00:00:00
This is On Trial, a special series from Dateline True Crime Weekly, bringing you daily coverage from the Sean Combs racketeering trial.
00:00:09
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. I'm Andrea Canning, and it's Monday, June 16th.
00:00:16
Just a heads up, in this episode, we're going to be talking about some graphic details and harrowing subject matter.
00:00:22
The government began the sixth week of trial by giving the jury a look at material they pulled off Christina Corum's phone.
00:00:30
We've talked about Christina before. She worked for Sean Combs in various positions over the years, eventually becoming his chief of staff.
00:00:38
And according to prosecutors, her phone contains group chats, audio files and voicemails that prove their charge of RICO conspiracy.
00:00:47
NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas was in the courtroom as the prosecution went through all these messages and she has stepped out to tell us all about it.
00:00:55
Hey, Chloe. Hey, Andrea. Chloe, how was the prosecution presenting this evidence to the jury? Who was on the witness stand?
00:01:04
The woman who testified today, she's a paralegal for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
00:01:09
She's considered something called a summary witness and basically there to explain how things work and tie up loose ends before this case is over.
00:01:17
She reviewed a bunch of data that had been extracted from different devices, put it into a 30-plus page roadmap for the jurors,
00:01:25
saying here are text messages or even audio messages, when they were sent, to whom, from whom, and where you can find it in exhibits later.
00:01:34
So who is Christina, also known as KK, communicating with in these messages? Everybody from Cassie Ventura to Jane to other assistants.
00:01:45
There's even an exchange about the Cowboys for Angels company that we talked about.
00:01:51
Right. I mean, this is so fascinating. It's Ryan Lopez, who is one of Combs' former assistants, writing to KK,
00:01:59
I think I saw one of the Cowboys today. You can spot them in the lobby like an escort.
00:02:05
KK responds with four laughing emojis. And according to the prosecutor, the messages appear to show talk of moving drugs around for Combs.
00:02:12
Yes, we see more about that Gucci bag. Remember, Diddy didn't go anywhere without that bag, and in it was drugs.
00:02:19
So you have KK writing to Brendan Paul, another assistant, saying, King mode active, or Gucci bag active, meaning what was Combs' mood that day?
00:02:29
Was he ready for a freak off or did he want to do drugs? In some of these texts KK is directly communicating with Jane and Cassie Ventura about some pretty serious stuff involving Sean Combs So let start with Cassie right In one text exchange you have KK writing to Cassie are you okay Cassie responding no but you should talk to
00:02:55
him, meaning Combs. No one deserves to be dragged by their hair. I don't have my stuff. I don't have
00:03:00
money. I'm effed. So let's jump to Jane. Jane writes to KK, just keeping it real. I'm not doing
00:03:07
any more hard partying, no more hotel nights. And so I think that what you're seeing is that KK,
00:03:13
I mean, she essentially knows where the bodies are buried metaphorically, right? I mean, she
00:03:18
is Diddy's right hand and she is communicating with these different women and she goes way back
00:03:26
in time to 2016, right? During the Cassie days. Chloe, how did the prosecution tie all of this
00:03:33
into their RICO conspiracy charge. Well, remember, in order for the prosecutors to meet the bar of RICO conspiracy,
00:03:42
they have to prove that Combs used his business, his enterprise, to carry out a legal activity that could be procuring drugs,
00:03:51
that could be hiring these escorts. And so when you're seeing these text messages with KK and assistants
00:03:57
or with these former girlfriends, you're seeing that it involves KK and others in the production of these freak-offs at these
00:04:07
hotels. And you're also seeing them talk about getting drugs, molly and pills and other types
00:04:14
of substances. Did the defense need to do much on cross or was it just so overwhelming that,
00:04:19
you know, it kind of was tough for the jury anyway to absorb? It was really quick. Teddy
00:04:25
Garagos, who led a cross-examination today, pointed out there's a lot here and it was a lot. I mean,
00:04:29
Diddy was yawning. There was just so much data, Andrea. But these are just cherry-picked moments
00:04:36
over the course of nearly a decade. And Tenny Garagos was saying, these are accurate, but you
00:04:42
don't understand what happened before and after these messages. So what she was doing was trying
00:04:46
to show text messages and voice notes before and after said messages in these spreadsheets to try
00:04:53
to provide more perspective. When we come back, the prosecution also introduced messages between
00:04:59
Combs and some of his employees right after Cassie Ventura filed her suit. We'll dive into why the government is so focused on what the staff had to say.
00:05:16
Okay, so Chloe, Cassie Ventura filed her lawsuit on November 16th, 2023. And today we saw a lot of messages around that day.
