Sean Combs: "Jane" takes the stand.

Summary

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Episode: Sean Combs: "Jane" Takes the Stand

Release Date: June 6, 2025
Host: Andrea Canning, NBC News

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Introduction

In this gripping episode of Dateline: True Crime Weekly, host Andrea Canning delves deep into the high-profile racketeering trial of Sean Combs, also known as Diddy. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and this episode focuses on the testimony of a pivotal witness, referred to as Jane to protect her identity. The episode provides a detailed account of the courtroom proceedings, the dynamics between the prosecution and defense, and the personal testimonies that could shape the outcome of the trial.

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Prosecution's Key Witness Testimony

[01:32] Andrea Canning introduces the special series On Trial, highlighting that this episode centers around Jane's testimony. Jane, labeled as victim number two in the government's third superseding indictment, alleges that Combs coerced her into engaging in commercial sex acts through force, fraud, and coercion. The prosecution claims that Combs replaced Cassie Ventura with Jane in orchestrated "freak offs," some occurring as recently as the previous year.

[04:38] Chloe Meloss provides background on Jane, revealing that she dated Combs from 2021 until his arrest in 2024. During her testimony, Jane appeared visibly nervous and emotional, even shedding tears at points. Notably, Jane and Combs shared playful nicknames for each other—Bert and Ernie—which elicited a brief, light-hearted moment in the courtroom despite the gravity of the allegations.

[05:40] Jane's testimony outlines the rapid progression of their relationship, including a five-day first date in Miami, extensive use of drugs like ecstasy and molly, and escalating sexual encounters. She describes how Combs gradually introduced the idea of involving other men, culminating in arranged meetings with escorts through a company named "Cowboys for Angels." Jane recounts feeling torn between her love for Combs and the coercive circumstances imposed upon her, especially as he began withholding her rent payments as leverage.

Notable Quote:

Jane (Testimony) [07:40]: "When he said, 'Can you imagine yourself with one of these men? Would you ever want to do this?' I just said, okay, because I wanted to make him happy."

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Courtroom Dynamics and Combs' Behavior

[02:43] Chloe Meloss recounts an intense moment in the courtroom where the judge reprimanded Combs for making facial expressions and eye contact with the jury during Brianna Bongoulin's testimony. The judge warned, "If you continue to look at the jury and make faces... I'm going to kick you out of the courtroom" ([02:53]). Combs acknowledged the warning, but prior to this incident, he exhibited behaviors such as nodding and shaking his head during testimonies, drawing scrutiny from observers and court artists alike.

Notable Quote:

Judge [02:53]: "If you continue to look at the jury and make faces and any sort of expression at all, I'm going to kick you out of the courtroom."

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Allegations of Coercion and Sexual Exploitation

Jane's testimony underscores the prosecution's argument that Combs used his financial support as a means of coercion. When Jane expressed her desire to cease participating in the orchestrated sexual encounters, Combs threatened to withdraw her rent assistance, effectively forcing her compliance.

[10:04] Chloe Meloss highlights Jane's recounting of these coercive tactics:

Jane [10:04]: "He was holding the rent over me, which goes to sex trafficking. You're talking about force, fraud, coercion."

The prosecution aims to establish a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) conspiracy, suggesting that Combs directed his associates to facilitate these illicit activities, thereby fulfilling multiple predicate crimes necessary for a RICO charge.

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Defense's Strategy and Cross-Examination

The defense is poised to challenge the credibility and motives of Jane's testimony. Chloe Meloss notes that Jane remained with Combs until his arrest in 2024, raising questions about her decision to testify against him. The defense is expected to scrutinize the evidence Jane presents, including her text messages, emails, photos, and videos, to undermine the prosecution's claims of coercion.

[11:33] Andrea Canning observes:

"It is muddy. There's a lot of gray in this entire case."

Journalists and observers are split on the strength of the prosecution's case, with many questioning whether Jane felt genuinely coerced or obligated due to her reliance on Combs' financial support.

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Courtroom Sketch Artist's Perspective

A unique element of this trial is the involvement of court artist Jane Rosenberg, who provides visual documentation of the proceedings. In a segment of the episode, Christine Cornell discusses her experience sketching in the courtroom.

[14:30] Christine Cornell:

"You want to capture a little bit of the dynamic of the courtroom. You can't help but feel that there was a tension between P. Diddy and, you know, Cassie."

Cornell emphasizes the challenge of portraying not just the physical likeness of individuals but also the underlying emotions and tensions present during testimonies. Her sketches aim to reflect the complex interactions between Combs, his defense team, the prosecution, and the witnesses.

