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      As Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Took a Victory Lap, He Planned Sex Nights, Prosecutors Say

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      Questioning its final witness, the government laid out flight plans, escort prices, hotel reservations and a web of payments for sexual encounters in 2023.It was September 2023, and Sean Combs was on top of the world.On the 12th day of that month, he accepted the global icon award at the MTV Video Music Awards, celebrating his decades of success as a trailblazing record producer and media mogul.Three days later, he released “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” his first solo studio LP in 17 years, and Mayor Eric Adams of New York gave him the key to the city, recognizing Mr. Combs as “the embodiment of the New York City attitude.”That month, Mr. Combs was also busy planning sexual encounters involving his girlfriend “Jane” and hired male escorts, at hotels in New York and Miami Beach, Fla. These encounters, which the government has described as elaborate, drug-fueled sex marathons that Mr. Combs coerced two women to participate in, are central to the prosecution’s case; he is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.The arrangements for those encounters — flight plans, hotel reservations, negotiations over escort rates and a web of payments — were laid out in detail at Mr. Combs’s trial on Monday. Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor, asked a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations to read from text messages, American Express bills and other records as the 34th and final witness for the government before it rests its case.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty and denied the accusations against him. His lawyers have argued consistently throughout the seven-week trial that Mr. Combs’s sexual arrangements were all consensual, and that no criminal conspiracy exists.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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      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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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Ex-Assistant Says Mogul Told Staff to ‘Move Like SEAL Team 6’

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      Brendan Paul testified that his duties for Sean Combs involved getting drugs, setting up hotel rooms for sexual encounters and handling routine tasks.Brendan Paul, a former assistant to Sean Combs who was arrested last year amid federal raids, testified on Friday at the music mogul’s trial that he obtained drugs and prepared hotel rooms for nights of sex and partying as part of his job.While Mr. Paul was a low-level employee — his duties included packing bags and coordinating meals — he became one of the most prominent members of Mr. Combs’s entourage in March 2024, when he was charged with cocaine possession after Mr. Combs and his properties became the target of sweeping searches.On the day of the raids on two of Mr. Combs’s homes, Mr. Paul was at a Florida airport with the mogul, en route to a Combs family vacation in the Bahamas. Federal agents intercepted the group and found cocaine in a bag that Mr. Paul was carrying. Mr. Paul testified that he found the cocaine — amounting to 0.7 grams — in Mr. Combs’s room early that morning and had forgotten about it as he was packing for the trip.Mr. Paul, who had been working for Mr. Combs for about 18 months at the time, testified that he did not tell law enforcement that it was Mr. Combs’s cocaine.“Why not?” a prosecutor, Christy Slavik, asked Mr. Paul.“Loyalty,” he replied.The case against Mr. Paul was dropped last year after he completed a drug intervention program.Mr. Paul, who testified under an immunity deal with the government, is the only Combs aide known to have been arrested in connection with the federal investigation into Mr. Combs’s conduct.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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      A Trip Through Trip-Hop’s Past and Future

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      Listen to songs from Portishead and Cibo Matto, plus inheritors like Fcukers and a.s.o.Beth Gibbons of Portishead onstage in 2008.Oliver Hartung for The New York TimesDear listeners,Over the past couple of years, it’s started to feel like every out-of-favor electronic music style from the 1990s is returning at once. PinkPantheress is singing pop songs over drum-and-bass beats. Oklou uses trance synths. Hyperpop has made “uncool” taste a creative virtue. (On the less-out-of-favor, more-commercially-successful end of things, there’s Beyoncé and Charli XCX’s love for “Show Me Love.”)Signs have been building that trip-hop, a genre that reached popularity in the mid-90s by mixing atmospheric hip-hop beats with moody pop vocals, was next up for a resurgence. In one sense, it’s a sound that never fully went away — step into any swanky hotel bar over the past few decades — but it was seen as a creative dead end. “Today, trip-hop is the most toothless of beats-based styles,” the critic Jody Rosen wrote in a 2003 article in The New York Times about Massive Attack, one of the genre’s standard-bearers. “It’s easy listening for hipsters in space-age sneakers.”Well, lace up my space-age sneakers, because this music is sounding good again. Confirmation that I wasn’t imagining things hit my inbox via a recent edition of the always perceptive Herb Sundays music newsletter, which found ample evidence that trip-hop is in the zeitgeist, like Logic1000’s new, low-B.P.M. mix for the long-running DJ-Kicks series. (They referred to the sound as “downtempo,” one of a few related labels, but let’s not get lost in the subgenre soup and just vibe, OK?)Here are six classics from trip-hop’s initial wave and four tracks from current artists who are picking up the torch.A woman in the moon is singing to the earth,DaveListen along while you read.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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      Jurors at Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial See Video of ‘Freak-Off’ Sexual Encounters

