← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
“Inflatable Pool of Baby Oil”: Inside Diddy’s Sickening Hotel Rituals | Diddy Trial Day 2
00:36:48
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Ashley Banfield
Foreign. Hey, everybody, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. And there's no other way to describe what I'm about to say other than nsfw, not safe for work. So put in Yalls headphones because the Diddy trial today on day two, was dirtier than any porn I've ever heard of and seen. I'm no prude, but let me tell you, this stuff was dirty. Like, really, really sick. I like to say I'm a pretty seasoned reporter, but even this stuff made me feel pretty grossed out along the lines of a lot of the Cosby stuff that I remember hearing. And I've got to tell you honestly, whether Sean Combs is found guilty or not in this trial, I think his reputation is finished. I'll be honest with you. This testimony was so overwhelming today from the star witness, Cassie Ventura, his former girlfriend, the woman who's in the hotel being beaten up at the elevator. It was so graphic and so filthy and so ugly and so awful that I don't think he can survive this as a person. Right. Like Bill Cosby, he skated in the legal system right. On a technicality, but he's finished and he's a punchline. And I really feel that Diddy is headed that way. Just after day two today, there was a pin drop moment, like big pin drop moment when Cassie walked into court because she big, she is like eight and a half, almost nine months pregnant. And she was bringing receipts, names of like a half dozen male escorts who she says were all hired to be a part of the Free Cops. And why that is a receipt is because we're not trying to, you know, watch for a conviction of Diddy being mean and abusive. That's not what he's charged with. He's not charged with beating up Cassie. Right. He's charged very specifically with sex trafficking and racketeering and forced labor. So some of the evidence that I'm going to lay out for you in just a hot minute, if the jury believes it, he's done like a lot of these elements were proven according to the prosecution. Now, don't forget, defense gets its day. Right? They get to cross examine. They have not done that yet. And I would not want to be Diddy's lawyers cross examining a very, very pregnant, beautiful woman in the front of that courtroom. But that is going to happen. We also found out today why, oh, why, if the prosecution's to be believed, why the feds say they seized over a thousand bottles of baby oil because Cassie said like one free cough was 10 large bottles and it would often run out. So I'll get to what else they were doing with a baby pool. But we also learned something really big. Why Cassie says she ran from the hotel room right before we saw the hotel video of her being beaten to a pulp out in front of that elevator bank. She has a very specific reason. And remember when I told you this trial is not about her getting beaten up. Racketeer influenced, corrupt organization. RICO is a really weird charge. It's such an awkward name to say racketeer influence, corrupt organization, but it is a real catch. All that that prosecutors came up with when they were trying to, like, catch the mob, it's an easy way to catch the mob because there's a bunch of elements. I'm going to get to exactly why RICO applies according to the prosecutors in this case and why some elements of RICO may have been met today by the prosecutors. Again, it's up to the jury to believe that, and it's up to the defense to be, like, aggressive to try to knock it down. That hasn't happened yet. So let's start with the biggest part of day two, that pin drop moment when Cassie Ventura walked into the courtroom. Cassie is the singer who dated Sean Diddy Combs for more than a decade, and she is arguably the star witness in this case. This was the first time that she and Diddy have laid eyes on each other since breaking up six years ago. And oh, what a reunion. Not the kind anybody wants. When she entered the courtroom, you could have heard a pin drop. She was dressed to the nines, as in nine months, like almost nine months pregnant. And she was in a super snug brown dress that was hugging her pregnant belly and the rest of her body, and it went nearly down to her ankles. And as she walks in and walks towards the stand, she was fixated on the courtroom in front of her, like, staring straight ahead. Did not look at all at the defendant, did not look at Diddy. But he, on the other hand, he did not take his eyes off of her. So talk about a hell of a dramatic moment. Like, this is the kind of thing that you write when you're doing some kind of legal, you know, thriller. But in contrast to, like, Cassie's look, Diddy looked like kind of a librarian. He was dressed in this