UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ------------------------------x UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. 24 Cr. 542 (AS) SEAN COMBS, a/k/a "Puff Daddy," a/k/a "P. Diddy," a/k/a "Diddy," a/k/a "PD," a/k/a "Love," Defendant. Trial
New York, N.Y. May 16, 2025 9:05 a.m. Before: HON. ARUN SUBRAMANIAN, District Judge -and a Jury- APPEARANCES JAY CLAYTON United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York BY: MADISON R. SMYSER EMILY A. JOHNSON MAURENE R. COMEY MEREDITH FOSTER MITZI STEINER MARY C. SLAVIK Assistant United States Attorneys APPEARANCES
(Continued)
AGNIFILO INTRATER LLP Attorneys for Defendant BY: MARC A. AGNIFILO TENY R. GERAGOS -and- SHER TREMONTE BY: ANNA M. ESTEVAO -and- SHAPIRO ARATO BACH LLP BY: ALEXANDRA A.E. SHAPIRO JASON A. DRISCOLL -and- XAVIER R. DONALDSON BRIAN STEEL NICOLE WESTMORELAND ALSO PRESENT: LUCY GAVIN, AUSA Paralegal Specialist SHANNON BECKER, AUSA Paralegal Specialist RAYMOND MCLEOD, Defense Paralegal Specialist
(Trial resumed; jury not present)
THE COURT: Ms. Estevao.
MS. ESTEVAO: Yes, your Honor.
THE COURT: The government has done you a solid and has constrained their redirect and says that you can have until 4:30, and they will take the balance of time and then know that we are going to stop at 5. It doesn't leave them much time for redirect. But given that, do you foresee any issues in meeting that time expectation?
MS. ESTEVAO: Well, first of all, I think the parties have a very different understanding as to the admissibility of certain exhibits which impacts my answer, so it might make sense --
THE COURT: I did not receive anything in advance of this hearing on any evidentiary issues, but OK. Putting that to the side, do you foresee any issues with the 4:30, I said deadline, but they are saying you will have until 4:30, and they will limit themselves on redirect to facilitate the issues concerning the one that we previously discussed. Putting aside the issues for the moment on admissibility, do you foresee any issues in terms of timing, or can we move on to those evidentiary issues?
MS. ESTEVAO: Unfortunately, they are intertwined because if the government continues to object to the admissibility of certain evidence and insists on Ms. Ventura reading text chains from the stand, that will significantly delay things. However, we have no -- we don't understand why the government is continuing to object to authenticity on this basis when they have had the documents now. We complied with the 8 p.m. deadline, and presumably the government has had time to review and determine whether or not they are authentic and that they could be admissible. And some of them --
THE COURT: Ms. Estevao, I hear you. What is the evidentiary issue? What are we talking about? Which exhibits? What is the issue?
MS. JOHNSON: Your Honor, since they are our objections, do you want me to raise them?
MS. ESTEVAO: There are a number of exhibits that we proposed.
THE COURT: Let's hold on for a second. First of all, I thought I was pretty clear that if issues are to be raised before the jury comes in, they need to be raised with the Court in advance, and I've been very lenient with that. There have been letters that have come in at 3 a.m., and I've come in early so I can make sure that I have a handle on the issues before we get here, because the jury has been so prompt. They are here. They are ready to go at 9:30. This is a problem because we are running out of time to address issues that you are saying impacts a very serious concern that the government has but that the government did not raise. They did not raise the issue of any kind of admissibility concern of any evidence whatsoever, despite the fact that they put in a letter at 12:30 a.m. complaining about the timing of the cross-examination. That would be a good opportunity to say there are urgent issues that we need to address concerning the admissibility of certain exhibits that are being put in on the cross-examination. Perhaps, your Honor, we should come in at 8:30 a.m., at 8 a.m. Here are the exhibits. Take a look at them. We can decide this in advance.
MS. ESTEVAO: Understood, your Honor.
THE COURT: I'm asking you, Ms. Estevao, and then I'll turn to Ms. Johnson, what are the issues, as you understand them?
MS. ESTEVAO: As we understand them, and we understand that it would have been prudent to inform the Court. However, these issues have been developing as early as this morning, that there are a number of exhibits that we told the government about by 8 p.m. last night, and we significantly winnowed the number of exhibits and shortened the number of exhibits and provided to the government those exhibits so that they could review them and tell us about any objections in advance of Ms. Ventura's continued cross-examination this morning.
THE COURT: You don't know exactly what the objections are.
