What all can we expect to hear from her today as she takes the stand and later this week as well. Good morning, Sarah. So Don Richard will be back on the witness stand this morning, Friday, her testimony.
She said she witnessed Combs come downstairs into the kitchen, take a skillet with eggs in it and attempt to hit Cassie Ventura, his then girlfriend over the head. She also testified that comes drag Ventura up to the bedroom and she could hear glass breaking and yelling. The next day, Richard said Combs asked her to come back to his home into the recording studio.
She said he locked the door and then told her where he comes from. People who speak sometimes go missing. She said that she took that as a threat, so she will be back on the witness stand this morning.
Her testimony is supposed to wrap up pretty quickly and then the prosecution is going to call Ventura’s former best friend. We heard a lot about her last week. Her name is Kerry Morgan.
She’s expected to testify and Ventura testified she was friends with Morgan before she met Combs and was friends with her throughout the relationship until Ventura said Combs hit Morgan and that ended their friendship. So Morgan expected to be a prosecution witness who will corroborate some of what Ventura has said. After that, they’re going to call a couple of people who worked for Combs, including a former personal assistant, a former chef.
Prosecution said they also expect to call an escort this week as well as Ventura’s mother. Ventura has testified that she told her mother about some of the physical abuse at the hands of Combs at one point in their relationship, so she will be another witness that the prosecution is calling this week. Of course, this is just week two of what the prosecution says will be six weeks of their presenting their case to the jury.
Sarah and the picture they are painting is one of a man with a lot of power and a man with what appears to be in their evidence. You will see how the defence deals with that scarce canal. Great reporting from the court as usual.
Appreciate it, john. All right, with us now, former Manhattan prosecutor Jeremy Saland, also former federal prosecutor Elyse Adamson and Jeremy, let me just start with you because I’m curious after the testimony of Cassie Ventura, which in a way is the bulk of the prosecution case, what left do they have to do? What are they now trying to do with these witnesses in order to prove the sex trafficking and racketeering charges? Force fraud, coercion, not just a bad, bad, ugly guy doing terrible, horrible things, not a sex abuse case, not a domestic assault case, but that there was this conspiracy to have this criminal enterprise that all this different foundation of this force fraud and these actions on his part and these different players building it up to traffic women and men evidently to because you have these male prostitutes across state lines to engage in this commercial sex acts. So it’s not just that he beat her.
It’s not just that he hit her with a skillet. It’s not just that he maybe not forced her to take drugs and she maybe did engage on her own in these free costs, but it’s building that criminal enterprise conspiracy much more difficult on its face. Yeah, and we’ll get to the defence with the defence will be in a second, but at least first continuing on the prosecution and what they’re trying to do in order to prove force fraud and coercion.
What exactly do they need to elicit from these witnesses? Don Rashard testified on Friday that she did see an example of abuse. Did he? She testified Sean Combs beat Cassie Ventura. He saw her with a skillet or whatnot.
But what more besides that? Yes, john, you’re absolutely right. That is exactly what the prosecution needs to show that it was more than a consensual relationship as the defence tried very hard to paint during Cassie’s cross examination. They need to elicit from Don Rashard more details about this abusive conduct because recall on cross the defence kind of left the impression with the jury that maybe Sean Combs only became violent when he was coming down off of drugs.
Maybe he was bipolar, but no, already Don Rashard has kind of dispelled that by saying he got mad about not answering fast enough and then beat her with a skillet and dragged her upstairs by her hair and then threatened them both. And that is key because, you know, agreeing to do something consensually is one thing. But Don Rashard basically said she was afraid she was gonna die if she did not do what comb said.
So all of that is very corroborative of Ventura’s account. And it also goes to combs intent, which is key for the trafficking charge. How will the defence at least we’ll keep going with you on this.
What will the defence do to counter these witnesses after they come? Yeah, the defence is gonna have to employ the classic playbook, which is to discredit and impeach this witness. So Don Rashard had a longstanding relationship with Diddy, a professional relationship spanned over a decade. So expect them to ask questions about having seen this abusive conduct and being afraid that she’s going to be killed, but continuing to work with him, asking the motivations.
She has her own lawsuit, which she filed against Diddy in September, where she alleges some of the same conduct. But expect the defence to paint that as a money grab, because that would be the motivation for her to provide this testimony. If it’s not true, Jeremy, how successful has the defence been so far during its cross of Cassie Ventura in planting some of the seeds that they will need going forward planted some but nothing exceptional.
So if you’re going to argue, for example, the timing of a particular rape and whether or not that’s accurate, you know, that’s that’s a difficult lift to do, because I think they’re still established that it was against her will. Do you believe that maybe if she’s off by a certain period of time that that rape didn’t happen? You know, you came back and you return to him with their love. You could love someone at time one and still not consent at time to you can consent again at time three and not consent at time four.
So it’s a very difficult thing to do and poke the holes at her. Is it about money? Well, no, I didn’t cancel my tour because of the money. You know, I cancelled my tour separately.
So there’s it’s difficult. I don’t know if they’ve done the job they needed to do with her. But I think that goes to the point.
There’s still a lot more to come. You can have text messages. You’re gonna have the transactional records.
You’re gonna have other witnesses are going to testify and bolster up Cassie Ventura. It’s not just gonna rise and fall solely on her shoulders. You did express some curiosity.
The Cassie Ventura’s mother is on this witness list. Yeah, you know, a lot of what she’s gonna likely say would be hearsay. There is an allegation that I came across involving something about the reaching out to the father by Diddy about I’m her father now or I’m her dad now and she’s my daughter.
Basically, family set aside. I don’t know whether or not the mother was was privy to that call, but there’s going to be a lot of hearsay in that. So I’m not sure.
I don’t think there’s allegations that she saw the injuries as alleged, but we’ll find out. But she’s not really a critical witness. I think some of the other players are much more important.
At least just finally, do you think six weeks? The prosecution really needs six full weeks to lay out its case, given where it is right now? Good question. And I remember thinking after this first week, Wow, that’s a long time. Ventura testified very early because she’s 8.5 months pregnant.
They had to get her on the stand. Remember, this is a Rico case, so it’s not just about the sex trafficking. Prosecutors have to show that combs was running his businesses as corrupt enterprises, which means they were organisations that were committing crimes.
So I would bet that the balance of this trial is gonna be corroborative of Ventura’s story. They also have to bring in the other victims, the unnamed victims. But they’re also gonna have to lay the foundation for this Rico charge and explain how he conspired with more than one person and how he was running bad boy records as a corrupt organisation.
So they might need that time. Data and records, often part of Rico cases. We’ll see if this becomes a data heavy case.