Key Moments in the First Day of the Sean Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial

In lurid element, Emily A. Johnson, the prosecutor who delivered a 50-minute opening assertion for the federal government, portrayed Mr. Combs as a person who ordered the efficiency of intercourse acts and “called himself the king.”

“To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Ms. Johnson stated. “A cultural icon, a businessman — larger than life. But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise.”

One of many authorities’s first witnesses was a person who stated he been paid as a lot as $6,000 to interact in prolonged sexual encounters with Mr. Combs’s girlfriend Casandra Ventura whereas the music mogul watched. He stated he additionally overheard what he believed to be Mr. Combs hanging Ms. Ventura in an adjoining room.

Mr. Combs, 55, one of the vital profitable producers and entrepreneurs within the historical past of hip-hop, faces costs of intercourse trafficking, transportation to interact in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy, a federal crime greatest recognized for its use in prosecuting organized crime syndicates.

If convicted, he might spend the remainder of his life in jail.

Mr. Combs has pleaded not responsible to the costs. “The evidence is going to show you a very flawed individual,” Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, stated in her opening assertion. “But it will not show you a racketeer, a sex trafficker or somebody transporting for prostitution.”

The trial of Mr. Combs is being carefully watched by his legions of followers and the celebrities and stars who as soon as turned in his orbit, attended his extravagant events or listened to the hit music he helped to supply.

The costs in opposition to Mr. Combs introduced into the favored lexicon “freak-offs,” which Mr. Combs used to explain the drug-fueled intercourse bacchanals he organized that would final for days. On the core of the case is the federal government’s competition that Mr. Combs, performing like royalty, dispatched a crew of staff to abet his habits and resolve any issues that it precipitated.

Within the packed courtroom on the twenty sixth ground of a Southern District of New York courthouse, the mogul’s mom, Janice Combs, sat within the second row of the gallery, wearing black-and-leopard print, and surrounded by members of the family.

Her son, who has been in custody since his arrest in September, wore a sweater, a collared shirt, slacks and lace-less sneakers. He sat on the protection desk, studying a Bible, his graying hair and beard revealing his months in detention, the place he can not dye it.

Ms. Johnson instructed a jury of eight males and 4 girls that the case would middle on the testimony of three girls, together with Ms. Ventura, 38. Higher often known as Cassie, she was additionally a singer previously signed to his label. As well as, Ms. Johnson stated, the jury would view movies of events the place Mr. Combs directed sexual encounters.

“You will see for yourself the defendant’s violence and its aftermath,” she stated.

In a single significantly graphic element, Ms. Johnson described a celebration at which Ms. Ventura “felt like she was choking” when Mr. Combs “made an escort urinate into her mouth.”

Ms. Ventura, who was a 19-year-old mannequin and aspiring singer when she met Mr. Combs within the mid-2000s, was bodily abused early on within the relationship, Ms. Johnson stated, describing how in 2009, Mr. Combs threw Ms. Ventura to the ground of an S.U.V. and stomped repeatedly on her face.

When it was their activate Monday, Mr. Combs’s authorized workforce portrayed their consumer as a “complicated man” who rose from humble beginnings and constructed an leisure empire. They acknowledged violent tendencies, jealousy-fueled disputes with former girlfriends — and that he was accountable for home violence.

However regardless of his “bad temper,” he was being wrongly prosecuted for his “private, personal sex life,” Ms. Geragos stated.

She instructed the jury that there may be a number of factors throughout the trial, which is anticipated to final about eight weeks, “where you think he is a jerk, he is mean.”

“But he is not charged with being mean,” Ms. Geragos stated. “He is not charged with being a jerk. He is charged with running a racketeering enterprise.”

Ms. Geragos described the witnesses testifying in opposition to Mr. Combs as “capable, strong, adult” girls who have been in love with Mr. Combs and who are actually concerned with monetary achieve. Ms. Ventura stayed within the relationship with Mr. Combs for over a decade, Ms. Geragos famous.

Over his three-and-a-half decade profession, Mr. Combs helped make artists just like the Infamous B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into family names. Below the title Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his personal in 1997 with “I’ll Be Missing You.” Mr. Combs’s lavish White Events, held within the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and different playgrounds of the wealthy, have been magnets for celebrities and music stars.

The road to enter the courthouse on Monday morning was crammed with reporters, podcasters, TikTok influencers and curious members of the general public. Inside they discovered a conflict of high-profile legal professionals. Mr. Combs’s eight-person authorized workforce is led by Marc Agnifilo, maybe greatest recognized for representing Keith Raniere, the chief of the Nxivm intercourse cult.

Among the many six prosecutors on the case is Maurene Comey, who has expertise with advanced prison issues, just like the 2021 intercourse trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. She is the daughter of the previous F.B.I. director James Comey.

Mr. Combs has had different brushes with the regulation, together with allegations of assault and a 1999 taking pictures inside a Manhattan evening membership that left three folks injured. He had been on the membership together with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and was in the end acquitted.

However essentially the most broadly seen episode of violence involving Mr. Combs got here final Might when CNN aired surveillance footage of him attacking Ms. Ventura within the InterContinental Lodge in Los Angeles in 2016. In that video, Mr. Combs, carrying solely a towel round his waist, is seen brutally kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura. On Monday the jury was proven the footage nevertheless it was slowed down — Mr. Combs’s legal professionals had stated the tape had been sped up and made the actions appear quicker than in actual life. A authorities knowledgeable corrected the pace.

The prosecution’s first witness on Monday was Israel Florez, a Los Angeles police officer who had been a safety guard on the InterContinental Lodge. He testified that he responded to a girl in misery on the sixth ground and located Mr. Combs seated in a towel, immobile however with “a devilish stare.” Huddled within the nook was Ms. Ventura, who had a “purple eye,” Mr. Florez stated.

Mr. Florez stated Mr. Combs supplied him a stash of money that he understood to be a bribe. “He was telling me, ‘Don’t tell nobody,’” Mr. Florez stated. The prosecution has stated that Mr. Combs purchased the surveillance footage from lodge safety for $100,000. However copies apparently remained.

The prosecution’s second witness was Daniel Phillip, the male stripper who stated he was invited a number of instances by Ms. Ventura to have intercourse along with her whereas Sean Combs watched and masturbated.

Throughout greater than an hour of express testimony, Mr. Phillip stated he noticed Mr. Combs as soon as threw a liquor bottle at Ms. Ventura when she didn’t instantly go to him when known as. He then dragged Ms. Ventura to a different room, testified Mr. Phillip, who stated he heard what appeared like Mr. Combs smack her. “Bitch, when I tell you to come here, you come here now, not later,” Mr. Phillip testified he heard Mr. Combs say.

Throughout his testimony, Mr. Combs’s three teenage daughters left the courtroom.

Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.