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      Earlier on Monday, the judge dismissed a juror over a “lack of candor” and prosecutors strove to show that the mogul’s “right hand” aide helped organize sex nights.After weeks of graphic testimony that detailed drug-fueled sex marathons, jurors weighing the fate of Sean Combs saw for the first time videos taken of the sex sessions at the heart of the case.The footage, from 2012 and 2014, involved Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, who testified that she participated in the encounters — known as “freak-offs” — out of fear of retribution from Mr. Combs, who repeatedly beat her during their relationship.The sensitive footage was not shown to the full courtroom, after the judge in the case sealed it from reporters and members of the public who attend the trial. Jurors watched the videos while wearing headphones and looking at screens that had been outfitted with privacy guards. Several jurors winced. One, frowning, snatched the headphones off after the first clip was played.The videos were shown in several brief clips, about 30 seconds each. Some footage was from an October 2012 stay at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan, where two male escorts were invited to meet Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs.Mr. Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which revolve around his relationships with Ms. Ventura and another former girlfriend, known in court under the pseudonym Jane. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have asserted that the two women repeatedly consented to the nights of sex.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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      The Rapper Silentó Gets 30 Years in Prison for Fatal Shooting of His Cousin

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      The songwriter, whose real name is Ricky Hawk, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and three other charges in relation to the killing.Silentó, the rapper known for his viral hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges related to the fatal shooting of his cousin.The rapper, whose real name is Ricky Lamar Hawk, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, possessing a firearm while committing a crime and concealing the death of another, District Attorney Sherry Boston of DeKalb County said in a statement.Mr. Hawk, 27, was arrested in connection with the shooting of his cousin, Frederick Rooks III, 34, in the early hours of Jan. 21, 2021, after the police found him bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds in a residential neighborhood in Decatur, Ga., seven miles northeast of Atlanta, according to a police report. Emergency workers pronounced him dead on the scene.Several people nearby heard gunshots, and security footage from doorbell cameras showed a white BMW S.U.V. fleeing the scene a few minutes after the gunfire, according to the district attorney’s office. A relative of Mr. Rooks told officers that he was last seen with Mr. Hawk, who had picked him up in a vehicle that matched the description.After he was taken into custody on Feb. 1, 2021, Mr. Hawk told investigators that he had shot Mr. Rooks, according to the district attorney’s office. Mr. Hawk initially faced a murder charge, which was dropped as part of the plea agreement on Wednesday.His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.On the day of his arrest, Mr. Hawk’s publicist at the time said that he had been “suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses” in recent years.Mr. Hawk became famous in 2015 while he was still in high school through his single, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” which started a social media dance craze. Tutorial videos have millions of views, and the official music video has been watched about 1.9 billion times on YouTube.In 2019, Mr. Hawk went on the interview show “The Doctors” and described his struggles with depression.“Depression doesn’t leave you when you become famous,” he said. “It just adds more pressure.”“I don’t know if I can truly be happy,” he added on the show. “I don’t know if these demons will ever go away.”With a plea of guilty but mentally ill, the state’s Department of Corrections is responsible for evaluating and treating Mr. Hawk’s mental health needs, according to Georgia law. More