Well, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing the Epstein client list any time soon, so we’ll have to settle for the next best thing. The trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs on sex trafficking and racketeering charges is entering its third week. Unsurprisingly, some big names and a whole bunch of ‘who?’ names are being dropped.
Not all is as some of the media would clearly like you to think. Sorry to disappoint you, but when names like Barack Obama and Jennifer Lopez have come up, it’s been in entirely peripheral circumstances. For instance, Obama’s name was only mentioned (so far) because some of Diddy’s ecky pills were shaped like Big Mike’s bitch’s head.
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former assistant, David James, testified on May 20 that the rapper typically carried “25 to 30” undisclosed pill bottles. According to James, some of the pills were ecstasy.
“Can you describe the ecstasy that you saw him taking?” Assistant US Attorney Christine Slavik asked.
“There were various pills, but there was one that was in the shape of a former president’s face,” James explained.
“Which former president?” the prosecutor questioned.
“President Obama,” James answered.
It’s hardly video footage from Epstein Island, I’m afraid.
The most damning testimony so far, though, has come from a former reality-TV ‘star’ who was big in the 2000s.
Former Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard testified that Usher was at a dinner where Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly punched Cassie Ventura in the stomach.
“We were having a private conversation, and we were all sitting, eating at the tables together,” Richard recalled during her testimony. “When I say we, I mean some Bad Boy, some of our other label, and even some celebrities were in the room. And they were secretly arguing, and he punched her in the stomach. Sean Combs punched her in the stomach.”
Nice bloke. Richard also testified that, y’know, punching your girlfriend in the gut at a dinner party is ‘par for the course in a normal relationship’, which may be true in celebrity circles. Combs also not-so-subtly threatened Richard if she opened her mouth, telling that “where he’s from, people go missing”.
It wasn’t just a one-off, either.
The singer said she “observed Cassie being attacked.” She alleged that Diddy came downstairs screaming, hit her in the head and beat her around.
Richard claimed Diddy “came downstairs angry saying where the f— is his eggs.” She then alleged Diddy grabbed a skillet of eggs and attempted to hit Cassie in the head.
Cassie allegedly fell to the ground, anticipating the hit, but it didn’t hit her.
“She went into a fetal position ... literally trying to hide her face,” Richard said.
“Richard’s testimony is highly impactful because it corroborates Ventura’s account,” former federal prosecutor Neama Ramani told Fox News Digital. “Her witnessing Combs attempt to hit Ventura with a skillet, kick her when she was in the fetal position and drag her by the hair was one of the most graphic of the trial so far. Richard also [allegedly] suffered her own abuse. She [claimed she] was groped and threatened not to speak out.”
Some of the other ‘name-drops’, though, are similar click-bait reaches by the media.
Biggie Smalls, or Christopher George Latore Wallace, has been mentioned a few times in Diddy’s sex trafficking trial. Biggie was killed in a drive-by shooting at age 24 in 1997 […]
James also revealed that Diddy used the name “Frank Black” when booking his hotel reservations.
“I think it was a reference to Biggie,” Kaplan told the jury before adding, “I think that [Biggie's] nickname was Frank White.”
Wow. Stop the presses.
Dragging Bruce Willis’ name into it similarly reeks of media desperation.
Bruce Willis was brought up during Cassie’s testimony in Diddy’s trial. Cassie told Diddy she was “at the edge of tears” in an emotional text exchange shown in court about his private family life.
Cassie wrote, “As much as you think you’re Bruce Willis, you aren’t. He’s married and before he was married, the family as a whole went on trips together, or just with him and his woman. Eddie Murphy and Paige took his kids away on their own.”
In other words, not all celebrities are woman-bashers, rapists and human-trafficking monsters. Which is something, I guess.
