names of very big celebrity friends of his are going to come up in this trial and either they could take the stand or they could face legal punishment of their own? That's the biggest question in the case. Everyone wants to know who else participated in these freak offs, who witnessed them. So far no big names yet, but there's a lot of speculation out there on social media. Really the only big name so far is rapper Kid Cudi, and that's just because Didi was jealous

of them and threatened to blow up his car. Yeah, threatened to blow up his car and do it while he was out of town so he could maintain his innocence. This is the stuff. I mean, I can see them right in the Netflix special right now on this case. It's, this is, I'm blown away by what we're learning every single day, but it's that celebrity angle. You know, the public hasn't received satisfactory information as they would see it when it comes to the Epstein files. And I think there's a similar expectation here received satisfactory information as they would see it when it comes to the Epstein files.

And I think there's a similar expectation here that, you know, the people, the rich and powerful that partied with Diddy, I think there's this hope that they won't, if there is justice that needs to be extracted from those people, I think a lot of people are expecting that and probably want it more than anything. Oh, no question. I mean, this is one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood. And it's not just Cassie Ventura. There are upwards of 100 victims who have filed civil lawsuits. So I'm not saying all of those are meritorious, but definitely when there's an abuser, they usually abuse more than one person. I think that's what we're seeing decades

of committing these types of abuse. I think that he's finally gonna be brought to justice. Nima, what do you make of the allegation that Diddy was, I mean, there's so much video, right? There's so much document to prove. Do we know if there are any celebrities, big names, who are seen in these videos? We believe that there are, according to Cassie Ventura

and some of the other civil plaintiffs, but those names just haven't been made public yet. I don't know if the government is just taking a cautious approach. They don't wanna really expand the net here, make this into even more of a circus, but the civil plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits have said that there were other participants,

there's plenty of folks that did these infamous white parties. I'm expecting that shoe to drop any day now, but it hasn't yet so far. And lastly, what does, I mean, it doesn't seem like this is gonna end very well for Sean Combs. With the mountain of evidence that seems to be presented,

what would have to happen for the prosecution's case to collapse entirely? There are some members of the public who disbelieve these types of claims, especially when they're raised years later. And the question they say is, well, why didn't Cassie leave? Why didn't she tell anyone when this was happening? Of course, as a former prosecutor, I know that's the psychology of an abuse victim, and that's not a typical but some people believe that this is all

fabricated because combs is a celebrity and These victims want money fame or revenge All right, Nima Ramani. Thank you so much for joining us and giving us an update on this explosive trial. We appreciate it Thanks Ben talk to you soon We appreciate it. Thanks, Ben. Talk to you soon. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience.

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