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Conclusion and Next Steps

As Jane prepares to continue her testimony in the coming days, the trial remains a focal point for media and public attention. The prosecution seeks to build a compelling case around the allegations of racketeering and sexual exploitation, while the defense works to dismantle the testimonies presented. Andrea Canning anticipates intense cross-examinations and further revelations as the trial progresses.

Listeners are encouraged to follow the trial's developments through NBC's coverage and to explore detailed analyses via the NBC newsletter.

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Notable Moments and Quotes

• Andrea Canning [01:32]:
  "The prosecution's last key witness began her testimony. The judge has allowed her to testify under a pseudonym to avoid harassment."

• Chloe Meloss [07:07]:
  "Jane is testifying that she's falling in love with him, but they're having a lot of sex, watching a lot of pornography..."

• Chloe Meloss [10:04]:
  "He was holding the rent over me, which goes to sex trafficking."

• Christine Cornell [15:26]:
  "You want to have an accurate drawing that really resembles them and you want to capture a little bit of the dynamic of the courtroom."

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Additional Resources

For those interested in visual representations of the trial, Christine Cornell's sketches are available on the Dateline True Crime Weekly website. Additionally, updates and in-depth analyses can be accessed through the NBC newsletter by visiting nbcnews.com/diddy.

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This summary provides an overview of the key discussions and testimonies from the episode "Sean Combs: 'Jane' Takes the Stand" of Dateline: True Crime Weekly. For full details and ongoing coverage, listeners are encouraged to tune into the podcast and follow related NBC News resources.

Transcript

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[Andrea Canning]

This is On Trial, a special series from Dateline, True Crime Weekly, bringing you daily coverage from the Sean Combs racketeering trial. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. I'm Andrea Canning and it's Thursday, June 5th. Just a heads up. In this episode, we're going to be talking about some graphic details and harrowing subject matter. Today. The prosecution's last key witness began her testimony. The judge has allowed her to testify under a pseudonym to avoid harassment. She is being called Jane in the courtroom and the judge has asked the press to be very careful about revealing her identity. So we are not going to describe her. What we can tell you is that the government's third superseding indictment against Sean Combs lists her as victim number two. The prosecution alleges that Combs recruited her and used force, fraud and coercion to get her to engage in commercial sex acts. They're alleging that Combs replaced Cassie Ventura in freak offs with Jane. And some of those happened as recently as last year. NBC News correspondent Chloe Meloss has Been in the courthouse this afternoon, and she stepped out to bring us the latest. Hey, Chloe.

[Chloe Meloss]

Hey, Andrea.

[Andrea Canning]

It's been an intense day in downtown Manhattan. Even before Jane took the stand, there was some drama with Sean Combs himself. Tell us about it.

[Chloe Meloss]

So the judge told Diddy, if you continue to look at the jury and make faces and any sort of expression at all, I'm going to kick you out of the courtroom and you're not going to be able to be here. And Diddy just said, yes, Judge, I understand. So during testimony of Brianna Bongoulin, I guess Diddy was nodding and really shaking his head and making eye contact with the jury.

[Andrea Canning]

Brianna, who claims that Combs dangled her over a balcony.

[Chloe Meloss]

Yes. And her testimony really had a lot of holes today on cross examination. Andrea, it's what a ton of journalists were buzzing about outside of the courthouse, that it was a big day for the defense.

[Andrea Canning]

Okay. Is this the first time, Chloe, that Combs has been scolded for doing something like this by the judge?

[Chloe Meloss]

I've been in the courtroom most days, and I have never seen anything like this happen. But I do want to give you the perspective of somebody that's literally had their eyes glued, glued to him the entire time. And that's court artist Jane Rosenberg. She's the one that one of the individuals that draws all of those court sketches that you see. She's had her eyes and binoculars on him for over a month. And she told NBC News that Diddy has been making facial expressions both affirmatively and negatively, depending on the testimony. Now, I've seen that. I mean, I've seen him look directly at the jury. I've seen him nod his head. I'm not sure exactly what happened that was escalated things so much.

[Andrea Canning]

Combs defense attorney told the judge he would make sure that that did not happen again. So, Chloe, after lunch, Jane, victim number two, according to the prosecution, finally took the stand. What did you learn about her? And of course, we already told you off the top, we have to be careful about not revealing too much about this woman.

[Chloe Meloss]

Right. So I'm not going to describe what she looks like. I know who she is. I know her backstory. But that's because I've been covering all of this for a couple of years now. She dated Diddy from 2021 up until his arrest in 2024. And she seemed really nervous and she actually started to cry at some points.

[Andrea Canning]

You learned that they apparently had goofy nicknames for each other.

[Chloe Meloss]

Yes. So she testified that she met Diddy in Miami because her friend was actually dating him, and that they exchanged numbers on the DL and that they decided to have nicknames for each other. And they came up with Bert and Ernie.

