Judge Arun Subramanian went into his robing room to talk with representatives for the U.S. Marshals Service about some of the issues raised by Sean Combs’s defense. Lead counsel Marc Agnifilo has been vociferous — in his very genteel way — about wanting to spend more time with Combs to review the prosecution’s evidence. He has asked if they could do so in the courthouse after hours, instead of at the jail.

Prosecutor Maurene Comey noted that the defense has had access to this evidence for months. After returning to the courtroom, Subramanian said Combs and his attorney can use the courtroom — under supervision by U.S. Marshalls — until 6 p.m. today.

And with that, court is over for the day.

Marc Agnifilo, the lead defense counsel, pleaded with the court for more time before a new witness begins testifying against Sean Combs later this week. The witness, using the alias Jane, is expected to be on the stand for multiple days, and the defense wants time to ask Combs about a huge volume of evidence that will accompany her testimony, including sensitive communications and nude images that Combs cannot look at without an attorney or paralegal present.

Agnifilo has complained that the Brooklyn jail where Combs is housed is inadequate for trial preparation and violates his client’s constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial. The judge said he will ask the marshals service if they can allow Combs and his legal team to confer in the courtroom for a few hours after trial lets out each day.

Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo ended the day’s testimony cross on an awkward note. After a series of questions that painted Sean Combs’s business empire as extremely well organized, he asked former CFO Derek Ferguson, “Do you think highly of Combs?”

You could have heard a pin drop as Ferguson took a lengthy pause. “I don’t know how to respond to that,” he said.

Ferguson then left the stand, and the jury was sent home for the afternoon.

Before adjourning for the day, the court discussed the upcoming testimony of Jane, a former girlfriend of Sean Combs who the government says was sex-trafficked by him. Jane, who is using a court-approved pseudonym to protect her privacy, is expected to take the stand this week.

The government wants the courtroom video feed turned off while Jane is on the stand, because it will display exhibits that include her real name and that of her son. (The volume of documents is so great that names cannot be redacted in time, prosecutors say.)

It seems closed-circuit video of Jane’s testimony will be shown in the overflow room for the public and the press room.

It makes sense that defense attorney Marc Agnifilo would spend some time cross-examining Derek Ferguson about his perspective on Sean Combs. Ferguson worked with Combs for nearly 20 years in various parts of his business empire, serving as chief financial officer for Bad Boy Entertainment and later a chief executive at Combs’s media company Revolt. Testifying under a subpoena, he is the first Combs employee at the trial to say he never saw Combs be violent or break the law.

“Did you see anyone commit crimes?” Agnifilo asked. “Did you see anyone make the company stronger through threats of violence?” Ferguson said he had not.

“Did you see anyone enhance Combs’ reputation … through prostitution?” the lawyer asked. “No,” said Ferguson.

Tuesday afternoon’s testimony from former Bad Boy CFO Derek Ferguson is certainly dry compared to this morning, when a hotel guard described Combs pulling $100,000 in cash out of a brown paper bag to buy a surveillance video in which he was caught brutally attacking his girlfriend Cassie Ventura.

If there was one nonlawyer in the courtroom who remained fully engaged while Ferguson discussed financial details and expense reports, it was Combs himself. He intently watched his lead counsel, Marc Agnifilo, cross-examine Ferguson, just before the court called for a sidebar discussion at the judge’s bench.

We’re in a weedy stretch of financial testimony from former Bad Boy chief financial officer Derek Ferguson, as the defense tries to undo prosecutors’ portrayal of Sean Combs’s business as a vast network of cash-heavy enterprises. The debate is central to the racketeering charges against Combs: Did he use his business network as a tool for extortion, or run it legitimately?

Under cross-examination, Ferguson testified that a team went through expense statements each month, determining what was for business and what was personal. “For your entire time, 19 years,” asked lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, “ … did anyone not pay the taxes they were supposed to pay, or do something that they were not supposed to?” Ferguson said he never would have intentionally allowed fraud at the company.

Sean Combs’s highly profitable deal to promote Cîroc Vodka and DeLeon Tequila soured because Combs felt the beverage company, Diageo, was only using his ads in Black and minority neighborhoods, his former chief financial officer Derek Ferguson testified.

Combs filed a lawsuit against Diageo alleging discriminatory business practices, which was settled in 2024. Ferguson was discussing the matter on cross-examination when prosecutors objected to the line of questioning, which ties into the defense’s theory that many people treat Combs unfairly due to his race, including the government in their prosecution of him.

Derek Ferguson is back on the stand, as lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo uses the financial executive’s cross-examination to paint a positive picture of Sean Combs’s businesses.