pale crewneck sweater, which was a far cry, you know, from what we're used to seeing him in when he was in better days as a hip hop mogul and a titan of bad boy entertainment. When he had walked into court like earlier in the day, he hugged his lawyers very quickly, and then he glanced over to his feet. Family seated just a few rows back. And who knows if Diddy had any idea of the things that that family was about to hear in this courtroom today, how dirty things were going to get. Like, not safe for work, not safe for your mom. And yet his mom was in the courtroom. There she was supporting her son right there in row two, and your kids right there. Right there behind the defendant. At one point, Diddy, again, sort of did that. The heart. He formed his hands into a heart and made the shape of the heart for his daughters who were sitting behind him. And again, it is hard to believe that he would want those daughters anywhere near this trial. I told you before, I'm a veteran of this stuff, and I felt sick. I've seen plenty of trials about lurid sex crimes, but this one was really sick. But the morning actually began not with Cassie, with a guy named Daniel. Phillip. He was back on the stand for day two. Male escort testified that he was hired to have sex with Cassie while Diddy sat back in the. In the room and watched and filmed. But today, it was Diddy's lawyer, Xavier Donaldson, asking the questions on cross examination. And the defense tried to paint the encounter as consensual. So Mr. Donaldson asked this witness, quote, was Cassie the one who paid you? And Philip answered, yes. And the lawyer said, and she wasn't drunk or high. And Philip replied, correct. That's a. That's a win for Diddy, right? Like, you weren't drunk, you weren't high, you weren't being pushed, you know, without consent. You. You were fully of your convictions, right? If this witness is describing Cassie. But Diddy's lawyer pushed even further, and he said, quote, is it fair to say she was in complete. Complete control of everything she did? And the witness responded, I cannot say that. And with that, Mr. Phillips stepped down to make way for the headliner of the day, the government's star witness, Ms. Cassie Ventura. And Diddy's lawyer, Mark Agnifolo, was not keen on the idea of the jury seeing her walking in, you know, all pregnant. So he instead asked the judge to let Cassie take the stand before the jury entered the courtroom, claiming that her pregnancy might earn her some sympathy points with the jury. I know. I'm like, nice try, right? Judge was not having it. And the jury watched every single one of those dramatic steps that Cassie took as she made her way to the front of the court and to the witness stand. Cassie was calm. She Was composed, and again, she was super duper pregnant. Cassie began her testimony by telling the jury how she first met Diddy modeling in New York City. She was just 19, and at the time, he was massive. You know, he was this music mogul. He was a producer who would eventually become her boss. But two years later, on her 21st birthday, she said it all changed. Cassie testified that Diddy kissed her during her birthday celebration in Las Vegas. After the party, he invited her to the Trump Hotel in Manhattan, where she said that he, quote, introduced her to oral sex, end quote. She told the jury that she did not reciprocate and said Diddy, quote, kind of made her feel crazy about it. At the time, she was romantically involved with someone else, and in her own words, she was new to that kind of sexual relationship. Later, Cassie signed a 10 album deal with Bad boy Records, and eventually she and Diddy became romantically involved, she said. She testified that their first sexual encounter happened in Miami after Diddy gave her a blue dolphin ecstasy pill. She said she thought it meant they were exclusive. But later, she said she realized she was just one of many girlfriends. She told the jury, quote, he would say, I'm Puff Daddy, and Puff Daddy has many women, end quote. That's when the control started, Cassie said, and according to her, it touched every corner of her life. She said he dictated what she wore, how she looked, how she smiled, how her nails had to be French tip or white in color. She had to be tan. He even talked about her getting breast implants. Once, she testified, Diddy told her that she looked too Mexican with her hair styled a certain way. And if Diddy didn't like what he saw, Cassie said, quote, the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face, end quote. She told the jury that Diddy would snap, telling her, quote, fix your face, quote, or quote, watch your mouth, quote. But she said it happened quite often. But nothing, she said, compared to the freak offs. She told the jury. They were, quote, very choreographed