Lauren LaRose (0:00)

This is an I heart podcast. I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything. And everybody knows you don't lie about that, right? Lauren came in hot. Hey, guys, it's Lauren LaRose. We are here at the courthouse. We just wrapped another day a testimony in the. The trial of Sean Combs. The. The Diddy trial. Mia, assistant mia, former personal assistant of Sean Combs. Mia, her testimony. Now, I will say to you guys that in the beginning cross testimony, I was. I was a bit confused. I'm like, okay, Brian Steele obviously is like the star of Diddy's defense team. I told you guys from the very beginning that Diddy's defense team had a very different approach depending on who was up. So you have Brian Steele, who is, like, very sharp to the point. He gonna get them punches in regardless. You have Mark Agnilio, who is. I. I would say Mark Agnes is a little bit more. He's not as aggressive. He's not as straight to the point. He fumbles around a bit. It takes him a while to get to his point. And sometimes he arrives there, and when he does, it's like, oh, okay, I understand. I get it. Other times it's like, okay, Mark, it takes you a minute. It might take you a witness or two after the witness that he first spoke to. That kind of confused you a bit for you to fully understand the scope of his angling and what he's doing. Then Garagos, who just recently, we just found out that she's actually expecting a baby, thanks to Mark Gargos, her father, who revealed that on the Two Angry Men podcast on TMZ's podcast network. She is a beast when it comes to evidence. Like, she can dissect evidence the way evidence was submitted, the way it was clocked and logged. Like, she is the evidence girl. But back to Brian still. And the reason why I broke that down for you guys is it's important to understand that, to understand what I'm about to say and what I'll be breaking down, you know, on the podcast, the latest with Lauren, the Rosa in Breakfast Club, social media, all the places where I do the things. Brian still today did something in court that he had Mia on the stand again. Mia is the personal assistant who alleges that she was raped by Diddy three times. And she also talks about, you know, just working in a very, very harsh, toxic environment. Her testimony has been quoted by several media outlets as, like, very important when it comes to having the conversation about proving the forced labor. Now, in the beginning of the cross today, Brian still took a lot of time with reminding Mia of all of her post job conversations. So, I mean, he. When I say text message after text message after text message, he just kept them coming, reminding me like, hey, at this point, you weren't even working for Sean Combs. You had no ties to the company professionally. Even as a friend, you would reach out to him, and he may or may not even respond to you, right? And he was showing every single time. She's reaching out. Merry Christmas. Love you. She reached out when Kim Porter, you know, after Kim Porter passed away, she reached out on Kim Porter's birthday the following year. She just. There was a lot of continuous follow ups. Diddy was doing a something in a water festival that Pharrell brought to Virginia, and this was like the first year of it. I believe it was 2019. Mia, the former assistant, is from Virginia. So when that was announced and Diddy was, you know, allegedly a part of the lineup, she had text Diddy and said, yo, look, I am so happy that you're a part of this. You know, you just being involved has already brought a positive light to the festival and to the area of Virginia Beach. And Brian s like, well, why would you text a man who you allege right after all this time, right between the timeline of when you alleged that he sexually assaulted you, there's been so much time that passed to now. Why would you text a man who you were alleging sexually assaulted you and say to him, your presence is going to make this positive already you're thanking him for coming into your community and doing these things, but you have no. You have no reason to text him. You're no longer tied to him. You no longer work for him. Not only that, but you weren't even required to be there. You're letting him know that, okay, you're not going to be there because your grandmother, you know, is currently on hospice and you got to go say your goodbyes. And she's like, you know, I just assumed that because he was in, you know, my hometown that I may be required to be there. And he's like, okay, whatever. He let that go. And he was doing things like that for a while where he would, like, open up the thought of, like, she just wouldn't let go of, you know, the relationship that she had with Diddy work wise and the friendship and, you know, the life that she was living during the time when she was working with Diddy. But he would never, like, close it. He would never just, like, directly say it, which is what all these attorneys do. Like, that is a strategy. That is the game. That is what they do. Right? So he's doing a lot of that. So he talks about the, you know, the. The festival in Virginia. He gets