00:05:26
What is the prosecution trying to show with these? So the government is really trying to show that Combs and his staff were really trying to figure out what to do and how to handle this Chloe what is the prosecution alleging that Combs staff did to protect him
00:05:42
One of the things that we saw reiterated today were messages between DRock, who was Combs' head
00:05:47
of security, and Mia, one of Combs' former personal assistants. So during Mia's testimony,
00:05:53
and remember that was under a pseudonym, she talked about having worked for days without sleep.
00:05:59
She testified about being sexually assaulted by Combs. And today you're seeing more text exchanges between D-Rock and Combs and D-Rock to me.
00:06:09
D-Rock is calling her and texting her, trying to get her on the phone. This is a really long way to answer your question, Andrea, which is just that Combs had people working for him like D-Rock who were trying to get to potential witnesses who might testify.
00:06:27
And this could go towards obstruction of justice, which is one of those predicate crimes that the government has to prove to meet that RICO conspiracy charge.
00:06:37
We heard Jane testify last week that reading about Cassie's allegations in her civil suit made Jane feel like the concerns she'd had about the hotel nights were legitimate.
00:06:47
You have Jane writing to KK, hey, you know, I don't want to involve you, but I'm traumatized by my time with him.
00:06:55
He's saying how I hurt him, not the trauma he caused me. He started yelling at me.
00:07:00
Now he's threatening me and saying that he's going to call the police and send the tapes to my child's father.
00:07:04
These are sex tapes where I'm heavily drugged. It's very hurtful for him to exploit me.
00:07:09
Please talk sense into him. So then you have KK responding to Jane. Hey, they're about to read all of this and we'll call you.
00:07:15
I have not seen him in two days. What the defense team has always said is that Jane was smart
00:07:20
And she was memorializing these experiences in writing with not just Combs, but with KK after Cassie's suit was filed because she knew that she either wanted to pursue civil claims or potentially be in a situation like she is now testifying in a courtroom.
00:07:38
But the prosecutors are saying this is a woman that was going through trauma who in real time was talking about these horrific experiences of potentially being blackmailed and extorted.
00:07:49
It wasn't just these women having exchanges with Combs. They were having exchanges with KK.
00:07:55
So they were talking about it with other people. Chloe, let's talk about the second witness today, an investigator for the prosecutors of the Southern District.
00:08:04
Why did they call her? This witness was going through flight and hotel records, Andrea.
00:08:09
And the purpose of that is to put Cassie and Combs and Jane and several escorts in the same places on the same days.
00:08:18
so that Combs can say oh I didn know where they were traveling from and how do you actually know that they showed up to the same hotel as I did Maybe we booked them a flight to another state and I wasn even there
00:08:30
This was to show the jury this is not a coincidence. Yeah, so this is to prove the transportation for the purposes of prostitution charges,
00:08:39
which a former federal prosecutor told me that's, he thinks, one of the easiest charges they have.
00:08:45
It is, and they have two of them. So last thing for today, Chloe, this morning, the judge officially dismissed juror number six, who we have been talking about on the podcast.
00:08:54
Did you learn why? Because of credibility issues. He said he was living in one place.
00:08:59
It appears he's potentially moved to New Jersey and he wasn't upfront about it. The judge also saying this morning that it's not out of the realm of possibility that this juror had ulterior motives and really wanted to be on this jury because he had bias.
00:09:14
And that was another reason to dismiss him. They replaced him with an alternate who happened to be a white man.
00:09:20
And this goes exactly to what Combs' legal team wrote in a very long, fiery letter over the weekend to the judge saying that this is not about his credibility and living in the right jurisdiction to serve.
00:09:32
You guys are potentially dismissing, and they did, one of only two black men on the jury.
00:09:38
And this is racism. The judge very quickly shutting that down this morning. He was not having it.
00:09:45
I was in there. He was not in a good mood being accused that there were racial motivations here.
00:09:51
So really that hung over the whole morning of testimony. You could tell that the judge was just not happy and things were really tense.
00:09:59
Chloe, now we're hearing a possible issue with another juror. So tomorrow morning, the judge is actually going to be questioning another juror who might have talked about the case to a former colleague.
00:10:10
So suffice to say, things are not going very smoothly when it comes to the jurors.
00:10:15
Tomorrow, Chloe, we're going to hear from Brendan Paul. Who is he? He's the assistant that was arrested during the raids of Combs' homes.
00:10:26
We're finally going to hear from him tomorrow, and I'll be in the courtroom. Looking forward to that.
00:10:31
Thank you, Chloe. Thanks, Andrea. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow.
00:10:37
If you want to read the latest developments and analysis from inside the courtroom,
00:10:41
check out the NBC newsletter, Diddy on Trial. Go to NBCNews.com slash Diddy to find that.
00:10:48
On Trial is produced by Franny Kelly with help from the Dateline True Crime Weekly team.
00:10:53
Our senior producers are Alison Orr and Liz Brown-Korloff. Original music by Jesse McGinty.
00:10:59
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.