experiences, each one staged down to the lighting and the baby oil. Diddy insisted, she said, on Johnson's brand. And it had to be warm. Cassie said his staffers would supply the rooms and stick the bottles in hotel sinks that were filled with hot water just to get them ready. The goal, to make sure she and any male escort involved were, quote, glistening. Stop for a moment there. Just file this one away. This little piece of information where Cassie told the jury that staffers would get the free coughs ready, staffers would bring the products, the baby oil, the lube and the condoms and all these things. Staffers would do this. That's important for later. I'll get to it in a moment. Cassie testified that if she started to look dry during the free coughs, that Diddy would stop everything and tell her to reapply the baby oil, sometimes every five minutes. She said this was the point in court where Diddy actually shook his head when Cassie described rubbing baby oil on the escorts. So I'm like, wait, that's the point where you're shaking your head, where Cassie's rubbing baby oil on a guy. Because the stuff I'm about to tell you all. There are a lot of other places where if I'm the defendant, I'm shaking my head, and I don't think that would be one of them, because that is the most benign thing you're about to hear. If Cassie's telling the truth, that she's putting baby oil on an escort, that is nothing. I don't know why that elicited that kind of response from Diddy, but he did. He shook his head. Cassie said when they ran out of baby oil, which she said actually often happened, they had to call a staffer again. Staffer, file that away for later or they'd have to tip the hotel bell desk to bring in more. Once, she said, they actually inflated a kiddie pool in the middle of a hotel room and filled it with baby oil and lube. This is weird, this next part. Cassie said that Diddy made her climb in fully dressed. He wanted the visuals, the performance, she said. She estimated they went through about 10 large bottles of baby oil per session. And Cassie testified that sometimes the free coughs would last three to four days. She told the jury, quote, it was such a mess. It was like, what are we doing? End quote. Prosecutors asked who decided how these sessions played out. Cassie's answer never changed. Sean, she said it was his decision, she said, to bring in male escorts. His idea to pour hot candle wax on her body. His setup, his rules. But that wasn't all that the jury learned. Cassie told them about drugs and said there were a lot. Ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, ketamine, mushrooms. She said Diddy provided them all. And Cassie says she used the drugs not to party, but to numb herself to what was happening. She said she used them to disassociate, to give herself a buffer from reality and stop again. And file that one away, y' all. I'm gonna get to why that matters. Cassie saying, did he supply the drugs? It matters to the actual charges he's facing as Far as the escorts, she said there were more escorts than she could name. The jury saw photos of six male escorts. She said they'd hired those guys, including one of them with a nickname, the Punisher. Cassie said Diddy had her look for them on craigslist and backpage.com. his preference, she said, was, quote, black males with large penises, end quote. She said each one was paid in cash, 1,500 bucks to 6,000 bucks a session. Sometimes Diddy brought the money himself, she said. Other times it came from one of his security guys. File that away, guys. The money. File away this little detail that somebody, either Diddy or the staffers, according to Cassie, brought money. Eventually, she said that she was the one hiring the male sex workers from a professional service called Cowboys for Angels. And to keep quiet, Cassie told the jury she would book travel for the escorts and refer to them as, quote, new staff members. She testified that she was the one making the calls, but said that Diddy told her to do it. Once again, file this one away in a very important memory bank that she says flights, travel arrangements were made at the behest of Diddy. She did them at his urging. That's important. If you have heard of something called the Man Act, M A N n, it is very simple. It's a federal charge. If you transport these kinds of workers, you know, escorts across state lines to do their business, that's federal crime. It's the Man Act. And so that is really important in this case. Again, I can't stress enough. This is not a case about Diddy beating up Cassie. That's on video, and he admitted to it. He's not charged with that. He is charged with rico. Right. He's charged with trafficking in the you know what kind of way. And he's charged with coercion, coercion of forced labor. Right. And so these are