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      Aide Who Was Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s ‘Right Hand’ Draws Scrutiny at His Trial

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      Kristina Khorram, the mogul’s former chief of staff, was not charged in his indictment, but the government has identified her and other staff as co-conspirators.For years, anyone who wanted access to Sean Combs had to go through Kristina Khorram first.An employee at his company since 2013, becoming his chief of staff in 2020, Ms. Khorram was the mogul’s “right hand,” as he once called her. Before leaving her role in the last year, she commanded a rotating army of personal assistants for Mr. Combs and was the central go-between for his multifaceted business empire.While much of her work related to Mr. Combs’s businesses, she also made doctor’s appointments for his girlfriends. Made sure their rent was paid. Apprised them of the boss’s daily moods.“Don’t know how I’d function without her,” Mr. Combs wrote in a Facebook shout-out in 2021.The actions of Ms. Khorram and others who worked for Mr. Combs over the years are now being scrutinized in federal court, where prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Mr. Combs is guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, asserting that he ran a “criminal enterprise.”Ms. Khorram, 38, has not been charged in the case, has not been called as a witness and has denied wrongdoing in the past. But her presence is woven through various accounts given at the trial of wrangling hotel logistics for the sex marathons that are at the heart of the case, or of arranging for drugs to be transported by plane to the music mogul.“Her duties as Mr. Combs’s chief of staff were extremely broad,” Meredith Foster, a prosecutor, told the judge this month. “They involved setting up hotel nights,” she added, “facilitating the transportation of narcotics, various items such as that.”During the trial, prosecutors have described the behavior of various bodyguards and staff at Mr. Combs’s companies, as well as Ms. Khorram, as they argue to the jury that the conduct of the employees was not just the work of dutiful assistants, but of racketeering co-conspirators.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question for the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jurors: What Qualifies as Coercion?

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      When the jurors deliberate Sean Combs’s fate in the coming weeks, they will confront a vast trove of evidence from two women who say his treatment of them for years swung between tender affection and sexual subjugation.At the core of the panel’s review will be the question of whether the women — both put forward by prosecutors as sex-trafficking victims — were willing participants in sex marathons with male escorts that lie at the center of the federal case against Mr. Combs.The women have testified for days that while they were in romantic relationships with Mr. Combs, they complied with his requests for voyeuristic, drug-fueled sex nights because they feared the retaliation of a man who wielded immense power over them.Casandra Ventura said she was repeatedly beaten and feared he would make sex tapes of her public as he had threatened. “Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym, said she was repeatedly pressured to have sex with hired men — once after vomiting, another time on her birthday. She said she worried that, given his pattern of behavior, she would seriously displease him if she stopped, leading him to stop paying the $10,000-a-month rent on the home where she lives with her child.“It was many, many blurred lines of love and affection mixed with emotional pressure to perform these things that my lover really desired,” Jane said of her relationship on the stand last week, “and so I wanted to fulfill my duties as a good girlfriend.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Latest in the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Timeline and Testimony

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      The music mogul has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Here’s what has happened in court.Sean Combs, one of America’s most influential music moguls, is standing trial on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Prosecutors accuse him of leading a criminal enterprise that committed a series of crimes including kidnapping, arson and obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have said all the sex at issue in the case was consensual. Read the indictment here.The Latest:The Jury Sees ‘Freak-Off’ Videos and a Juror Is DismissedAs the trial enters its sixth week, the prosecution has highlighted key pieces of evidence to summarize its case. Among them were a trove of text messages from Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff, which prosecutors said showed that Ms. Khorram was closely involved in planning the intensive sex marathons that Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified as “Jane” said they endured. Over the course of the trial, those events have been called “freak-offs,” “hotel nights” and “wild king nights.”Prosecutors also showed jurors brief excerpts from videos of those events, which were taken from devices that Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, provided to the government. That evidence is sealed, and was not visible to the public or the news media. Jurors watched the videos on screens, and listened on headphones; one juror, frowning, snatched the headphones off after the first clip was played. During cross-examination, the defense chose segments of the same videos that lasted up to five minutes.The defense has called the footage “powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion.”On Monday, the judge dismissed a juror who gave inconsistent information about where he lives, raising concerns that he had been seeking a spot on the jury of the high-profile case. On Tuesday, the jury saw charts that detailed phone records and text messages related to Mr. Combs’s assault on Ms. Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, and illustrated how some of the expenses related to freak-offs were paid through Mr. Combs’s companies.Prosecutors are expected to rest this week, and the defense will then call its own witnesses, who are expected to include a former human resources manager for Mr. Combs’s company and a forensic psychiatrist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial, a Detailed Timeline of the Hotel Assault on Cassie