her to say, understand why, you know, I thought that I may be required to be there. And then they talk about. There was another text message that she. That they brought up when she mia, former personal assistant, text Diddy and said, you know, she's remembering old times. And a lot of the text messages were that were her remembering the old times. And sometimes that he would engage, and sometimes he wouldn't. And mind you, not only is this post her alleging, you know, the time period of her sexual assault, but this is also post her receiving a settlement because when she was. When she decided to separate from the company, she got an attorney and they settled out. She took home $400,000, but she personally took home 200k after paying out her people. Right? So this is. Post all of that. She is free. She is not. You know what I mean? Like, she. There is no. There's no legal obligation for her to be in conversation with Diddy, nor is she working for him at this point. So Brian still was making a point. He's like, okay, so not only were we texting about Virginia and something in the water festival when you were not required to be there, right. But you text him about R. Kelly. So then they read a text. The text, you know, to summarize it, not verbatim, said that she had had a dream about R. Kelly, that she was in an elevator with R. Kelly and that Diddy actually was the one that came and saved her. He's like, wait, hold on. So after this man sexually assaulted you? Allegedly, right. You then text him about R. Kelly and you make him your savior in this dream that you had, and you were okay with doing that. And he's asking her, like, well, why would you do that? And she's like, she. She's like, I don't know. You know, like, I. I don't know. She just kept saying she didn't know. She couldn't explain it. You know, she was saying that, like, she would. She did a lot of. When they were bringing up all these text messages and her reaching back out. Like, she also reached out when Andre Harrell passed away. You know, just various times, at various moments, she reached out. She had found, like, some. No, Chadwick Boseman. She reached out when Chadwick Boseman passed away as well. Because we found out today in court that Diddy had actually auditioned to play James Brown. Chadwick Boseman ended up getting the role, but Diddy auditioned alongside Chadwick Boseman. So when Chadwick Bosen passed away, assistant MIA reached out and was like, man, like, you know, him passing away just brought back memories. Remember, you were, you know, auditioned to be James Brown, and she talked about the suit and she talked about they had a bunch of, you know, videotapes of the auditions and all these things. And she had been taking around, like, a camera before, you know, allegedly before Diddy had, like, these content creators following him. So she had a lot of these, like, videotapes of just old moments and old memories. And she even put together, like, a scrapbook for his birthday of all these media moments from, like, you know, when they first started to, like, you know, the 44th birthday. And it was a lot of things that she held on to that, you know, she would bring back up in conversation when the moments made sense or when birthday celebrations and things of that nature. So when that was happening, and she's like, okay, look, I don't know. I can't answer the question. It's a mental health thing. At the time, she's like, I didn't have all the resources. I didn't feel like I had the resources to really understand what was happening to me. They asked her, you met with the government 27 times. You waited until the last couple times that you met with the government to even mention the fact that you were sexually assaulted, allegedly. And you waited until you did that because you had an attorney, Correct? And she's like, no. Like, they made it a point to mention that her attorney is working pro Rono. And she's like, no, it wasn't that. I just didn't have the resources. I didn't know how to go about things. They brought up the fact that she had been speaking to Cassie during, you know, the time that Cassie settlement had come out, allegedly. And, you know, she and Amia admitted, like, they did have some conversations, but she said that they never talked about the case and in preparing for the case. But this whole time, I'm like, okay, Brian, still, I think you're good at what you do. But at the same time, like, what. What are we getting to here? Because how do we prove that, you know, her reaching back out and staying connected wasn't something that has to do with her mental health? Like, there's no way that you can properly prove that. We put the expert on the stand to talk about that, to talk about trauma and how it affects different people and ptsd, which Mia said prior to that she had experienced, you know, and going back to work for celebrities after working for Diddy allegedly, like, And. And defense was like, no, we don't want this expert on the stand. We don't want to talk about that. So this woman is leaning into all of these things. How do you prove that or disprove it for the defense? Why are we having this