Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial updates: Cassie Ventura breaks down as testimony concludes

In opening statements, Combs' defense attorney, Teny Geragos, said Combs may come across as mean but reminded jurors that he's "not charged with being mean, he’s not charged with being a jerk.”

Geragos insisted that the criminal charges Combs faces relate to his private, personal sex life. “The government has no place here,” she said.

The defense conceded Combs “has a temper” and “got violent” when they say he drank or used drugs but insisted domestic violence was not part of any RICO conspiracy or was meant to coerce women into sexual acts.

The defense said the 2016 hotel security video of Combs and Cassie, in which Combs physically attacks her, shows a fight over a phone. Geragos said what is depicted in the video “is dehumanizing and violent and terrible” but not evidence of sex trafficking.

“It is evidence of domestic violence,” Geragos said.

Geragos said Combs led a “swingers’ lifestyle” and downplayed “freak offs” as consensual threesomes.

“That may not be what you like to do in your bedroom,” Geragos said. “But you are not here to judge him for his sexual preferences.”

Prosecutor Emily Johnson urged the jury not to believe how the defense characterized the evidence, which they said shows, among other things, Combs violently forcing Cassie and 'Jane' to participate in freak-offs under the threat of releasing videos of the event. Prosecutors have previously pointed to the 2016 video of Combs kicking and dragging Cassie as evidence of allegedly sex trafficking his then-girlfriend for a “freak off” in which she was forced to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes.

After the prosecution announced Cassie Ventura, “Jane" and others will testify at trial, defense attorney Teny Geragos, in her opening statement, accused the government of trying to turn relationships and choices involving consenting adults into a racketeering case.

“It will not work,” Geragos said.

“Sean Combs is a complicated man but this is not a complicated case. This case is about love, jealousy, infidelity and money,” Geragos said.

Sean Combs, the “musician who created an empire,” also ran a criminal enterprise with his “trusted inner circle” that committed “crime after crime” for 20 years, including kidnapping, arson, drug offenses, sex crimes, bribery and obstruction, a federal prosecutor said Monday in opening statements.

The prosecutor also detailed Combs’ alleged dealings with ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and another anonymous victim.

The prosecution described how Combs allegedly “used lies, drugs, threats and violence to threaten and coerce first Cassie and then 'Jane' to have sex with him in front of male escorts.”

Combs had no discernible expression on his face as the prosecutor recounted the acts he allegedly committed. His six children and his mother are seated in the second row listening to all of it.

A jury was selected Monday to hear the evidence against Sean Combs.

The 12-person jury includes eight men and four women.

The defense accused federal prosecutors of bias since most of the government’s nine peremptory strikes were Black prospective jurors.

“By our count, the government struck seven Black people which, it’s our belief, amounts to a pattern,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said.

“The government has conducted itself completely neutrally during jury selection,” prosecutor Maureen Comey responded. “The jury itself is composed of a very diverse group of jurors.”

Comey then listed “neutral” reasons for exercising each peremptory strike, including a woman who recognized 17 names on the list of people who could potentially come up at trial, and a man who she said gave “meandering, nonsensical answers” and once called police officers “assholes.”

The judge rejected the defense’s challenge.

“The government has given race-neutral reasons,” Judge Arun Subramanian said.

Combs argued earlier this year the prostitution charge he faces should be tossed because, he claimed, federal prosecutors demonstrated racial animus. Federal prosecutors denounced the argument as baseless.