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      Jurors were also shown how expenses related to the sexual encounters were paid for by the mogul’s companies, as well as text and phone records surrounding a 2016 assault.Just after noon on Tuesday, the courtroom where Sean Combs is standing trial went silent.For a second time in Mr. Combs’s federal trial for sex trafficking and racketeering, jurors were shown explicit videos of “freak-offs,” the extended sexual encounters that are central to the case — this time, in excerpts chosen by the defense.On Monday, during questioning of a federal agent by prosecutors, jurors had viewed a series of short clips from the videos, each about 30 seconds in length. On Tuesday, during cross-examination, the defense chose segments that lasted up to five minutes.Jurors, wearing headphones, kept their eyes trained on screens in front of them. But, following an order from the judge supervising the case, Arun Subramanian, the videos were not displayed to reporters and members of the public in the gallery. The footage was taken from devices that Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend for about 11 years, turned over to the government during its investigation.For about 20 minutes, as the videos were played, the courtroom was largely hushed while jurors watched. Mr. Combs, sitting in his chair, leaned back and tapped his fingers rhythmically against his right thigh. His lawyers eyed the jurors closely.On Monday, some jurors had seemed visibly uncomfortable when viewing the clips. But on Tuesday, they showed little reaction. When the videos ended, one juror rubbed his face and eyes.Teny Geragos, the defense lawyer cross-examining the agent, DeLeassa Penland of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, said nothing about the videos, only giving the time codes for when the segments would stop and start; in some cases, she indicated that they were resuming where Monday’s clips had ended.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question for the Sean Combs Jurors: What Qualifies as Coercion?

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      When the jurors deliberate Sean Combs’s fate in the coming weeks, they will confront a vast trove of evidence from two women who say his treatment of them for years swung between tender affection and sexual subjugation.At the core of the panel’s review will be the question of whether the women — both put forward by prosecutors as sex-trafficking victims — were willing participants in sex marathons with male escorts that lie at the center of the federal case against Mr. Combs.The women have testified for days that while they were in romantic relationships with Mr. Combs, they complied with his requests for voyeuristic, drug-fueled sex nights because they feared the retaliation of a man who wielded immense power over them.Casandra Ventura said she was repeatedly beaten and feared he would make sex tapes of her public as he had threatened. “Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym, said she was repeatedly pressured to have sex with hired men — once after vomiting, another time on her birthday. She said she worried that, given his pattern of behavior, she would seriously displease him if she stopped, leading him to stop paying the $10,000-a-month rent on the home where she lives with her child.“It was many, many blurred lines of love and affection mixed with emotional pressure to perform these things that my lover really desired,” Jane said of her relationship on the stand last week, “and so I wanted to fulfill my duties as a good girlfriend.”Mr. Combs has vehemently denied the sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against him. The heart of his defense is consent. His lawyers spent hours asking the women to review messages in which they expressed love for Mr. Combs and, at times, interest in the sex sessions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Ex-Girlfriend Will Return for 22nd Hour of Testimony

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      “Jane,” taking the stand under a pseudonym, is expected to face her final questions from the mogul’s lawyers on Thursday.On the 22nd day of Sean Combs’s federal trial, the defense is scheduled to complete its cross-examination of “Jane,” an ex-girlfriend who has testified about the affection and passion she once shared with the famed music producer — as well the degrading sex marathons with hired men that she says she endured to please Mr. Combs and retain financial support from him.Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy; prosecutors have said that he directed bodyguards and executives at his company to enable and cover up his crimes — including coercing women into sex — as part of a “criminal enterprise.” Jane, who is appearing under a pseudonym, is the second woman the government has put forth as a victim of sex trafficking, after Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who testified for four days last month.Mr. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and has strongly denied that any of his sexual activities were nonconsensual.On Thursday, Jane, who was in a relationship with Mr. Combs from 2021 until his arrest in 2024, will get on the stand for a sixth day; since she first began testifying a week ago she has been questioned for about 21 hours. Even with the torrent of details she has provided, Jane’s testimony has centered on one of the key aspects of the case: whether she was coerced into sex, or acted as a willing participant.During her time on the stand, Jane has recounting grueling experiences about what she and Mr. Combs called their “hotel nights,” in which she had sex with male escorts while Mr. Combs watched. She said she once vomited after having sex with two of them, and then was encouraged by Mr. Combs to have sex with a third. She said she developed urinary tract infections as a result of the frequent encounters. And after a violent brawl with Mr. Combs that started with an argument over another woman he was dating, Jane testified, she took part in yet another sexual encounter with an escort, wearing makeup to cover up her black eye and welts.In cross-examination, Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, focused on dozens of text exchanges between Jane, Mr. Combs and others in which Jane appeared to express excitement about hotel nights and took an active role in planning them. In an exchange from 2021, a pornographic actor who took part in many of these encounters wrote about the “roughest sex we ever had.” Jane called it “def one for the books” and added a “mind-blown” emoji.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Defense to Analyze ‘Hotel Night’ Texts With ‘Jane’

