Defense lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs call it the single most important — and dangerous — piece of evidence in the trial.
And federal prosecutors agree, saying that it clinches the top two charges in the Combs indictment, rackeeteering and sex-trafficking, each carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Here’s why the now-notorious March 5, 2016, security video — showing Combs kicking, stomping, and dragging girlfriend Cassie Ventura in the hallway of the InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles — is so crucial to his ongoing Manhattan trial.
And here’s why the defense has fought so hard to limit its impact, particularly given what emerged in court on Tuesday.
Combs personally counted out a $100,000 payment to make the video disappear: Witness
A former InterContinental hotel security guard testified Tuesday morning that it was Combs who personally negotiated a $100,000 payment that the rap mogul hoped — in vain — would make the video go away forever.
Nine years later, a copy of the footage would be obtained by CNN and go viral.
“He was smiling, excited, just looked happy,” the ex-guard, Eddy Garcia, said on the witness stand, describing the moment he handed Combs a USB thumbdrive containing what was then believed to be the only copy of the incriminating hallway footage.
In return, he said, Combs showed him “a brown bag and a money counter machine,” and began counting out $100,000 in cash.
“There was stacks of money just being put into it, stacks of $10,000 at a time,” the ex-guard remembered.
When a prosecutor asked who was putting the money through the machine, the ex-guard answered, “Mr. Combs.”
Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS
How the Cassie InterContinental video supports Combs’ sex-trafficking charge
“It is horrible. It’s dehumanizing. It’s violent,” defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors, owning up to the brutality of the video in her May 12 opening statement.
“It is called domestic violence,” she told jurors. “It is called assault,” she said, naming two crimes Combs is not charged with.
But prosecutors say that at the very moment that footage was taken, Ventura was being sex-trafficked — meaning coerced to participate in a commercial sex act.
“We were having an encounter that we call a ‘freak off,'” she told the jury, testifying a day after opening statements.
Freak offs, she explained, were elaborately-staged, dayslong performances “where he would watch me have intercourse and sexual activity with a third party,” specifically a paid, male sex worker.
At the time Combs kicks and drags Ventura down the hotel hallway — leaving a sex worker named “Jules” behind in the room — she had just been punched in the eye by Combs, she told the jury.
“There was a lot of drinking, there was a lot of partying, but in the middle of it, I’m not sure what happened, but I get hit by Sean, and I have a black eye.”
She added, “At that point, all I could think about was getting out of there safely.”
The video shows Ventura leaving their sixth-floor hotel room and standing in the hallway barefoot and carrying bags. As she puts on her sneakers and waits for the elevator, Combs runs out into the hallway after her, wearing only socks and a white towel around his waist.
The federal sex-trafficking law defines coercion as using force, threats, or fraud.
Prosecutors will likely argue that the video record of the beating that happened next — with Combs pulling Ventura to the ground by the hood of her sweatshirt, kicking her as she lay in a fetal position, and then dragging her by the hood and hair — provides indisputable evidence that Combs used force against Ventura.
A hotel security guard, Israel Florez, has also told jurors that when he responded to the fight, Ventura’s eye was purple.
Jane Rosenberg/ REUTERS
How the hotel video supports the racketeering count
To win a racketeering conviction, prosecutors must prove that Combs used his hip-hop lifestyle and music empire — his “criminal enterprise” according to the indictment — to commit at least two underlying crimes.
Prosecutors may argue that the hotel video, and testimony saying Combs tried to bury the video, prove three underlying crimes: not only sex trafficking, but also bribery and obstruction of justice.
Florez told jurors that Combs offered him “a stack of cash” to keep him from reporting the violence to police. The guard also said he refused Combs’ cash and secretly made a copy of the video on his cellphone so he could show it off to his friends.
Ventura did not want the police involved, so he did not call them, Florez said.
Further proof of bribery and obstruction may have been provided Tuesday by the second former hotel security guard, the one who on Tuesday described all that cash going through Combs’ cash-counting machine.
Garcia said that in the days after the violence, Combs’ chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, repeatedly called his cellphone to ask to see the footage.
“Mr. Combs sounded very nervous, he was talking very fast,” Garcia told jurors of Combs himself getting on the phone. “Just saying that he had a little too much to drink, and I knew how it was with women, and if this gets out, it could ruin him.”
Garcia said he personally pocketed $30,000 of the offered bribe — the rest was shared with two other hotel security staffers — and signed an NDA promising the video would never surface.
Combs called him “Eddy, my angel,” Garcia said.
And in a copy of Combs’ contacts shown to jurors, Garcia’s phone number is indeed listed under “Eddy my angel.”
“God is good,” Garcia said Combs told him in a phone call that was the last time they spoke.
“God put you in my way for a reason,” he said Combs told him.
