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Tony Bruski (0:59)

Tonal.com this is continuing coverage of United States versus Diddy Combs from the Hidden Killers podcast and True Crime Today.

Mia (1:10)

You know how people throw around the phrase living in hell when they're talking about a bad job? Yeah. Mia wasn't exaggerating. She lived it day in, day out. And for the first time on May 29, inside a quiet federal courtroom in Manhattan, she finally said it out loud. She wasn't crying wolf. She wasn't looking for attention. She was a woman testifying under oath about what it was like to work for one of the most powerful men in music and how that job slowly became a waking nightmare. To be clear, Mia isn't her real name. The court is protecting her identity, and for good reason. According to her, speaking out about Sean Diddy Combs has consequences. Big ones. Which makes what she did all the more impactful. She worked for Combs as his personal assistant from 2009 to 2017, eight years on call for everything from handling his taxes to quite literally cracking his knuckles. Yeah, that was on the job list. Her voice barely rose above a whisper in court, but the weight of what she said that landed like a hammer. Let's start with how her life was structured, or more accurately, dismantled by the job. Mia described working 22 hour days, often going five full days without sleep. That's not some humble brag tech bro nonsense, that's actual sleep deprivation, she said at one point. Her vision blurred, her hearing cut out and she physically broke down. And Combs. He didn't let her rest until he decided she could. Everything revolved around his whims. Mia explained that she couldn't lock the doors in his homes. That's right. No privacy, no safety. Combs allegedly had a standing nobody locks my doors. She needed permission to leave a room, leave a house, even take care of personal hygiene. One time, she excused herself during a gathering to change a tampon, and he screamed at her, flung a bowl of spaghetti at her, and told her to get the out of his house. Think about the level of control it takes to micromanage someone's ability to go to the bathroom. That control extended to every task she performed. There was even a written list shown in court. Every single day is different. PD that's puffy. Daddy can ask you to do 17,000 things, and that's not hyperbole. She described running business operations one moment, then being tasked with bizarre personal chores the next. Imagine being someone's executive assistant and their emotional punching bag all rolled into one. Mia said she had to anticipate his whims, needs, and moods. It wasn't just a job. It was survival. And when his moods turned, he didn't just sulk. He exploded. Mia described a pattern of outbursts where Combs would throw whatever he could get his hands on. He allegedly hurled turkey meat, cell phones, a computer. And once, he slammed a door repeatedly on her arm because he had taken her phone and didn't want to give it back. She didn't initially think the door slam was intentional until he did it again and again. She realized then that he wasn't just angry. He was enjoying it. At one point, she said, he told her he wanted to have something on her, some leverage, because he knew she had things on him. That wasn't paranoia. That was strategy. According to Mia, everything with Combs was a power play. Every smile, every rage episode, every twisted rule. It wasn't random. It was control. And the control didn't stop with her. Mia said she saw firsthand the abuse that Cassie Ventura endured. She and Cassie were close, like sisters, she said, and she was often instructed to accompany Cassie as a sort of handler. But what she witnessed wasn't glamorous. It was brutal. She testified about multiple incidents where Combs allegedly attacked Cassie. The one that still makes your stomach turn happened in 2013 at Cassie's apartment in Los Angeles. Cassie was getting ready for a trip. Mia and Deontay Nash, another witness, were helping her pack. Then Combs showed up, angry, accusing. Within minutes, he allegedly yanked Cassie by the hair, threw her to the ground and started beating her. Mia and Nash tried to stop him. Mia said she jumped on his back. He threw her off like she weighed nothing, slammed Nash to the ground, then turned back to Cassie and according to Mia, smashed her head into the corner of a bed frame. Cassie started bleeding badly. It was chaos. Mia said she genuinely thought he was going to kill her. There were other incidents, too. A party hosted by Prince in 2012. Yes, that Prince, where Combs showed up uninvited, tackled Cassie and started attacking her until security stepped in. After that, Mia said she was suspended without pay for disobeying Combs's order to keep Cassie under control. That was the power dynamic. You get punished not for violence, but for failing to facilitate it. Now, if you're wondering why Miye stayed, why she didn't run or report him or blow the whistle years ago, she addressed that too. She said she