the elements that need to be proven in this case, which is why I keep telling you to file stuff away. And I'm going to get to why in a moment. I'll lay it all out. Cassie didn't just describe these free coughs. She said that she told she tell the escorts that it was her, quote, husband's fantasy to watch her with another man. So in court, she really gave us the full play by play of what a free cough was like. Step by step. She said they always followed a pattern. Okay, file that one pattern. File that away. First came the masturbation. Then came the touching. Then came the oral. You know what? It was a routine. She said it was A sequence. And according to Cassie, it was never about her inside these hotel rooms. Cassie said the aftermath was disgusting. And what was left behind, she said, was pure chaos. Oil and wax was smeared everywhere. On the walls, on door handles, on furniture. She said the smell of urine, of sweat, and of body odor and candle wax was everywhere. She said sometimes there was actually blood on the sheets because she said she was expected to participate in this behavior even when menstruating. So another moment, and can I just remind you who's behind Diddy in the court? All his kids, mom, baby, mom, like so many family members are hearing all this. And it got even worse. If you didn't think it could, it did. Cassie then said that Diddy urinated on her during some of the free coughs. She said he had the escorts urinate on her. In one case, she said an escort urinated into her mouth. And she described the incident in detail for this jury. And I will quote her. I choked. There was too much urine in my mouth. I was laying in a position I couldn't easily get out of. I put my hands up to get him to stop, but nothing happened. End quote. She said she never wanted the escorts to urinate on her, that she never asked for it. But that quote, it was a turn on for him, meaning Diddy. So it happened at that point, you could see the jury shift, physically move uncomfortable in their chairs. That's the point where the one black male juror shook his head repeatedly and looked right at Diddy as Cassie was describing what was happening to her. And a black female juror looked stunned, her face like reacting in disbelief and shock and at times, disgust. Misa Hilton. That's Justin Combs, mom. Right. So Justin Combs is Diddy's son, and his mom, Misa, left the courtroom at that point after Cassie described getting urine in her mouth from Diddy and male escorts. So, yeah, I get it. Good on Misa for leaving. I wouldn't have wanted to be there in the first place. And when Cassie named the Intercontinental Hotel in New York City, she said that Diddy was actually charged a massive cleaning fee to, quote, redecorate the room after one of the freak offs, she told the jury, quote, eventually it just became a job. I'd get the contacts, set it all up, book the hotel. In the beginning, Sean handled everything she said, but later, it was all me. She listed the cities where she said all these things happened. Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Ibiza, Turks and Caicos. Freak offs, she said, happened everywhere. And staff stocked the rooms with Condoms, Astroglide and baby oil in advance. Remember that when she said that last part about the prep? Diddy shook his head. Now I know. I know why Diddy's shaking his head. That prep, the staff, it's going to be real important in a minute. So, yeah, that's where Diddy shook his head. Not because it was gross. That staff bring a bottle of baby oil to a hotel room. Not about being gross. I know. I think why Diddy is shaking his head at that moment. So then she revealed what she said were fake names that were used to book the hotels. Jackie Star, Frank Black, Frank White. This is another weird moment in the courtroom. Diddy, like, suddenly shoved his chair back from the defense table, looking clearly frustrated. I'm not exactly sure why that bothered him. Like, of all things that you're hearing in this courtroom, the fact that pseudonyms were revealed about booking a hotel room under a fake name. Every celebrity almost books a hotel room using a fake name. So that's not weird and it's not creepy and it's not criminal. But Diddy was very upset, shoved his chair back. At that moment, when the prosecutor asked why Cassie didn't just say no, Cassie told the jury, quote, I thought it was obvious that I didn't want to do it. But she seemed to be indicating it wasn't just the acts, it was the control. Cassie said Diddy even made her call him Pop Pop. That's a name that she used for her grandfather while he called her baby girl and cc, short for Cassie Combs. And that little fact, the CC Cassie Combs business, that matched what a hotel security guard testified just a day earlier that he said did. He called her Cece, right