‘It’s Called Psychological Abuse’
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When Sean “Diddy” Combs’s lawyer Brian Steel, who recently enjoyed a fawning New Yorker profile following his success in Young Thug’s RICO case, started to cross-examine “Mia,” his questions quickly turned to her social-media history. Steel grilled the former assistant to Diddy, who testified that the fallen mogul had sexually assaulted her multiple times, about Instagram posts where she said positive things about him. Steel’s implication, of course, was that if Mia really had been traumatized, she wouldn’t have been effusive about the boss she said routinely threatened her. “Because of Sean Combs, you suffered a great deal?” Steel asked. Mia answered in the affirmative. And she worked with him from 2009 to 2017? Yes. Steel went on: “He made you, you told the jury, in front of this honorable court, do things that were unthinkable, is that fair to say?” Yes, she responded. “And that includes sleeping in a room without a lock?” Right. “Coming into that room, and violating you, in the most unthinkable manner?” “True,” she responded. “At times you wanted to go kill yourself?” Steel pressed. “Yes,” Mia said. Diddy, who donned a pale-blue sweater, could be seen looking toward Steel at the lectern various times during his cross.
Steel’s questions about Mia’s personal posts soon followed. He showed one photo of Diddy getting a vanilla latte with the caption, “no big deal.” “So on your personal account, you posted a picture of Mr. Combs, right?” Steel asked. “The person who terrorize[d] you, fair?” She said yes. He asked about a post of hers from the Burning Man festival that included Mia, Cassie, model Kerry Morgan (who has also testified), and Diddy posing together. Steel’s line of questioning included asking Mia if she thanks Diddy for inspiring her, and if she’d call the man who harmed her one of her closest friends: Yes, she answered. He asked about a photo she posted of her with Diddy on a Times Square billboard, and another of Diddy dancing with a bottle of his tequila brand.
Steel’s queries about Mia’s social media went on for hours. He asked her about a scrapbook she made for Diddy with magazine clippings from the early part of his career. “Instagram was a place to show how great your life was even if it’s not true,” she said in response to Steel’s questioning. Diddy saw her Instagram, and some of his fans followed her. “I didn’t want my family and friends to know the misery I was in so, of course, you post the great times,” Mia said. It was unclear whether any of Steel’s attempted “gotchas” landed in the jurors’ minds. Mia was asked at various points a version of: Why would you say or do something nice for someone so awful? She repeatedly framed her behavior in the context of what happens to those who have been victimized. “It’s called psychological abuse,” said Mia, whose voice was firm on cross. “Everyone acted like it was normal.”
Mia’s cross-examination came shortly after telling jurors that she lived in fear that Diddy could easily ruin her life at a moment’s notice.Mia, who has accused Diddy of multiple sexual assaults, said that the rapper threatened her with these incidents—indicating that he would speak about them as if she were a willing participant. She recalled a particularly menacing exchange in October 2015. Mia was in South Africa with Diddy’s then-girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura; she was shooting a movie. Cassie, whose allegations of coerced sexual encounters are the core of prosecutors’ case against Diddy, had discovered that he was seeing another woman. Cassie refused to speak with Diddy. So, Diddy and his staff stateside tried over, and over, and over, to get in touch with Cassie, through Mia.
“If you dont call me now fuck it all. And Imma tell everything . And don’t ever speak me again,” Diddy said in a text to Mia. “You have 2 min. Fuck her. Call my hs now or never speak to me again. Fuck abc and all lawyers. Let’s go to war.” Mia was asked what she thought “tell everything” meant. In her mind, it meant that Diddy would present the assaults as consensual sexual encounters, “as though it was my fault or that I was, that I had a part in it.”
“I’m inside now - they are safety pining a shirt on her in a fitting- I will pull her out the second that I can - I’m trying not to say anything out loud bc people are in this room and noone needs to know Puffs business,” Mia responded. “So please extend my time to 9 minutes please. I’m begging you.”
She testified on May 29 that Diddy repeatedly attacked Cassie and that she feared repercussions about coming forward. “I knew his power, and I knew his control over me, and I didn’t want to lose everything that I worked so hard for or this, like, world that I — that was the only thing that I had anymore,” Mia told jurors.
Mia, who became close with Cassie during her nine years working for Diddy, described watching him batter the singer on day one of her testimony. “The highs were really high and the lows were really, really low,” Mia said of her time working for Diddy. Diddy’s ever-shifting mood drove the atmosphere. “He’s thrown things at me. He’s thrown me against the wall … He’s thrown me into a pool,” Mia said. “He’s also, uh, sexually assaulted me.”
Prosecutor Madison Smyser this morning asked Mia whether the sexual assaults were the lowest points of working with Diddy. “They were the lowest, yes,” Mia said.
However today might have gone for Diddy at trial, there was a development outside of court that proved interesting. Apparently, Donald Trump has not ruled out a pardon. Mia returns to court on Monday for more cross-examination.