was terrified, ashamed, certain that no one would believe her. If I hadn't been called to testify. She said I was going to die with this. And it's not hard to understand why. Back then, there was no number. Me too. No social media army, no Safe HR hotline. She worked in a bubble where Combs was the sun and no one dared cast a shadow. Mia testified that she never went to the police, never told friends. Not even after he allegedly raped her. She said one night in 2010, she was sleeping in a guest room at Combs's LA house, doors unlocked, per his rules. She woke up to find him in her bed on top of her. She froze, didn't scream, didn't move. He raped her, she said quickly, quietly, like it was routine. There was no dramatic aftermath, no confrontation. Just silence. The kind that sits on your chest for years. And according to Mia, it wasn't the only time. The assaults came sporadically, unpredictably. Each one followed by a long stretch where she tried to convince herself it wouldn't happen again. And then there was the groping. She described an incident during Combs 40th birthday party. They were in a penthouse at the Plaza Hotel taking vodka shots. He leaned in, kissed her, slid his hand up her dress. She didn't say no. She didn't say yes. She just stood there, frozen, humiliated. And he walked away like it never happened. The court also heard about how Combs allegedly pressured her to take ketamine. Just handed her a pill and expected obedience. Like always, she took it. Not because she wanted to, but because saying no wasn't really an option. At the end of the Day, Mia said something that stuck, something that echoed through the courtroom even after she stepped down from the stand. She said Combs controlled everyone's movement, mood, and ability to speak out. And for eight years, she believed she had no voice. That whatever happened to her physically, sexually, emotionally, was just the cost of admission to Combs inner circle. But on May 29, for the first time, she broke that silence. No entourage, no glamour. Just a soft voice on the stand recounting the kind of life you wouldn't wish on anyone. And as she testified, the room changed. Not because she said something that hadn't been heard before, but because she confirmed with vivid clarity what others had already begun to expose. The jury sat with it. The judge sat with it. And tomorrow they'll hear more. If you were sitting in that courtroom on the morning of May 29, it wasn't the fireworks that caught your attention. It was the chess match. The defense team had their moment. After days of emotionally charged witness testimony and a prosecution on the attack, it was their turn to try and pull at the threads. And the thread they pulled first was Deontay Nash. Now, Nash isn't just some bystander. He was close to Cassie Ventura, worked in the same industry, styled her for events, and according to his testimony, saw some of the darkest moments of her relationship with Sean Combs up close. The day before, he told the court about an incident in 2013 where he claimed he watched Combs assault Cassie physically, attacking her so severely that both he and Mia, the assistant we met in the previous session, tried to intervene. He testified that he genuinely feared for her life that night. But on cross examination, the defense didn't go after what he saw. They went after when he said it. They focused in hard on the fact that Nash didn't mention one specific part of his story. Cassie allegedly telling him, I don't want to freak off, referring to one of Combs so called sex parties until May 17th of this year. That's right. This particular detail didn't come out until after Cassie herself had testified. So naturally, the defense seized on that like a lifeline. They framed it like this. Nash waited to mention something so important until after the key witness had already spoken. Convenient timing, right? They asked if Nash had talked with prosecutors about that phrase before he admitted no, he hadn't. Not until that meeting on May 17. The implication was clear. They were planting the idea that Nash was tailoring his story to match Cassie's, that it was scripted, coordinated. And that wasn't the only connection the defense tried to make. They brought up the Fact that Nash was in regular contact with Cassie during the trial, helping her with wardrobe choices, talking to her, seeing her. The defense didn't have to outright say it. They let the jury fill in the rest. Friends during the trial, conversations outside the courtroom maybe a little too close for comfort. But Nash didn't flinch. He admitted he helped her pick clothes. She was pregnant and needed maternity, friendly styling. But he was adamant. They didn't talk about testimony. They didn't talk about the case, not once. Just support, just friendship. Still, the defense pressed further. They pulled out a moment from 2015, two years after the alleged 2013 assault. Nash had told the court that Combs was abusive, dangerous, unpredictable. But in 2015, for Cassie's 29th birthday, Nash admitted