[Andrea Canning]

Interesting.

[Chloe Meloss]

And Maureen Comey, the prosecutor, who is very serious, is like. You mean like Sesame Street? Yeah. It was like this sort of light, funny moment for a split second.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah. Who doesn't know Bert Nurney? And so. So she said that on the stand that their first date in Miami lasted five days.

[Chloe Meloss]

So according to Jane's testimony, they continued to text each other and FaceTime each other and talk on the phone in the weeks after she first met him, and that her friend actually was seeing other people during the same time and got engaged and moved overseas quite quickly. And that's when Jane felt like it was seeing to start dating Diddy. So she tells Diddy that she's going to be in Miami for an event. He pays for her hotel, and she ends up meeting up with him, and they have sex on the first night, and they end up having sex for the next five days. And it's interspersed with dinners, beach walks. And she says that she's really falling head over heels for him.

[Andrea Canning]

The prosecutor asked Jane to describe the next three months of their relationship.

[Chloe Meloss]

She said that they did a lot of drugs. They. They went on a trip. Shortly after that five day first date, they went to Turks and Caicos, then they went to the Bahamas. And she testified that she did everything from ecstasy to molly with Diddy, and that she did so much ecstasy that at one point she lost her sense of self on the beach. But she said that she continued to take ecstasy every 12 hours.

[Andrea Canning]

Wow. And at times, I mean, this testimony reads like a tawdry sex novel. She's talking about their sexual encounters and the details involved with that.

[Chloe Meloss]

So on one hand, Jane is testifying that she's falling in love with him, but they're having a lot of sex, watching a lot of pornography, and that Diddy wants her in very scandalous lingerie in what she called stripper heels. And that what, while they were watching pornography over the next couple of months, he would start to get more bold with her. And she testified that he started to say, can you imagine yourself with one of these men? Would you ever want to have sex with another man? I'd love to watch you with another man.

[Andrea Canning]

Sounds like the beginning of a freak off.

[Chloe Meloss]

Exactly.

[Andrea Canning]

Tell us about where that went, him introducing this idea of more people.

[Chloe Meloss]

So it was actually at this moment in her testimony, Andrea, that Jane began to cry. And she paused for several long seconds and took a tissue to her eyes and looked down at the floor and testified that when she was watching pornography while having sex with Diddy, that he said to her, you know, can you imagine yourself with one of these men? Would you ever want to do this? And she said that. She just said, okay, because this was a man that she loved. She could tell he was getting turned on, and she wanted to make him happy. And Jane testified that she went into the bathroom. When she came out, Diddy was wearing a robe and intensely looking at his cell phone. And then within the next few hours, they went to a hotel in Miami and an escort showed up by the name of Don from a company called Cowboys for Angels.

[Andrea Canning]

Jane testified that the next day she felt excited, you know, that it was something she'd never done before. But she also testified that she thought this was a one time thing.

[Chloe Meloss]

Right. So also, I just want to point out that during her testimony, she said she had already been up for about 24 hours at this point, that she agreed to have sex with somebody else. And she testified that she was on drugs, she was high, and they went to this hotel. And when she and Diddy got to that hotel, she testified that she saw assistance there, but she couldn't remember their names. Setting up the baby oil, making sure that there were beverages in the room. She didn't talk about lighting or cameras or drugs. But again, this is that part of the RICO conspiracy charge, because the prosecutors want you to believe that. That Diddy was telling his minions, right, the people that worked for him, his employees, to go and set up these hotel rooms for freak offs. You know, that they were aware of the escorts, you know, that they were a part of this illegal activity. And they have to get him on multiple predicate crimes to prove RICO conspiracy, which we've talked about a lot.

[Andrea Canning]

And Jane testified that she tried to tell Combs she didn't want to do any more free coughs. Yes.

[Chloe Meloss]

So she testified that it was like opening Pandora's box, that that set the tone for the rest of the relationship. And it was a door that she could never shut, but she wanted to. 90% of her relationship over the next few years centered around these encounters with escorts. And that she told him repeatedly, both verbally and in writing, whatever that means, that she didn't want to do it.

[Andrea Canning]

She says he threatened her.

[Chloe Meloss]

Yes. So she testified that Diddy was paying for her rent and that when she told him, you know, do we have to keep doing this? I don't really want to do this anymore, that he said to her. Okay, well, how many more months of rent do you need? Because I'm not going to pay for somebody's rent that isn't my girlfriend and isn't doing these things. And then Maureen Comey, the prosecutor, said, well, were you trying to break up with Diddy? And she said, no, that she just wanted to have sex with just Diddy. She didn't want to have sex with these escorts, but he was holding the rent over her head, which goes to sex trafficking. You're talking about force, fraud, coercion. He's coercing her into these freak offs because he's holding the rent over her.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah. This is the prosecution's argument. It seems like the key here is like, is it coercion or did she feel obligated? You know, is there a difference there? I mean, one's pretty serious.