there in the hallway. She told the court that she also handed over a ton of old electronic devices to the feds back in December of 2023. Phones, iPads, laptops, all of them broken, she said, but she kept them. And she said she kept them because she didn't know what was still on them. The jury saw an email from 2010 where Cassie invited a contact named Pop Pop, whom she said was Diddy to have sex. And the reply came, want to call someone, end quote. Meaning an escort. Cassie says she told Diddy she just wanted to be with him, but that he responded, quote, now you don't want to do anymore. I already know you. So predictable. End quote. She said she knew exactly what that meant, that he wasn't interested in her feelings and wasn't going to stop. Cassie said the control extended far beyond the hotel rooms she Testified that he took away her keys, her phone, her tablets, her laptops, that he kicked her out of apartments, that he controlled her money, her music and her life. When asked on the stand what else he took from her, she answered simply, quote, my self confidence. She also told the jury about Diddy's violence. Quote, he would bash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head when I was down. She said his moods would flip in an instant. Quote, his look would just change over. The best way to describe it is his eyes just go black, end quote. And she wasn't the only one hurt. She said her former best friend, model Carrie Morgan, was allegedly hit in the head with a wooden hanger thrown by Diddy. Cassie said she paid Carrie out of her own pocket afterwards to help settle the damage. In another incident, she said while high on mushrooms at a club in downtown la, one of Diddy's security guards handed her a loaded gun. She told the jury, quote, I was freaking out the whole time. It was going to go off. Cassie also named the names of Diddy's inner circle. Christina Coram, Neil, Dominique, David James. She said they helped run the operation. Remember that? Running an operation. She even named members of his security team, Drock Bones, Uncle Paulie, Fahim and Malik. She said they were the people that monitored her every move and helped set up the Free Coughs. And many of the Free Coughs, she testified, were recorded. Cassie said she believed those recordings were blackmail, a warning that he could release them at any time. As time went on, the sessions consumed her life. She said she told the jury, quote, there was no space to do anything else but recover and try to feel normal again, end quote. When asked why she hadn't released more music Despite a 10 album contract, Cassie responded, quote, you're asking me? And then added, quote, plainly the free coughs became a job, end quote. She said she wrote hundreds of songs, but only one album was ever released. She testified that her manager, James Cruz, once told her he was managing her, quote, with one hand tied behind his back because every decision, he said, had to go through Diddy. She broke down when the prosecutor showed her a photo of herself with Carey Morgan, that friend back when they were still best friends. At times, she rested her hand on her very pregnant belly. At other times, she wiped her eyes with a tissue. She recounted the time that Diddy abruptly left a Free Cough to confront Suge Knight at a diner. She said he grabbed guns and threw on black clothes and left with his bodyguard. She told the jury, quote, I was Crying. I was screaming like, please don't do anything stupid, end quote. End quote. It's like I wasn't even there, end quote. Cassie told the jury she never knew what no meant in that relationship. Would it get her hit? Blackmailed, abandoned? She said, I thought it was all I was good for. I didn't have the words for how horrible I really felt, end quote. She said there were moments when both Diddy and an escort were having sex with her, but that if she protested that it was, quote, a lot happening at once, end quote, that Diddy would have none of it and that he'd just tell her to, quote, finish up strong, end quote. Cassie told the jury it felt like porn, not because of the sex, but because of the setup, the direction, the objectification. She told the jury, quote, I was an object being highly objectified by men in that scenario, end quote. And if Diddy wasn't there in person, she said he'd FaceTime in to watch. She said he'd even given Viagra to her and the escorts to keep things going longer. Diddy also filmed the encounters on his phone or on hers, she said. She also said she'd delete the videos on her device and asked him to do the same because his staff had access to his phone. But she said she wasn't sure if those recordings were ever erased off his devices. Prosecutors pressed for details, asking, quote, at what point would the escorts ejaculate, end quote. And