MS. ESTEVAO: With respect to --
MS. GERAGOS: If I could just speak on this, since I've been handling most of the objections, I think there are a couple. First are a few 412 issues, which I think we can put to the side because we may not just even use those exhibits anymore. I think it's really only about two to three. Ms. Johnson or Ms. Slavik will correct me. Two are recordings, video recordings, and I believe that the objection from the government is a 403 objection. I really think it's just those two or three. I think we have significantly narrowed any -- I'm just looking at my email to double check. I think we have significantly narrowed any dispute over exhibits. We have withdrawn about five that we were going to use that they were going to object to. I think it's two videos and it's one text chain between Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs' chief of staff, which they do not think there is a basis to get in because it's not with Mr. Combs. We think that it's an 803(3) state of mind to Ms. Ventura's state of mind.
THE COURT: Understood. Ms. Johnson.
MS. JOHNSON: Yes, your Honor. Again, I apologize to the Court for not teeing this us more promptly.
THE COURT: That's fine. Don't worry about it.
MS. JOHNSON: I agree with Ms. Geragos. We have an objection to the proposed -- to the marked exhibit, Defense Exhibit 1278. That is approximately a 30-second video clip of Mr. Combs wandering through nature and talking about -- hold on one moment, please.
THE COURT: Do we have the video and can you throw it up on the screen. Can somebody do that.
MS. JOHNSON: One moment. While she does that, I will explain the nature of our objection. This is, first of all, hearsay, and there is absolutely no indication that Ms. Ventura has seen this video, that she is familiar with this video or be able to testify about it. It's simply a video of the defendant speaking. And the content of the defendant speaking, the government submits, should be excluded under 403. He is speaking about religion and God. To the extent that -- that is improper argument seeking sympathy from the jury, and it goes to nullification.
THE COURT: I understand. Do we have the video. While we are waiting, what's the next issue? I think we have the video.
(Video played)
THE COURT: Ms. Estevao.
MS. ESTEVAO: Your Honor, this is a video of Mr. Combs when he was attending rehab approximately a month after the Intercontinental incident in April of 2016 and it was sent from him to Ms. Ventura. That being said, we anticipate only using it to refresh her recollection if she says that she does not remember him going to rehab following this incident.
THE COURT: You're not intending to admit this into evidence.
MS. ESTEVAO: We are not.
THE COURT: Then there is no issue, right?
MS. JOHNSON: I agree. Although I would note that this cannot be used to refresh her recollection without dealing with sound issues because she cannot listen to it in the courtroom in front of the jury without headphones.
MS. ESTEVAO: I believe we have headphones.
MS. JOHNSON: We do, but that requires some setup. I'm just flagging that for the Court. We could do it over lunch, if it becomes an issue.
THE COURT: Given that we have, by request of the witness, have taken breaks at a steady interval, there should be a way for the witness to view the video outside of the presence of the jury and then answer any follow-up questions, so I don't think that's an issue. I think that one is resolved. Next.
MS. JOHNSON: There are four 412 objections which we will continue to confer with Ms. Geragos on appropriate redactions. And then we have an objection to 1193, which is a photograph -- it's a photograph that is sent by Ms. Ventura in a text exchange with another individual that was originally marked. She is talking about how she went --
THE COURT: Let's see it, 1193.
MS. JOHNSON: This photograph is sent in a text chain that we otherwise objected to because it's between Ms. Ventura and another individual speaking about going to a dance class and becoming bruised, and this is contained therein. Admission of simply this photograph without any context, and we submit that the context is admissible, is confusing to the jury. I can also proffer that Ms. Ventura has seen this photograph before and does not recall what it is, so I don't think she has any personal knowledge that she can testify about. If defense wants to cross-examine Ms. Ventura about whether she was bruised on any other occasions from any other incidents, they certainly can do so, but this exhibit, without anything else, is very confusing and should be excluded under 403.
MS. ESTEVAO: Your Honor, may I?
THE COURT: You may.
MS. ESTEVAO: Ms. Ventura was shown this photograph during an interview with government counsel and asked about these bruises, and she said that it was likely caused by Mr. Combs, which shows that she was speculating as to these bruises on her leg, which is very relevant.
THE COURT: That may be true, but how are you getting this into evidence?
MS. ESTEVAO: I am going to show this to her. I'm not planning to admit this.
THE COURT: Then there is not an issue. Ms. Johnson, how can there possibly be an issue?
MS. JOHNSON: That's fine. To be clear, that wasn't clear to us that it wasn't being admitted.
THE COURT: Two down. We are making progress.
MS. JOHNSON: I believe that is all of our issues, absent the 412 issues that we need to continue to discuss.
THE COURT: That took us five minutes.
MS. JOHNSON: I would like to address the authenticity issue that Ms. Estevao raised.
THE COURT: Yes. Because there is one text chain -- let me take a step back. Ms. Geragos mentioned one text chain, but then I didn't hear about that, so I just want to make sure there are no issues.
MS. GERAGOS: That was 1373. It is a message between Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs' chief of staff at the time. That is the only other one I have on my list right now that we are -- that is in dispute.