[Chloe Meloss]

I saw some different journalists turning around in the overflow and they were whispering to each other and they were mouthing the phrase, this is really muddy. So it is muddy. There's a lot of gray in this entire case. But what sort of text messages, what sort of emails does she have to back up that she didn't want to participate? I do find it interesting that she was still with him up until his arrest. So it's a big question for me as somebody who's been covering this for so many years now. What made her want to be a witness for the prosecution? What changed? So we expect her to take the stand tomorrow and for several days next week. And we've been told that there are a lot of exceptions, explicit text messages, photos and videos.

[Andrea Canning]

And the defense clearly will get their shot at cross examining her. And I'm sure they are eager to do that. Chloe when we come back on our weekly show, Dateline True Crime Weekly, the episode that came out this morning, we played my interview with one of the courtroom sketch artists from Combs trial. We're going to play you a bit more from that interview how she sketches anonymous witnesses.

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[Andrea Canning]

Welcome back everybody. This is Christine Cornell.

[Christine Cornell]

People are fascinating. The stories are fascinating. It's always a challeng and when you're lucky, you make art.

[Andrea Canning]

And this is a piece of our interview, a little more about her experience drawing Sean Combs federal trial over the past month. When you're drawing them, are you just trying to get it right, like as close as you can, or are you trying to capture like more of a feeling or what, you know, is it can you describe that?

[Christine Cornell]

It's both things. You know, you want to have an accurate drawing that really resembles them and you want to capture a little bit of the dynamic of the courtroom. You know, you can't help but feel that there was a tension between P. Diddy and, you know, Cassie. I could see it on her, you know, cause you know, she held her own, but she wept a little. And Diddy, of course, is fighting for his life. So, you know, he's in warrior mode.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah. So you're trying to capture also some personality there then as well. State of mind.

[Christine Cornell]

Sure.

[Andrea Canning]

You know, not only are you drawing the defendant, but you're also capturing other things in the courtroom as well. The judge or there's the lawyers or the juror. Obviously you can't show the jury, but you know, you can't draw them. You just don't.

[Christine Cornell]

In any detail.

[Andrea Canning]

In any detail. Okay.

[Christine Cornell]

You know, I did one yesterday because I've been asked a lot, how's the jury reacting?

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah.

[Christine Cornell]

And I think they were incredibly pained by Steele's cross examination of Mia because she was shrunk into herself. She kept her head down. I've never seen a witness not make eye contact with anybody in the courtroom.

[Andrea Canning]

Given that Mia is her, not her real name, pseudonym. Were you allowed to shoot even her, like bent over or not?

[Christine Cornell]

You know, she, I drew, you know, a triangle that was the color of her skin with her hair falling across her face.

[Andrea Canning]

This is all fascinating. You know, there are times where we know that sketch artists get critical feedback.

[Christine Cornell]

Sometimes for the most part, I get a lot of affirmation. You know, puffy combs. Mom is sitting behind me and she tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs up. She likes the way I'm drawing her son. Really? And I said, well, ma' am, do you mind if I draw you? And she right away started posing for me.

[Andrea Canning]

Oh, my goodness. Well, thank, thank you so much for doing this interview.

[Christine Cornell]

You're a sweetheart. Thank you.

[Andrea Canning]

Thanks. Just super interesting. If you want to take a look at some of Christine's sketches, you can find them on our website@dateline truecrimeweekly.com Chloe, back with you. Thank you so much as always for bringing us all your color from the courthouse and the courtroom.

[Chloe Meloss]

Thanks, Andrea.

[Andrea Canning]

Thank you for listening, everyone. We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow. If you want to read the latest developments and analysis from inside the courtroom, just check out the NBC newsletter. Diddy on trial go to nbcnews.com diddy to find that. On Trial is produced by Franny Kelly with help from the Dateline True Crime Weekly team. Our senior producers are Alison Orr and Liz Brown Kurloff. Original Music by Jesse McGinty, Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.

[Oregon Lottery Representative]

In the summer, all of Oregon is our playground thanks to our incredible park system. That's why it's so cool that Oregon Lottery gameplay, like video lottery or cash pop, helps support tons of parks projects statewide like accessible trails at Silver Falls State park or upgrades to your favorite dog park in Newburgh. It's just one way a little lottery play from many Oregonians can add up to a lot of good the Oregon Lottery. Together, we do good things. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only. Must be 18 or older to play.