conversation? And then Brian still just start going in. He gets to the point where he. Because. Because now he's starting to say things more direct because you were lying because this didn't happen. Things like that, right? And I'm like, oh, okay. The judge. Then it gets to a point where the. The government is objecting everything. Everything. They're like, you know, objection, objection, objection. They didn't have a sidebar. They didn't have so many sidebars in. In today's cross examination. It ain't funny. They didn't have a sidebar. When they come back from the sidebar, the judge is like, look, he's talking to Brian still. He's like, listen, you keep asking questions that are. That. That we are. Like, it's objected. And then once it's objected, you still continue to ask the question. So I'm starting to think that you're doing that just to get your question in, which is not fair because the jury shouldn't hear the question if it's objected. And if you are doing that just to get your question in, like, that's not. You can't do that. So I already. I'm like, okay, wait. Because now at first, I'm like, yo, Brian, what are you doing? You messing this up? And then as that's happening, and then when a judge comes and says that, I'm like, oh. Because a lot of this testimony, I've been feeling like, okay. And when I made the video saying that, I feel like the government has, like, presented everything that they can at this point. Everything else is just redundant or just like, you know, adding and piling on, which I get it. It's without a shadow of a doubt. The proof is without a shadow of a doubt. So I get it, right? But at this point, a lot of what we're having conversation about is about how people felt and what they experienced. And you may have text messages and emails and, you know, photos, but it's different because, like, when a Cassie was on the stand, right, and she talked about you, she was scared, and she was being forced to do these things, allegedly because she thought she'd be physically abused, you then had the photos and these different things to point to. And I'm not saying that Mia was not, you know, Mia can't alleged that she was sexually assaulted because we don't have physical proof that it happened. But my point is, is even when you remove her sexual assault allegations, right, when you just talk about the forced labor part of this, the, you know, the. The whole conspiracy of, you know, she's working within this whole group and unit of people allegedly, who she can't tell, she's physically afraid to. She can't push back about certain things to allegedly. Right? These are all things that they're setting up to prove their case. But there's nothing fully there, even in the text messages and emails that she did send when she was trying to alert people of certain things. It's like she's saying, yo, I couldn't do that because people were fired. People were this, people were that. So we're seeing bits and pieces of these solid, concrete, tangible evidence. But everything else is left up to testimony, various testimonies, which change as you go to people, to people. So I'm like, if I'm Brian Steele and I know that right now this witness is here alleging things that neither side, neither one of us may actually be able to, like, a hundred percent prove with a tangible piece of evidence, the only thing you can do is plant a thought in a juror's mind. Boom. That's what Brian still did the whole rest of the time. The judge specifically told him, you are harassing the witness, and that cannot happen. The way that you are talking to her and the way that, you know, she's being handled on the. On the stand. You know, we. We. They wanted to have a conversation about if this will make other women not want to come out about these alleged things. But then, I promise, y' all, he. He was so sure, he called her a liar, told her things did not happen. Even when they went into the conversation about Cassie and Cassie being her best friend, it's like, look, this is your best friend, but you. You had to. You had to tell her certain things when it came to Diddy that were not true, correct? And she's like, yes. Mia said yes, but only because that was her job. She worked for Diddy. She had to do and say certain things. And they're like, so you lied to your sister. Like, there were certain buzzwords that he was planting. He even called her, and I highlighted this. He started talking about money, right? Because he's like, is it true that you're here because you think you're going to get some money from this. And she's like, no, absolutely, like what? No, absolutely not type vibes, right? And then they bring up the settlement that she received when she left working for Diddy and the fact that she had actually asked for 10 million but only received that 400k, 200k take home. And then the, and then they brought back in the fact that her lawyers working pro bono, you know, trying to shape this whole, like, this is just a cash grab. Allegedly. Right? He called her a me too money grabber while she was on the stand in front of the jury. I'm like, oh my God. Because. And granted, she brought up me too. She