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      The music mogul’s lawyers have started walking his former girlfriend — now a government witness — through a voluminous history of text and audio messages.Sean Combs’s former girlfriend, who has said she was subjected to a pattern of degrading sex marathons with male escorts, will take the stand for her fifth day of testimony on Wednesday at the music mogul’s federal trial, as his lawyers seek to portray her as a willing participant in the encounters.On Tuesday, the defense’s cross-examination of the woman — who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane — delved into lengthy, emoji-filled text exchanges surrounding the encounters, which the couple referred to as “debauchery” or “hotel nights.”Prosecutors say Mr. Combs coerced Jane into these nights, and she has testified that they left her feeling disgusted, used and sometimes physically sick, saying that Mr. Combs tended to be dismissive when she voiced her aversion to them.While questioning Jane, the defense highlighted messages from Mr. Combs in which he appeared to be solicitous about what she wanted to do sexually; once, in 2021, he asked her about her own sexual fantasies, writing, “we don’t have to be debaucherous lol.” Jane testified that she often read “undertones” of expectation in her boyfriend’s messages, leading her to be agreeable or try to cater to the kind of voyeuristic sex that he often requested.“I know my partner and what he likes and what he wants,” she testified.The trial is scheduled to have a delayed start on Wednesday, but when testimony starts in the afternoon the defense is expected to parse more messages that help chronicle the couple’s volatile relationship, which lasted from 2021 to Mr. Combs’s arrest in 2024.Mr. Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking Jane and another former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, who testified at the start of the trial. He is also facing a charge of racketeering conspiracy, which includes allegations that he ran a criminal enterprise that helped facilitate sex trafficking, among other crimes.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers have denied that the mogul coerced the two women into sex, and they have asserted that members of Mr. Combs’s staff, including security guards and high-ranking employees, were members of lawful businesses — not a criminal conspiracy.Under questioning from the prosecution, Jane described the drug-fueled nights of sex as “performances” and said she continued to participate to please Mr. Combs and to secure time alone with the man she loved. But in 2023, the dynamic shifted when he began paying her $10,000-a-month rent in Los Angeles. She testified that Mr. Combs started to use the house as “leverage” for her to continue participating in sex with escorts.And she described a violent brawl with Mr. Combs in 2024, when he was under criminal investigation. She testified that afterward, when she had welts and a black eye from his blows, he demanded she perform oral sex on an escort despite her protests. She said she took the Ecstasy pill he gave her and complied.Olivia Bensimon More

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      At Combs Trial, ‘Jane,’ an Ex-Girlfriend, to Testify About Sex Abuse

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      Prosecutors say the woman, who will take the stand under a pseudonym, endured coerced sex marathons called “freak-offs.” The defense contends they were consensual.A second woman who prosecutors say was sex trafficked by Sean Combs is set to take the stand on Thursday at his federal trial in what is expected to be several days of testimony about drug-fueled sex marathons with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”A judge has allowed the woman to testify anonymously, and she is being referred to in court by the pseudonym “Jane.” She is the most significant witness since Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, whose allegations of physical and sexual abuse gave rise to the criminal case.Prosecutors have said that Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs mirrored the one he had with Ms. Ventura in many ways. Like Ms. Ventura, they have said, Jane was coerced into freak-offs through violence, financial control and threats related to videos of the sexual encounters, which they said Mr. Combs directed step by step.Unlike Ms. Ventura, who is a singer known as Cassie and a public celebrity, Jane’s identity has not been revealed.The government has described Jane as a single mother who started spending time with Mr. Combs in 2020 and quickly fell in love with the music mogul, agreeing to participate in an initial freak-off to please him.“Jane thought the first freak-off was a one-time, wild night,” Emily Johnson, one of the prosecutors, said at the start of the case. “Jane was wrong.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More