Ferguson, who has a master’s degree from Harvard Business School but grew up working for his father’s trucking business in the Bronx, testified that he was attracted to Bad Boy Records because it employed people of color and tried to empower young entrepreneurs. “First and foremost, for me coming from the Bronx, I felt like we needed more companies that really would hire people from the communities that I grew up in,” he testified. “What I observed with Bad Boy and Sean Combs was a company that really gave a lot of young executives a lot of opportunities.”

Prosecutors are also asking the judge to instruct an organization to remove a social media post that reveals the identity of Mia, the alias for a former Sean Combs assistant who was allowed to testify anonymously against him to protect her privacy. Mia claimed Combs assaulted her repeatedly throughout her employment, including allegedly climbing into her bed and raping her.

We’re back from break. The prosecution wants to admit into evidence some communications between Sean Combs and his bodyguard D-Roc, including some that refer to Cassie Ventura.

“She wants to ice up,” D-Roc told Combs in one message, which prosecutors say relates to Ventura’s injuries. In another, the bodyguard wrote, “She wants to see you but you not f—-ing with her.”

Ventura has testified that many women in Combs’s circle thought of D-Roc as a friend or ally, but prosecutors allege he was actually funneling information to Combs.

When CNN released a video in May 2024 of Sean “Diddy” Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in 2016 at the InterContinental hotel, it was the first time the public saw evidence of Combs being physically abusive, and it corroborated an allegation Ventura made in her now-settled lawsuit against Combs.

After the video went viral, it prompted a now-deleted apology video from Combs, in which he called his behavior “inexcusable.” He’s denied the allegations against him in 70-plus sexual assault lawsuits.

The footage then became a key part of the prosecutors’ case against Combs. They alleged in pre-trial court filings that the video helps show Combs’s “persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals.”

Combs’s attorneys have criticized the video CNN obtained, alleging that the footage was sped up and edited. According to court filings, the CNN video was actually a cellphone recording of the hotel surveillance footage.

Throughout the trial, jurors have been shown the original surveillance footage. The defense have still tried to limit how many times the video is shown during the trial, calling it “prejudicial.”

It’s open seating in the overflow courtroom, but this morning the crowd there seemed to divide itself into groups. On the right sat the journalists with their badges around their necks, while most social media influencers and members of the public chose the left side of the room.

Two people left the overflow room loudly during the morning break, yelling “let’s go viral!” Outbursts have been happening more frequently as the trial goes on. There is also a man in a black cap with the words “FREE PUFF” in the overflow room, as well as Combs’s former bodyguard Gene Deal, who has attended trial sporadically.

Derek Ferguson, Sean Combs’s former CFO, has spent the past hour describing the structure of his sprawling business empire, with accounts at multiple banks and a regular cash flow to his various ventures.

Ferguson described properties that Combs owned in Miami, New York City and the Hamptons. He said executives were given American Express cards for expenses, but the business also relied heavily on cash, which many performers requested as payment. Many bodyguards carried cash on them in case Combs needed it, Ferguson testified before the court took a lunch break.

When Derek Ferguson became Sean Combs’s chief financial officer in 1998, he testified, Combs was very involved in the company and they spoke regularly.

Combs’s business expanded into a constellation of companies, ventures and partnerships during Ferguson’s employment, which lasted until 2012. It included Bad Boy Productions, Bad Boy Marketing and Bad Boy Films — all solely owned by Combs. At times, Ferguson was in charge of his personal finances.

Combs always drove the creative, marketing and product management of his companies, Ferguson testified, but in time became more of a “chairman” than an active manager. Most of his businesses were profitable, the former CFO said, and Combs drew simultaneous salaries from several of them.

The government has called its next witness, Derek Ferguson, who held several executive titles at Sean Combs’s companies, including chief financial officer for Bad Boy Entertainment from 1998 to 2012.

Wearing a dark suit and glasses, Ferguson told the jury he is testifying under a subpoena.

Eddy Garcia’s number was saved in the phone of Sean Combs’s chief of staff Kristina Khorram, misspelled, as “Eddie my angel.”

Garcia, a hotel security worker who says Combs paid him and his colleagues $100,000 for a video of Combs beating Cassie Ventura, testified that the music producer repeatedly called him “his angel” and told him God had put the two of them together.

But when Garcia asked Combs for help finding work after he handed over the video, he testified, Combs did not respond to his Instagram message.

Court is running a little late after the midmorning recess. Sean Combs sat in the courtroom the entire time. At one point he was the only person at the defense table, where he shuffled through his papers and wrote some notes.