mentioned in her previous testimony on Direct with the Government that she didn't say anything about certain things because at that time, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't as normal for women to get on social media and claim Things and the MeToo movement hadn't happened and Diddy was such a big star and all these things. But Brian still made it a point about, big point today to hammer in like, you know, at these points where you're still, you know, reaching out to, to Diddy and saying, merry Christmas, I love you, wishing you guys peace. Like all these things right at this point now, the MeToo movement is years in. Social media, has millions of users. You could have had a voice if you wanted one. Why didn't you? And then he, he called her a me too money grabber. It was a very aggressive way to go about a cross examination. Almost hostile in my opinion. It was given like he didn't care if he was even found in contempt of court. The thought process and the imagery that he wanted the jury to have was this woman because also she's been very like mild tempered and like, doesn't even look up during the whole testimony. Brian still is very direct, he's sharp, he's saying what he needs to say and he is not holding back objection after objection after objection. He's just going to. She didn't break down and crash it in any of that. And I thought she would, to be honest with you, because of some of the things that he was saying and just how he was just going and going and going. But I'm like, man, I mean, if you're trying to make a thought turn, this is how you do it. You give the jury the thought to have instead of just inferring it. Because every attorney up until this point has just laid things out there and inferred it. Now the prosecution came back on, they did try to clear things up. They're like, you know, because they brought up, like, birthday posts that she had posted for Diddy and, you know, Surat posts and things of that nature. And, and, you know, the prosecution tried to clear that up by saying that was your job. Correct. Like, everybody that worked for Diddy posted for his birthday and things of that. And she's like, yeah. And then they brought up the fact that she doesn't like public speaking and the fact that, like, she looks down so much because she's terrified of public speaking. And, you know, that, like, for her it's not about money. She kept saying that she was there because she felt like it was something that she morally had to do. And she ended on, you know, her, her redirect with the government saying she can't look her niece and her goddaughter in their eyes and guide them throughout life without standing up there and doing the right thing. So that's why she was. Brian still wasn't trying to hear none of that. None of it. None of it. Like, I've never seen anything like it. And I'm trying to tell you, it confused me at first. And then I was like, oh. And I wasn't in the actual courtroom where you could see the jurors. I was in an overflow room today. But I just talked to a friend who was in the courtroom where you could see the. The actual jurors. And I asked him. That was my first question. I'm like, what were the jurors reactions today? Because Brian said was straight at her. Like, straight at her. No. Mrs. Straight at her. And he said like, no, they were reacting a lot to, you know, her. Because she couldn't remember. She didn't remember majority of everything today. And literally, literally her response was, I don't know, I don't remember. I don't know, I don't remember. Or she would say, can you repeat the question? I don't. I don't really understand the question. Because Brian still was getting in trouble a lot for the way he was framing the questions. Because the way he was framing the questions, again, it wasn't even about getting an answer from her. He knew she wasn't going to be able to answer the question. He was just trying to get things. He wanted certain words and certain scenarios and certain things to be put out there. Like, me too. Money grabber. Liar. You lied to your best friend, Cassie. But that's supposed to be your best friend. He brought up the fact of, like, you keep talking about, you decided to take leave from or you. You and your job separated, Right? Like, basically, we decided to go our separate ways. He said no. Weren't you fired allegedly because you were drinking on the job? And she did not. Then they didn't. They objected to that. He just went right around it. He just act like it didn't happen. There were certain ideas and things he was trying to plant in the jurors minds. Even if he got in trouble today and he was successful at it, he was very successful at that. All right, guys, so we'll be back another day this week and just, you know, following what's going on. And it's Lauren LaRosa. This is the latest with Lauren LaRosa. As always, I tell y' all, y' all could be anywhere wear with anybody else listening to all these things because at the end of the day, there is always a lot going on. But y' all are right here with me. I appreciate you guys so much. I'll see you in my next upload. This is an I Heart podcast.