Cassie answered, quote, yes, usually when it was okay for them, per Sean, but usually they did it on me, end quote. And then she said Diddy would lead her into another room and tell her to spread the escort's semen on his body. Cassie said she would do that, quote, usually on his chest or nipples, end quote. She also testified that she was high during every single free cough, Ecstasy, mdma, whatever the drug was. She said it often made her feel sick, like she was about to vomit. Sometimes she said she did, but that that didn't stop anything. She told the jury, quote, shawn would encourage me to get up and continue, continue with the intercourse, even if I felt like I was vomiting or if I was, end quote. Then Cassie walked the jury through one of the most infamous moments of their relationship, the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles. And the jury was shown for a second time the hotel hallway video from 2016, the one where Diddy, by his own admission, is seen violently attacking her. The prosecution started with a text message from March 5, 2016, just days before Cassie had her first major movie premiere. Cassie texted Diddy, baby I want to freak off. It was actually fo. But, baby, I want to fo so bad, but I don't want to mess myself up. End quote. She said she meant drugs, that she didn't want to be wrecked from another free cough before a red carpet. But she said the free cough happened anyway with an escort named Jules. Cassie said there was a lot of drinking, and then it happened. She said she was hit, and she said she got a black eye and that it happened in one of the side rooms, not the main suite, where the free coughs usually took place. All she could think about, she told the jury, was getting out in time for her premiere. So when Diddy was distracted, she said she grabbed her things and she ran. I just grabbed my stuff and ran out as fast as I could. Next thing I knew, I was just thrown to the ground, end quote. The prosecutor asked, how many times had Shawn thrown you to the ground like that before? End quote. And Cassie responded, too many to count, rather than remember that. Remember that. Too many to count. It had happened in a pattern many times before, if Cassie's description is true. The jury was then shown that now infamous video. The hotel hallway beating Cassie at the elevator bank, trying to put on her shoes, the elevator doors about to open, and then Diddy coming at her, grabbing her by the neck, pulling her hoodie, throwing her down. Cassie explained why she stopped to put on her shoes in the middle of the elevator lobby. She said, quote, it was faster as she was trying to leave. She said she stayed on the ground because it felt like the safest place to be. End quote. And when asked why she didn't move, she said, I didn't want any more damage to be done. End quote. Then another clip was shown from the other side of the hallway. This time, it showed Diddy dragging her around the corner and leaving her in a lump on the hallway floor before taking her bags and walking back to the room with those bags. But here's what's key. The video also went on to show Diddy returning to where Cassie was slumped in that hallway, but he was no longer holding those bags, as if he had already taken them to the room, left the bags there, but then returned to her. And this directly contradicts the prosecutors say, what Diddy's defense attorneys said in their opening statements when they described what was happening in that hotel hallway. Yes, they said it was awful. It was terrible. But they told the jury that Diddy was simply trying to retrieve his phone in that horrible altercation. But if that's the case, why Would Diddy return to a cowering Cassie in that hotel hallway once he had left with her bags and taken them back to the room? Presumably, if he's after his phone, it would be in those bags. You got what you came for and you went back to the room. Why then would you return to Cassie, no bags in hand? What was the purpose of returning to Cassie? See where I'm going here. The prosecution asked Cassie to confirm what they saw. Yes, those were her bags that he carried, she said, and no, he didn't come back with those bags. Mark my word. Diddy's lawyers will get their chance to cross examine Cassie, nearly nine months pregnant Cassie, and that will come later this week. And with that, court ended for the day. Cassie Ventura is going to return to the stand on Wednesday to continue her testimony. And she is expected to be on the stand until the end of the week, maybe even until Thursday. That is, unless she goes into labor. And also, this is big. The judge said he's going to make the call tomorrow morning on whether those freak off videos will be shown to the press and to the public or if those videos will just be shown to the jury