THE COURT: That's Defense Exhibit 1373.
MS. GERAGOS: Defense Exhibit 1373.
THE COURT: If either side could put that on the screen, great. Thank you.
MS. GERAGOS: I think we would specifically be going to the second page of what is important for the defense.
THE COURT: It's this message here?
MS. GERAGOS: Yes, that's right.
THE COURT: Could you zoom in on that message. What are the grounds for admission?
MS. GERAGOS: We are offering it under 803(3) your Honor, which is the declarant's state of mind. But we will not be doing that this morning, so in the interest of --
THE COURT: It's not going to come in this morning?
MS. GERAGOS: We will not be dealing with this topic before the morning break.
THE COURT: Unlike some of the other text chains that we have addressed, where it was very clear that they fell within the 803(3), this has a lot of other factual content, so that doesn't even come close to fitting that rule. For instance, there is references to dealing with ketamine. There is references to other factual developments. So there are definitely things in this message that would not relate to a then existing mental, emotional, or physical condition. That's one thing. What's the response on that?
MS. GERAGOS: Perhaps understanding your Honor's concern during this morning, before the break, I could try to redact portions of the exhibit. I think where we are most -- where we think that 803(3) would certainly apply is when she is talking about her feelings, which certainly would come into her state of mind. If you don't want us to talk about the ketamine --
THE COURT: There may not be an objection, but let's hear, Ms. Johnson, do you have an objection to this?
MS. JOHNSON: We do, your Honor, because we don't understand the relevance of her state of mind at this point in time, given that we don't allege that any freak-offs occurred after the date of this email. This email is dated in August of 2018, which is after Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs broke up. She testified on direct that the last freak-off was sometime in late 2017, early 2018.
MS. GERAGOS: However, your Honor, we believe it's relevant, given the allegations of rape we heard on direct examination, which is unclear to us as to when this happened, and I think we will spend a significant amount of time on that today going through messages from August and September, because the time period of this alleged rape has changed over the past year and a half. So we think it is extremely important to bring out her state of mind, her feelings from August and September in order to try to confront Ms. Ventura on those allegations.
MS. JOHNSON: I don't think this needs to be in evidence for that purpose. It sounds like there will be a lot of testimony that the defense is attempting to elicit on this point, and this exhibit seems like it's potentially cumulative.
THE COURT: I have heard an objection on relevance and on this evidence being cumulative. I have not heard that there is an objection ground in the hearsay issue that Ms. Geragos addressed. Is there?
MS. JOHNSON: Yes, your Honor. There is a state-of-mind objection.
THE COURT: Ms. Geragos says, if you really read this, there may be factual content here, but that's not what this is really about. It's about at the time this message was written Ms. Ventura's state of mind and her feelings. So what's the response to that, just so I understand the government's position?
MS. JOHNSON: The defense has said that this is probative of her state of mind related to her rape by Mr. Combs.
THE COURT: The hearsay issue is independent of the relevance issue, the 403 issue, so just on the hearsay issue. If there is not a dispute on that, then I want to get to your relevance objection.
MS. JOHNSON: I think we would need to spend some time parsing this to figure out that this is a very long message. I think on the hearsay issue -- that includes a lot of factual assertions, and we would need to see any proposed redactions before we could speak --
THE COURT: Let's please take care of that before the lunch break so we can come back and address this. I have been told that this is not going to be used in the morning session, so it should not pose an issue. As to relevance, can you address, just so I can think about it, why Ms. Ventura's state of mind in 2018, even if it's after the last freak-off, would not be relevant to the defenses that have been raised, meaning that if after a freak-off, for instance, Ms. Ventura had indicated that she felt really thrilled and happy that her and Mr. Combs had been together, wouldn't that be relevant to the issues of coercion and intent that the government raised, and, if not, why not?
MS. JOHNSON: Yes, your Honor. Her state of mind -- the defenses to the charged offenses relate to Ms. Ventura's consent or lack of consent. Her state of mind in August 2018 related to a different incident does not go to any of the charged offenses. That incident is a singular date and time and it's not even clear to me that this message is at or around that date and time. She can't quite pinpoint it. It's in August. We don't know the relationship of this message to that rape.
THE COURT: I understand. You can pick it up again at the lunch break, but I've been told that our jury is ready. Are there any other issues that we should address before the jury comes out?
MS. GERAGOS: No. May I respond to Ms. Johnson's point?
THE COURT: Of course.
MS. GERAGOS: Very briefly.
THE COURT: While you're at it, does someone have a paper copy of that, or can you email it? Even if you have the file. You have it. If you don't need it, please. Thank you. Appreciate it.
MS. GERAGOS: My response, your Honor, and I will be very brief. First, if it's not relevant, because it's after the charged conduct, then the rape shouldn't have come in. That's a huge point for us.