Most of the attorneys are back now, milling around. Combs has been in an animated conversation with his lawyer Nicole Westmoreland. We haven’t heard much from Westmoreland. She was a later addition to the Combs defense team. She has only cross-examined one witness: the former Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard.

Eddy Garcia has concluded his testimony and cross-examination, and the court is on a short break.

Justin Combs, one of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s sons, arrived at the courthouse in a striped dress shirt and black tie to sit in on the trial Tuesday morning. Walking next to Justin in a “Free Puff” hoodie and hat was Charlucci Finney, a Combs supporter who has described himself to press as a friend of the family.

Sean Combs’s mother, Janice Combs, has been a regular presence throughout the trial. She was spotted coming to the courthouse Tuesday in gold hoops, a striped button-up top and an embellished black jacket.

Sean Combs leaned over the defense table and looked intently at a monitor on his lead counsel’s desk while the prosecution and defense teams were in a sidebar discussion with the judge. The monitor contains a live transcript of the proceedings, including sidebars, which are drowned out by white noise so the rest of the court can’t hear.

Defense attorney Brian Steel is now cross-examining witness Eddy Garcia, a hotel security worker who testified that Combs paid him and his colleagues to obtain what he believed was the only copy of footage showing the music producer physically assaulting Cassie Ventura.

Steel rose to fame as a result of the high-profile (and very drawn out) Young Thug racketeering trial in Georgia, and was a relatively late addition to Combs’s defense team. He’s the attorney we’ve heard from the most this week, even though we’re in the prosecution’s phase of the trial, as Steel delivered a long cross-examination of the pseudonymous witness Mia on Monday.

Prosecutors asked Eddy Garcia why he was nervous around Sean Combs while the two men allegedly struck a deal to sell Combs security footage of him beating Cassie Ventura.

The hotel guard began to explain his fear of the hip-hop mogul before a sharp objection from defense attorneys halted the line of questioning. Prosecutors are trying to provide the jury with evidence that supports racketeering charges, which involves making threats to extort individuals and companies. The imagery in this testimony is strong: paper bags filled with cash, body guards, money counters, bands of cash and veiled threats.

After Eddy Garcia gave Sean Combs a USB drive with the InterContinental security footage and signed two contracts, he testified, Combs stepped out of the room and returned with a money counting machine and a brown paper bag.

Garcia said Combs pulled bills out of the bag, ran $100,000 through the counter, and handed it to him, warning him not to make any big purchases.

Garcia, a guard at the hotel, testified that he gave $50,000 of the money to his supervisor who approved the deal with Combs, $20,000 to another guard involved in the incident, and kept $30,000 for himself to buy a used vehicle.

After Sean Combs and Cassie Ventura told him they wanted the security footage kept quiet, hotel security worker Eddy Garcia testified, he signed nondisclosure agreements averring that the video did not exist on any other servers, and that he would not divulge any details from the deal.

Garcia testified that Combs also had him text photos of his driver’s license, as well as IDs for his boss and another security officer who responded to the incident — so that they were “all on the same page.”

When Eddy Garcia met with Sean Combs to sell him surveillance footage of Combs beating Cassie Ventura, the security officer testified, he told Combs he worried police would come looking for it if Ventura filed a police report.

Combs “said I didn’t have to worry about that,” Garcia told the jury, then put him on the phone with a woman he understood to be Ventura. Garcia said he overheard Combs tell her, “let him know that you want the video to go away too.”

Ventura told Garcia she had a movie coming out, he told the jury. “It wasn’t a good time for this to come out and she wanted it to go away,” the guard said.

Sean Combs repeatedly tried to obtain hotel security footage of him beating his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, security officer Eddy Garcia testified, and finally handed over tens of thousands of dollars for the damning video.

Garcia said Combs first called him on the hotel security line after the beating, and “nervously” told him “he had a little too much to drink.” He said Combs intimated that “I knew how things were with women, and that one thing leads to another.”

The next time, Garcia said, Combs called his personal cellphone. “He stated that I sounded like a good guy, that I sounded like I wanted to help and something like this could ruin him,” Garcia told the jury. “He repeated that I sounded like a good guy, and I could help.”

Garcia said he initially told Combs that he did not have access to the video, but later reached back out and said his boss was willing to erase the footage for $50,000. (He later testified that Combs paid a total of $100,000.)

“Eddie my angel, I knew you could help, I knew you could do it,” an excited Combs replied, according to Garcia’s testimony. The next day, he told the jury, Madrano directed him to fudge the time-stamps on his shift logs and go to a high-rise in Los Angeles, where he met with Combs.

