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This is On Trial, a special series from Dateline True Crime Weekly, bringing you daily coverage from the Sean Combs racketeering trial.
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He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. I'm Andrea Canning, and it's Tuesday, June 17th.
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Just a heads up, in this episode, we're going to be talking about some graphic details and harrowing subject matter.
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Today in downtown New York, Hork kicked off with more juror issues, and that's also how the day ended.
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In between, the prosecution showed credit card payments for hotel rooms. They say Combs and his staff booked for nights with escorts.
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On cross, the defense pulled up more text messages that they say suggest Cassie Ventura enjoyed at least some of those nights.
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NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas was in the courtroom this morning as those receipts were shown.
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And as the judge read both legal teams the riot act, Chloe is outside now to get us up to speed.
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Hey, Chloe. Hey, Andrea. Yeah. So after a relatively quick and painless jury selection process, now in week six,
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there are problems. We've got turmoil with the jury. Juror number six was officially dismissed
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yesterday. And now it appears we have some issues with juror number seven. Here's the deal with juror number seven. Juror number seven was called in by the judge on Friday,
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and we could actually see him on the screens in the overflow room where the media and the public
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it, but you couldn't hear him. But a news organization published an article about juror
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number seven, and they knew all this information that was discussed behind closed doors. He said
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that he received a text message from an unknown number, a number he didn't recognize, wasn't
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stored in his phone, asking him if he was juror number six, right? Because there were all these
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discussions and it was all in the media late last week that juror number six might be dismissed.
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And so this juror did the right thing, alerted the court, let the judge know, but that devolved into the judge learning that he had had a conversation with a former colleague.
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So we're not exactly sure juror number seven is potentially in trouble here, but we do know that the judge is having another conversation with him today.
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Now, I also want to point out the judge said that he wants to find out who leaked what, when and how.
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And the judge is like, I'm going to investigate this and I'm going to, you know, there will be potentially legal ramifications for the prosecution or the defense if I find out that anybody gave this information to the press.
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And all of this happening amid juror number six having been dismissed this week.
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Juror number seven may be dismissed So it in situations like this Andrea that I just wonder they could have just sequestered them right I mean they didn do that Also relating to the jury yesterday afternoon while you and I were taping the prosecution played some video clips from freak
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This was something that we thought perhaps would be played for jurors earlier on because there's been so much discussion about these freak-offs.
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So some of the jurors were seen wincing and kind of frowning during these videos that were played.
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So they have to put headsets on when they're watching. And they have these screen protectors so that nobody else can see.
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These are exhibits that are sealed to protect the privacy of those involved and the judge and also the defense.
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They don't want these videos being put up all over the Internet and embarrassing everybody.
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And really just kind of feeding that media circus that we've seen around this trial.
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The defense played some different clips of the freak-offs, a different portion of the same video.
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What were they trying to show by showing that section of the video? They're trying to show that these were not forced sexual encounters.
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The defense has always maintained that everyone that participated in these freak-offs were doing so consensually.
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It's in an attempt to show the jurors that people were happy. There were conversations being had.
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It wasn't this forced sex trafficking situation that the prosecutors are trying to make it seem.
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All right, Chloe, when we come back today, both the prosecution and the defense returned to Cassie Ventura.
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What more is there to say? Find out. chloe we mentioned at the top of the prosecution showed the jury some receipts allegedly relating
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to the hotel nights what kind of things stood out to you from from what the jury saw these freak-offs
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could be expensive and i don't just mean the hotel room and the escorts what made it so pricey
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Some of the damage. One of the bills was from the Intercontinental Hotel from October 5th, 2012.
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Guess how much it was. You want to take a guess? A lot. Well, let me tell you the exact amount. $46,786.
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Man, look at my car. A car for that. Two cars. How is that even possible? Cool The Hermitage Beverly Hills Hotel there were two bills and that had to do with damage to the drapes and to the carpet So you can only imagine An important point the prosecution seems to me making is that these types of expenses were paid for by Combs company cards Yes So we saw a lot of different
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receipts and Amex bills that show that everything from travel, the damage, hotel rooms were paid for
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from his different business entities. Perhaps when the defense puts on their case, Andrea,
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They're going to say, well, Combs didn't know. He just put it on a credit card and expected his team to divide up personal and business.
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I think what they're going to try to say is that Combs wasn't doing his own expenses.
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Right, right. Next, the prosecution pulled messages from March 2016, and that is right around the time of the incident at the hotel in L.A.
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where Combs can be seen on surveillance video kicking Cassie when she's on the ground.
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Why did they go back to these messages? Because these messages appear to corroborate Eddie Garcia's testimony. Remember, he's the security guard who testified that he helped his boss sell that security footage to Combs, right? Remember the money in these brown paper bags, and he ended up paying double the amount instead of $50,000, it was $100,000.
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And they also show a lot of interaction between KK, remember Christina Corum, and D-Rock, Combs' head of security.
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And they seem to be helping Combs keep tabs on Cassie and communicating with her on his behalf.
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Remember, Combs showed up to her place. He had a hammer. He was banging on the door.
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This was after he had beaten her brutally in the hallway of the hotel. so in one message you have cassie writing to kk rock says he's 15 minutes away this is crazy
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he won't stop cassie to kk again can you please tell him that the neighbors are about to call the
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police and then d rock to kk tell him he needs to get out of there before they call the police
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and there's even another exchange in which combs actually writes to d rock about those injuries
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that Cassie had sustained, saying, how is she? And DRock responding, she's okay eating breakfast.
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Face don't look bad. She's smiling. Call her. And remember, Cassie testified that she had to recover from those injuries at a hotel
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for several days. On cross the defense, they pulled up messages from that day as well, giving a different view.
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They did. At the point of those messages, seems to be that they're trying to show that Cassie had
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lied when she told KK that her neighbors were going to call the police. Combs also wrote to Cassie hey call me the cops are here On cross today of this SDNY investigator the individual who was on the stand said that they didn see any evidence that cops were ever called no LAPD calls to Cassie phone no reports from the LAPD and there were no incident reports
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They also showed many, many text messages, Andrea, that seemed to show Cassie reacting positively to Combs' suggestions to have freak-offs and expressing positive feelings towards him after they happened.
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And we also saw this with Jane. After the judge dismissed the jury today, he also dismissed everyone else.
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He said, slate is up. What does that mean? He kicked everybody out, all members of the press, both in the courtroom and in the overflow room.
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And that's because he's trying to figure out this issue with juror number seven.
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And like I mentioned, we don't know what they've decided yet. He is not having a good day.
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He is angry. He's mad about this information being leaked to some news outlet about juror number seven.
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And the big question for me is, is juror number six having been dismissed this week going to talk and give interviews?
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Are they allowed? They are. Once they've been dismissed? Once they've been dismissed, yes.
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They can talk from their own personal perspectives. so the judge wouldn't put some type of gag order on them to wait until there's a verdict?
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Hey, I guess that he could because he's not happy right now, especially about information being leaked to the press.
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Yeah. Well, judges are humans, too. They're people, too, and they have bad days.
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Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Did we get any information, Chloe, about the schedule for the rest of this trial?
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Well, tomorrow, it definitely should be an exciting day because the prosecution is going to call Brendan Paul.
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He's Combs' assistant who was arrested on drug charges during the raids of Combs' properties.
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And he was supposed to testify today, but unfortunately, the direct examination, cross-examination, then redirect of that SDNY investigator that took all of today.
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But this is big, and we're going to hear about what went down that day. Yeah, this is very important for the prosecution as they wind down.
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Thank you, Chloe, so much. Of course. And thanks to everyone else for listening.
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We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow. you