Sean Combs, one of America’s most influential music moguls, was accused by federal prosecutors on Monday of leading a criminal enterprise that enabled his abuse of women and worked to cover it up.
As his trial got underway in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, prosecutors painted him as a serial sexual predator who orchestrated drug-fueled sex marathons with prostitutes. Mr. Combs’s lawyers acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence but denied that he had committed sex trafficking or run a racketeering enterprise.
In lurid detail, Emily A. Johnson, the prosecutor who delivered a 50-minute opening statement for the government, portrayed Mr. Combs as a man who ordered the performance of sex acts and “called himself the king.”
“To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Ms. Johnson said. “A cultural icon, a businessman — larger than life. But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise.”
One of the government’s first witnesses was a man who said he been paid as much as $6,000 to engage in lengthy sexual encounters with Mr. Combs’s girlfriend Casandra Ventura while the music mogul watched. He said he also overheard what he believed to be Mr. Combs striking Ms. Ventura in an adjoining room.
Mr. Combs, 55, one of the most successful producers and entrepreneurs in the history of hip-hop, faces charges of sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy, a federal crime best known for its use in prosecuting organized crime syndicates.
If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. “The evidence is going to show you a very flawed individual,” Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said in her opening statement. “But it will not show you a racketeer, a sex trafficker or somebody transporting for prostitution.”
The trial of Mr. Combs is being closely watched by his legions of fans and the celebrities and stars who once turned in his orbit, attended his extravagant parties or listened to the hit music he helped to produce.
The charges against Mr. Combs brought into the popular lexicon “freak-offs,” which Mr. Combs used to describe the drug-fueled sex bacchanals he organized that could last for days. At the core of the case is the government’s contention that Mr. Combs, acting like royalty, dispatched a crew of employees to abet his behavior and resolve any problems that it caused.
In the packed courtroom on the 26th floor of a Southern District of New York courthouse, the mogul’s mother, Janice Combs, sat in the second row of the gallery, dressed in black-and-leopard print, and surrounded by family members.
Her son, who has been in custody since his arrest in September, wore a sweater, a collared shirt, slacks and lace-less shoes. He sat at the defense table, reading a Bible, his graying hair and beard revealing his months in detention, where he cannot dye it.
Ms. Johnson told a jury of eight men and four women that the case would center on the testimony of three women, including Ms. Ventura, 38. Better known as Cassie, she was also a singer formerly signed to his label. In addition, Ms. Johnson said, the jury would view videos of parties where Mr. Combs directed sexual encounters.
“You will see for yourself the defendant’s violence and its aftermath,” she said.
In one particularly graphic detail, Ms. Johnson described a party at which Ms. Ventura “felt like she was choking” when Mr. Combs “made an escort urinate into her mouth.”
Ms. Ventura, who was a 19-year-old model and aspiring singer when she met Mr. Combs in the mid-2000s, was physically abused early on in the relationship, Ms. Johnson said, describing how in 2009, Mr. Combs threw Ms. Ventura to the floor of an S.U.V. and stomped repeatedly on her face.
When it was their turn on Monday, Mr. Combs’s legal team portrayed their client as a “complicated man” who rose from humble beginnings and built an entertainment empire. They acknowledged violent tendencies, jealousy-fueled disputes with former girlfriends — and that he was responsible for domestic violence.
But despite his “bad temper,” he was being wrongly prosecuted for his “private, personal sex life,” Ms. Geragos said.
She told the jury that there might be multiple points during the trial, which is expected to last about eight weeks, “where you think he is a jerk, he is mean.”
“But he is not charged with being mean,” Ms. Geragos said. “He is not charged with being a jerk. He is charged with running a racketeering enterprise.”
Ms. Geragos described the witnesses testifying against Mr. Combs as “capable, strong, adult” women who were in love with Mr. Combs and who are now interested in financial gain. Ms. Ventura stayed in the relationship with Mr. Combs for over a decade, Ms. Geragos noted.
Over his three-and-a-half decade career, Mr. Combs helped make artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into household names. Under the name Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his own in 1997 with “I’ll Be Missing You.” Mr. Combs’s lavish White Parties, held in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and other playgrounds of the rich, were magnets for celebrities and music stars.
The line to enter the courthouse on Monday morning was filled with reporters, podcasters, TikTok influencers and curious members of the public. Inside they found a clash of high-profile lawyers. Mr. Combs’s eight-person legal team is led by Marc Agnifilo, perhaps best known for representing Keith Raniere, the leader of the Nxivm sex cult.
Among the six prosecutors on the case is Maurene Comey, who has experience with complex criminal matters, like the 2021 sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. She is the daughter of the former F.B.I. director James Comey.
Mr. Combs has had other brushes with the law, including allegations of assault and a 1999 shooting inside a Manhattan night club that left three people injured. He had been at the club with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and was ultimately acquitted.
But the most widely seen episode of violence involving Mr. Combs came last May when CNN aired surveillance footage of him attacking Ms. Ventura in the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. In that video, Mr. Combs, wearing only a towel around his waist, is seen brutally kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura. On Monday the jury was shown the footage but it was slowed down — Mr. Combs’s lawyers had said the tape had been sped up and made the actions seem faster than in real life. A government expert corrected the speed.
The prosecution’s first witness on Monday was Israel Florez, a Los Angeles police officer who had been a security guard at the InterContinental Hotel. He testified that he responded to a woman in distress on the sixth floor and found Mr. Combs seated in a towel, motionless but with “a devilish stare.” Huddled in the corner was Ms. Ventura, who had a “purple eye,” Mr. Florez said.
Mr. Florez said Mr. Combs offered him a stash of cash that he understood to be a bribe. “He was telling me, ‘Don’t tell nobody,’” Mr. Florez said. The prosecution has said that Mr. Combs bought the surveillance footage from hotel security for $100,000. But copies apparently remained.
The prosecution’s second witness was Daniel Phillip, the male stripper who said he was invited multiple times by Ms. Ventura to have sex with her while Sean Combs watched and masturbated.
During more than an hour of explicit testimony, Mr. Phillip said he saw Mr. Combs once threw a liquor bottle at Ms. Ventura when she did not immediately go to him when called. He then dragged Ms. Ventura to another room, testified Mr. Phillip, who said he heard what sounded like Mr. Combs smack her. “Bitch, when I tell you to come here, you come here now, not later,” Mr. Phillip testified he heard Mr. Combs say.
During his testimony, Mr. Combs’s three teenage daughters left the courtroom.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