“He was smiling, excited, just looked happy,” said Garcia, who added that his own voice kept cracking with anxiety. He said he personally handed a thumb drive with the video to Combs, and assured him it was the only copy.

A hotel security worker testified that Sean Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, came to the InterContinental and asked to see surveillance footage on March 5, 2016, shortly after Combs beat Cassie Ventura.

The security worker, Eddy Garcia, said Khorram first asked for the video in a phone call and was told she would need a subpoena. When the Combs executive arrived at the hotel lobby, Garcia testified, she inquired again if there was a way she could see it so Combs’s staff could know “what they were dealing with.”

Garcia said he apologized to Khorram and insisted again that she needed a subpoena, but gave her a brief description of the footage: “It’s bad.”

Between the heckler’s disruption and a lengthy conversation about the Hotel Intercontinental video testimony, we had a bit of a later start than usual. The jurors have taken their seats in the jury box and the government has just called its first witness, Eddy Garcia.

Garcia, a 33-year-old private security worker, is wearing a black windbreaker. A former Securitas officer, he worked at the InterContinental Hotel in 2016 — the year security footage captured Sean Combs beating Cassie Ventura in the hallway.

The heckler escorted from the courtroom said she is a Sean Combs supporter, upset that people in the courthouse — particularly the overflow room where many members of the public congregate — have been discussing the case out loud. The woman said that she felt people were unfairly mocking the defendant, “and I wanted to make my voice heard.”

Court marshals worked to calm the woman once they got her outside. When approached by a reporter, she grew irate and began hurling expletives. “I’m tired of seeing everyone treating Diddy the way they are. I said my piece,” she said.

Government prosecutors just alerted the court about an individual who broke the pseudonym order for Mia. This person, the government said, was in the courthouse Monday and used Mia’s real name in the public square.

The government was in the middle of saying it planned to tell the court’s chief security officer about the person who violated the order (that person didn’t appear to be in court today, but will be escorted out if court officials see them) when there was a loud disruption in the courtroom.

Someone began heckling Sean Combs, yelling out to the court, “Diddy, these motherf—–s laughing at you.”

That person was escorted out of the room, and there’s no indication that it’s the same person the government said disclosed Mia’s identity. Just after the interruption, several reporters rushed out of the pressroom (including our own Wesley Parnell) to try to catch a glimpse of the disrupter.

Surveillance footage of Sean “Diddy” Combs attacking Cassie Ventura at the InterContinental hotel in 2016 has been shown several times at this trial. The government introduced it during opening statements, along with Israel Florez, a former security guard at the hotel who responded to the incident.

The footage shown to jurors was the surveillance video taken from the hotel, which is not quite the same as the footage CNN obtained last year. The CNN footage was a cellphone recording of the hotel’s surveillance footage. The government is expected to call a video expert Tuesday to explain the correct sequence of events, prosecutors say. Combs’s lawyers are highly opposed to showing this footage to jurors again, with attorney Teny Geragos calling it “unduly prejudicial.”

Jurors will hear from a number of witnesses today, including Eddy Garcia, a security guard at the InterContinental Hotel where Combs was caught on video assaulting Cassie Ventura in 2016. Prosecutors said that a third anonymous victim, Jane, will testify by Thursday. Attorneys are currently discussing the video and watching it to determine whether the way it had been edited, which apparently shows Combs chasing after Ventura with no context, was prejudicial to Combs.

Correction note: An earlier version of this post misspelled Eddy Garcia’s first name.

Sean Combs has entered the courtroom and is, for the first time, wearing a new outfit. The judge ordered him to wear light neutral tones, but today he is wearing a copper sweater over a collared shirt. As is his habit, he hugged the members of his defense team before taking his normal place at the defense table.

This morning, he seemed particularly animated, speaking at length with his attorney, Xavier Donaldson. While they’re often small interactions, such moments are also revealing as Combs has made it a habit during testimony to stay calm and staid.

It’s a sunny and resplendent day in Lower Manhattan and spectators are still lining up to witness the Sean Combs trial. Between media and public, both the courtroom and overflow room have been fairly full throughout the trial. There is an incentive to arrive early — whoever gets here first is added to a list and their spot is locked in for the day. The U.S. Marshals Service runs security in the courthouse and getting in can feel akin to going through airport security.

Sean Combs’s trial, estimated to last eight weeks at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in New York City, will not be publicly broadcast. During jury selection, prosecutors provided a list of 190 names — including celebrities and public figures — that could surface during testimony.

With the trial underway, here are the major players expected at court — including attorneys, potential witnesses and family members.

This is an excerpt from a full story.