- A 3rd ex-personal assistant will testify on Tuesday, when Sean Combs' sex-trafficking trial resumes.
- Ex-PAs have described heartrending instances of violence and coercion involving Combs' girlfriends.
- They've also described cleaning up after "freak offs" — and what Combs kept in his cosmetics bag.
Sean "Diddy" Combs was not an easy boss, frightening away or burning out a small army of personal assistants over the decades.
At his sex-trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan, these ex-assistants are coming back to haunt him from the witness stand.
So far, two former personal assistants have been called to testify by prosecutors. (A third, Capricorn Clark, is scheduled for Tuesday)
They told the jury that working as Combs' PA meant turning a blind eye to harrowing violence while meticulously managing every detail of his life, including making sure his toiletries all faced the same way and keeping his hotel suite stocked with applesauce, jello, and Fiji water.
Even on good days, the pay was low, the days were long, and the workweek could stretch 100 hours long, the two former PAs told jurors. Complaining was frowned on — "What rhymes with tired?" went a joke among the staff. The answer? "Fired."
But on the worst days, they testified, they were drawn into a world of chaos and illegality. Both described purchasing drugs for Combs or his friends.
Good days and rap wars
Former PA David James recounted chauffeuring Combs to a narrowly averted gunfight with rival record executive Suge Knight.
James said he realized he may die that night, at the wheel of his boss's car, in the parking lot of an all-night Los Angeles diner.
Combs sat behind him in the black Escalade with three guns in his lap, James remembered on the stand. "Mother fucking drive," he said Combs ordered as they set out.
The two PAs also described heartrending scenes of violence.
Ex-PA George Kaplan remembered the time in 2015 when he heard Combs' longtime girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, screaming in the bedroom of Combs' private jet.
"Isn't anybody seeing this?" she cried, accompanied by the sound of crashing glassware.
Kaplan told jurors that he turned in his seat and saw the rap mogul standing over a cowering Ventura while holding aloft a whisky rocks glass.
No one on the jet — the Gulfstream was crowded with Combs' security guards and assistants — interceded or checked on Ventura afterward, he said.
Everyone turned away, Kaplan said, as the sound of more screams, more shattering glass, filled the cabin.
Many empty bottles
The two personal assistants also described Combs' many peccadillos — and the many, many physical messes he left behind.
Kaplan told jurors on Wednesday that he was tasked with cleaning up whatever Combs left behind at luxury hotel suites in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles.
The jury has heard two weeks of testimony alleging that these hotel suites were crime scenes.
Ventura, the star prosecution witness, told jurors during the first week of testimony that throughout their decadelong relationship, Combs used violence and threats to force her to perform sex acts with male escorts, most typically at hotels.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied all accusations of sexual abuse. He has insisted since his arrest that he engaged only in consensual sex with his accusers, who he has alleged have a financial incentive to implicate him
"Lots of empty bottles, empty Gatorade bottles, empty liquor bottles, and often baby oil," Kaplan testified, describing the items he said he "tidied" at such hotels as the Trump International in Manhattan and the Hotel Bel-Air in LA.
Combs was a fastidious boss who liked things just so and threatened to fire him monthly during the year he worked for him, which was between 2014 and 2015, Kaplan said.
"Available, facing forward, and ready for use," he told jurors, describing how Combs expected to find the toothpaste, toiletries, and medications on his bathroom counter each morning.
Asked how often Combs would threaten to fire him from the $125,000-a-year job, Kaplan answered, "maybe monthly."
Mr. Combs' kingdom
The second ex-PA, David James, described his own harrowing tenure as Combs right-hand man between May 2007 and May 2008.
"This is Mr. Combs' kingdom," James said head of HR told him during his interview, gesturing toward a portrait of the rapper on the wall of his Manhattan headquarters.
"We're all here to serve it," James said she told him.
He said his starting salary was $70,000.
"There were times I worked three weeks straight," he said.
"Advancing a hotel room" was a frequent assignment, James said. That meant making sure it was stocked with Combs' favorite items, from clothing changes to "applesauce, jello, and Fiji water."
Combs' cosmetic bag went everywhere he went, and held some 40 different products, James said.
"Everything from ointments to a razor," he testified.
"He had Just For Men in there," he added, referring to the men's hair color brand. Since his arrest nine months ago, Combs' hair has turned mostly gray.
A separate "medicine bag" likewise went everywhere Combs traveled.
"There were probably 25 to 30 different pillboxes or pill bottles," James said. "Some were like Advil, Tylenol. He had water pills to help him lose weight. He had Viagra in there. He had some pills that helped increase his sperm count, for example."
Asked if there were any other sorts of pills, James said, "He did have ecstasy and Percocets in there, as well."
Combs took Percocets, a prescription opioid painkiller, "throughout the day," James said.
The rapper would switch at night to taking ecstasy, the PA told jurors, referring to the psychedelic stimulant also known as MDMA. One of Combs' preferred ecstasy pills was stamped with the image of Barack Obama's face, James testified.
"Diddy bopping" at the party
Once, at a New Year's Eve party thrown by Combs, James, who'd already been hitting the Ciroc vodka hard, went into Combs' med bag and popped an ecstasy pill, after which he was "feeling pretty good," he told the jury.
"Normally, I'm very straightedge, don't normally have too much emotion, but this night I was, like dancing — they said I was Diddy bopping all around the party."
"Diddy bopping" was left to the jurors' imagination.
A few days later, Combs called him into his office. He was "reviewing footage from the party," James said.
"Yo, playboy," James said Combs told him. "Is that you dancing around the party?"
"Yes, sir," James answered. "And he kind of nodded his head and he said, 'OK, I want to keep this footage in case I ever need it.'"
"It was so out of character for me that he thought it would be embarrassing if he released the footage of me to the public," James told the jury.
Prosecutors say Combs controlled Ventura by threatening to publicly release explicit sex videos.
First thing Tuesday, Capricorn Clark is set to be Combs' third former personal assistant to testify against him, kicking off week three of the government's case.
Federal prosecutors will ask her about a break-in at rapper Kid Cudi's Hollywood Hills home in 2011 — the one where his Christmas gifts were unwrapped and rifled through and his dog was left shut in the bathroom.
Clark was there and called to warn Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, that a jealousy-enraged Combs was inside the house, according to the rapper, who testified Thursday.
Clark may also describe Combs forcing her to take a lie detector test after she was robbed while carrying what another ex-assistant described to the jury as the rap tycoon's "jewelry suitcase or briefcase, if you will."
The heisted jewels were replaced by cubic zirconium replicas, that assistant dished from the stand last week.
She couldn't get out
Perhaps James' most significant testimony came he described something Ventura once said as they stood together smoking cigarettes one night on a dock outside Combs' Miami estate.
Ventura was then 21 or 22, and in the early months of her 11-year, on-and-off relationship with Combs. James was in his 20s as well.
As they commiserated about what they agreed was their crazy lifestyle of long hours and jetting city to city, James asked Ventura why she didn't simply leave.
"I can't get out," he testified that Ventura told him.
"Mr. Combs oversees so much of my life," she said, according to James' testimony last week. "He controls my music career, he pays for my apartment, he gives me an allowance."
James told the jury he believed her. "I just didn't think that she could easily leave," he said.
