MANHATTAN (CN) — Entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and his inner circle used a pattern of “lies, drugs, threats and violence” to coerce women into drug-fueled sexual rendezvouses with male prostitutes while he watched and taped, federal prosecutors said during opening arguments on Monday morning.
“Kidnapping, arson, drugs, sex crimes, bribery and obstruction,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told jurors. “These are just some of the crimes that the defendant and his inner circle committed again and again.”
Combs, 55, is standing trial on a five-count indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The Bay Boy Records founder, who has been held at a federal jail without bail since his September 2024 arrest in a New York City hotel, wore a light-colored sweater on top of a white collared shirt, with khaki pants.
At the center of the sex trafficking conspiracy claims are so-called “freak off” extended sex parties since as early as 2004, which prosecutors say Combs manipulated female victims into participating in "as part of his pattern of abuse.”
Johnson told jurors Combs and his inner circle supplied women with the drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, which made the participants “more uninhibited and sexually aroused."
Prosecutors claim the “freak offs” took place at luxury hotels across the country, and involved the coordinated transportation of commercial male escorts hired by Combs to have sex with women while he watched, masturbated and sometimes recorded.
Johnson told jurors they will be shown some of explicit videos Combs recorded and later used as blackmail material against the women in the tapes. “You will see them put on a performance high on ecstasy, where they pretend to enjoy themselves, because that is what the defendant said he wanted."
Combs directed every detail of these sexual performance in dark hotel rooms, prosecutors said, including demands that the women dress in lingerie, wear tall platform heels and have manicured white nails.
According to the indictment, Combs and the victims typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use — including ketamine, ecstasy and GHB — during the marathon sexual exploitation.
Prosecutors said Combs deployed a loyal inner circle of bodyguards and close confidants, who helped for facilitate the hotel sex parties and “closed ranks” to handled damage control covering up evidence of the alleged crimes.
Central to the case is the March 2016 video showing Combs violently hitting and dragging his then-girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie Ventura, in a hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. Prosecutors say Combs and his chief of staff paid a $100,000 bribe in cash hotel security to bury surveillance footage of the violent incident.
Combs sat stone-faced, with his hands clasped across his lap, while prosecutors described the alleged physical abuse and sexual coercion leveled at Cassie. "Time and again, the defendant hit Cassie in the head, threw her to the floor and dragged her by the hair … stomped repeatedly on her face," Johnson told jurors.
"Cassie will tell you how she felt like she was choking when the defendant made an escort urinate in her mouth, and how she overdosed during a 'freak off' when she still had an open wound on her face from the defendant's most recent assault," Johnson said.
The violence recorded on the video footage of the Cassie attack weighed heavily on multiple judges’ decisions to deny bail to Combs, keeping him detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest.
Combs is also accused of physically beating another woman, who will testify under the pseudonym “Jane,” when she hesitated to participate in the extended "freak offs."
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