that he told Combs it would be fine to surprise her at the party. It was one of those moments that the defense hoped would unravel the whole thing. If he was truly so afraid for her, if he believed Combs had been violent, why would he invite him back into her life, into that very celebration? That's a good question. And Nash answered it without spin. He said at the time, Cassie and Combs were back together. She had chosen to be with him again. And Combs asked him if showing up would be a good idea. Nash said yes. Maybe it wasn't the answer the jury expected, but it was honest. And sometimes, in abuse cases, honest doesn't always look clean. Then came the text messages the defense showed the jury, several from 2018 and 2019. Combs reaching out to Nash, asking him to check on Cassie, telling him things like, if she needs me, make sure you call me again. It was a tactical move. The message they were trying to send was this. Is this the language of a monster? Or a man who still cared, concerned, maybe even loving? But the prosecution didn't let that linger for long on redirect. They turned those very same moments into something more sinister. They didn't deny the texts were real. They just reminded the jury of what patterns of abuse look like. And one of those patterns is the emotional pendulum, the swinging back and forth between cruelty and affection. They asked Nash if Cassie sometimes said she was happy, why was he still afraid for her? His answer was chilling in its simplicity. Because with Puff, he said, it could go from happy to chaotic in a split second. That's the kind of testimony that sticks, because it doesn't sound like someone who's rehearsing. It sounds like someone who lived it. And that's when the prosecution's strategy came into full focus. Because as the morning session ended, And Mia took the stand that afternoon. You could almost feel the air get heavier. Her testimony didn't just tell a new story, invalidated Nash's. She described the exact Same Night in 2013. The same location, the same brutal assault on Cassie. She said she tried to stop it. So did Nash. She was thrown against the wall. He was slammed to the floor. And Cassie, according to both of them, was the one who took the worst of it. Her head allegedly smashed into the corner of a bed frame. Blood everywhere. No communication between the witnesses. No prep together. And yet their accounts lined up in detail. That's what prosecutors dream of. Independent witnesses confirming the same events with no contradiction. And it didn't stop there. Mia also backed up what Nash had testified about Cassie's demeanor before those so called freak off nights. She said Cassie dreaded them. That she'd confided in her, that she looked sick with anxiety before they happened. That these weren't wild, consensual parties. They were orchestrated, coercive and traumatizing. By the end of the day, you could feel the shift, the cross examination that the defense had hoped would weaken Nash's credibility, it ended up doing something else. It gave the prosecution an opening to strengthen it. Mia's testimony wasn't just powerful, it was a mirror. And what it reflected was consistency. Painful, documented consistency. Meanwhile, outside of the testimony itself, there were a few legal chess moves happening behind the scenes. The defense raised a concern that's been Bubb for a few days now. They complained that the government was subtly using witness flight schedules to pressure the court into rushing their cross examinations. In other words, if a witness says they've got a flight tomorrow and the prosecution tells the judge that, well, the defense feels boxed in. It limits their ability to challenge testimony without looking like they're wasting time. Judge Subramanian listened, acknowledged the concern, but didn't make a ruling on it. Instead, he did something else. He extended the court day. Rather than ending at the usual 3pm they kept going until almost 4. And he warned the jury that this might become the new normal. Not because anyone's dragging their feet, but because the schedule needs to stay tight. They're still aiming to wrap this trial before July 4th. That's the target. And he's making sure both sides get the time they need to hit it later. The defense raised another point. Access to Combs after hours. Right now, because he's being held at the federal jail in Brooklyn, his lawyers only get to see him at the courthouse until 7pm they ask the judge to allow extended hours up to 10pm to prep for the next day's witnesses. No ruling on that, either. The judge took it under advisement. But those procedural notes, as important as they are, took a back seat to the bigger picture. Because as the courtroom cleared out that afternoon and the jury was dismissed, something had shifted. Deontay Nash had been tested, cross examined, poked at. But his story held. And then Mia walked in and gave it Bones. She didn't just echo him. She reinforced him. And in that courtroom, under oath, that matters more than anything. Tomorrow, it continues.