THE COURT: That was not a huge point for you because it wasn't raised.
MS. GERAGOS: We thought we would be able to explore it on cross-examination, and she testified on direct examination that the date of the alleged rape, they were talking about whether or not she was going to go to Burning Man, which is what this message addresses. Those are just our two points. I agree, but we thought we would be able to properly explore such an important allegation on cross-examination. That's all. I understand our jury is ready, so we are ready.
THE COURT: Let's just think about it. This is because this came up right before this session. I think the parties just need to think a little bit about both the hearsay issue and the relevance issue. You might need a little time to do that. So we have the morning. You can think about that. We will address it right when the jury retires for lunch.
MS. GERAGOS: Just the last thing. I apologize. The government, myself, and Ms. Ventura's counsel have conferred on the 412 issues that we brought to the Court, and we all agree on those redactions, and we will submit those to the Court this morning.
THE COURT: Great. Ms. Johnson. Then I'm going to come back to Ms. Estevao because we started here with there being a number of objections. We have resolved them all in record time. Ms. Johnson.
MS. JOHNSON: Your Honor, I just wanted to flag that we did provide, after confirming with defense counsel, the exhibits with sound in them to Ms. Ventura to review outside of the courtroom. But given that there was a lot of movement on the other documents, she has not seen them, and she will need some time, particularly if they are lengthy, to review them. We can facilitate that outside of the room on breaks, if defense counsel is OK with that. We brought paper copies to make that much, much quicker, but the exhibits that were going to be offered today were in flux until this morning.
THE COURT: Understood.
MS. ESTEVAO: Your Honor, I understand that there is a dispute as to whether or not Ms. Ventura needs to continue to read the exhibit in full before she is asked about it. That was the issue that I expected would take the most amount of time and with slow things down. And we anticipated that by sending the exhibits to the government last night that they could agree to authenticity and that they could be admitted to wholesale, the way that the government did in their case when they read a long list of exhibits, which we had reviewed in advance and agreed to their admission. And there is some that we could do with Ms. Ventura and just admit and not even ask her about. The government appears to take the position that she needs to continue to read them, and we don't understand the basis for that.
THE COURT: I don't believe the government is saying that if you are trying to make sure that these text message chains are in evidence that you can't do what you're saying. I think that the government's position is, to the extent that you are going to be asking questions based on the exhibit, then the witness, in fairness, should have a chance to review the exhibit, which I think you probably agree on. Ms. Johnson, did I say anything else wrong?
MS. JOHNSON: No. That is exactly our position, Judge. For clarity, when the government authenticated its exhibits in this way, Ms. Ventura reviewed every single one of those exhibits outside of the courtroom before she came in to testify.
THE COURT: And, further, can we all agree that if Ms. Estevao is, for instance, only going to ask questions about a single page, but the first page of a long text chain, then we can admit portions of the exhibit to speed things along?
MS. JOHNSON: We can admit portions.
THE COURT: Those are two strategies, Ms. Estevao, that should help avoid the lengthy reading of exhibits that you could employ and that should work. If there are long exhibits and you really need to ask questions about the entire exhibit, then that's fine.
MS. ESTEVAO: Understood. Thank you.
THE COURT: Understanding all of that, are we going to run into any issues here?
MS. ESTEVAO: I do not believe so.
THE COURT: Can we get Ms. Ventura.
MS. ESTEVAO: I'm sorry, your Honor. One more issue. I believe the government has an objection to a recording that may come up earlier in light of the representation that there is not going to be a lot of reading by Ms. Ventura on the stand.
THE COURT: Which one is that?
MS. ESTEVAO: 1217.
MS. JOHNSON: To be clear, it's a 25-minute recording that we wanted Ms. Ventura to listen to to make sure she knew what it was. I'm not sure if she has listened to it yet. We sent it over this morning after confirming that that was OK with defense counsel. We had asked defense counsel to mark metadata, which they have done, because a recording absent any indicia of date or time is very difficult to pinpoint. So I think if she recognizes it and we have the date and time, I don't think we have -- she has listened to it. I have confirmed. I don't think we have an objection, so long as we admit it with the metadata.
THE COURT: Can we admit it with the metadata?
MS. GERAGOS: We could admit it with the metadata. We sent the provided metadata exhibit this morning. We will mark it as 1217-A, and we will admit it with the metadata.
THE COURT: Seems like we have no issue then. Let's get Ms. Ventura, and we will get our jury two minutes late.
(Jury present)
THE COURT: Welcome back, members of the jury. I'm only five minutes late today. You were here early, as usual, so I apologize for our lateness, but we are making a couple of minutes progress. We will keep working on it on our end. Ms. Ventura, you understand you are still under oath?
CASANDRA VENTURA: Yes.
THE COURT: Ms. Estevao.