and the witnesses. Two things here. There are videos. There are videos of the free cops. We just heard the judge say it. So they must have seized videos in some way because there's videos of the free cops. Right. The reason they may not show them to the public and to the gallery and just to the witnesses and to defense counsel, prosecution and the judge, of course, and Diddy is because some might say this is re traumatizing a victim. Right. Putting it all out there for everyone to see. So what a hell of a day. Like, wow, this was dirty, dirty birdie stuff. And if you already got through all of this podcast, good on you. But there's a reason you should stay for these details because I remind you he's not charged with abuse, he is charged with rico. Racketeer influenced corrupt organization. Right. He is charged with that kind of trafficking. Right. And he is charged with coercion, you know, coarse labor. So what about rico? Like what exactly is it? Right. The critical aspect of rico. And I'll actually just give you some of the important aspects of it. You got to prove some predicate acts, right. Some bad behavior in order to qualify for rico. Let me name you some of them. Kidnapping. Well, if he forced her to, well, he prevented her from leaving. That's kidnapping. OJ who was convicted of kidnapping at gunpoint from moving a couple of guys in a hotel room from one side of A hotel room to another. So you could say that if Cassie's testimony is to be believed by this jury, that is classic kidnapping. Forcing her to stay in a situation she's trying to escape through violence. And the trafficking stuff I told you about before, remember the Mann act, moving those escort kind of workers over state lines, buying airline tickets, paying for travel over state lines for that kind of activity in a hotel room with baby oil. That is classic trafficking in that kind of way. And that's a predicate act. Right. He's also charged with that. So there's Cassie saying, we bought the tickets and we brought in the escorts and they traveled. Forced labor. You could say she worked for him. Right. She's his employee, but she's also his girlfriend and she didn't want to be there and felt like this was forced. This. That could be forced bribery. There's another predicate act. Well, remember Cassie said, and the testimony of the hotel security agent was that Diddy came with a big stack of money and said, clean this up and make sure this doesn't get out. That's bribery. It's also obstruction of justice. There's another predicate act, obstruction of justice. So you have to prove two of these predicate acts in order to be able to prove RICO pattern of behavior. Remember I told you that Cassie said this happened all the time. How many times did I get knocked, you know, to the ground and beaten? That happened all the time. Pattern. How many free coughs? Lots. Right. Connection to an enterprise, Another element of rico Connection to an enterprise. Remember I asked you to file away for later. The fact that staffers of ditties were asked to get the free cough rooms ready with the baby oil and all the product. Using your staffers for this kind of illegal activity, that could be considered enterprise. Using your enterprise and then directing the activity, that's another element of this. And Cassie says it was all at the direction of Diddy. All these behaviors, Everything that everybody did was at the direction of the man at the top of the enterprise. So that's why I asked you to, like, force all those things into your memory. Because as we go through this trial, every time you hear some of those elements being proven, it's like notch one up for the prosecutors. And the defense has their work cut out for them. They're going to have to knock all that stuff down. And if there are all these witnesses, all these, you know, escorts who back up what Cassie says, it's going to be harder and harder and harder. It's not, he says, she says it's Diddy says and all those other people say gets a lot trickier. It is not about Cassie getting beaten up. That's not essentially what this trial is about, even though that's what the video's about. It's about all those other elements I just laid out. And so far, man, oh man, the prosecutors are laying out a good case, but we're in the prosecution's case. We're not yet in the defense case. So I'll be back tomorrow and every day after that for more updates. So make sure that you're subscribed. I drop bonus episodes all the time. In fact, I'm dropping a bonus episode on the Menendez development because it's a biggie, too. The judge in that case has said, sure, you can be resentenced. What? So like I said, subscribe and you won't miss these amazing bonus episodes. And I always like to hear your comments, too. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.