'You are the coolest': Diddy attorney dredges up social media posts in effort to discredit witness

MANHATTAN (CN) ­— Heavily filtered Instagram posts and lengthy hashtags took center stage at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ racketeering and sex trafficking trial on Friday, as his defense sought to impeach the credibility of a victim-witness who testified earlier that Combs sexually assaulted her multiple times during her employment for him.

Appearing at Combs’ trial under the pseudonym “Mia” to protect her privacy, that person testified on Thursday that the Bad Boy Entertainment mogul put his hand up her dress and forcibly kissed her at his 40th birthday party in 2009. In addition, she said, Combs raped her in a guestroom at his Los Angeles mansion in 2010 after climbing into her bed and also forced her to perform oral sex while she helped him pack for a trip.

Referred to in Combs’ criminal indictment as Victim-4, Mia cited the risk to her psychological, emotional and professional wellbeing in her request to not be named at trial.

Defense attorney Brian Steel, who spent nearly two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug in the protracted YSL racketeering and gang case, spent nearly all of the defense’s cross-examination grilling Mia about Instagram posts she made celebrating and promoting Diddy when she worked as his personal assistant.

Replete with gratuitous hashtags, the posts — originally from the 2010s and entered as defense evidence on Friday — included photographs from the Burning Man festival, a beach in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and the W Hotel Istanbul. One post showed Combs buying vanilla lattes at a Starbucks.

The first post that Steel displayed, from Mia’s personal social media page in January 2013, showed her cradling several bottles of Ciroc vodka. The caption read “what we do when you’re not around” and tagged Combs’ @IAmDiddy account.

“That’s the man the terrorized you?” Steel asked Mia. She confirmed that Combs had sexually assaulted her and abused her by that point in time.

Another post, tagged #TBT for “Throwback Thursday” in social-media parlance, showed Mia, Combs, Cassie Ventura and Kerry Morgan, a former friend of Ventura, in colorful outfits at Burning Man. The caption: “take me back.”

Steel pointed out that Mia was standing directly beside Combs and leaning into him in the photo. “And he terrorized you, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she responded.

Steel asked Mia if she really meant it when she venerated Combs, the source of her psychological trauma, in social media posts.

“YOU ARE THE COOLEST ALIEN ROCKSTAR UNICORN PIZZA SLICE," she had written in another.

“Everybody that worked for Puff was expected to promote what Puff was promoting, or his brand,” Mia explained in court. Asked by Steel how should could have considered Combs to be a best friend, Mia replied: “I guess we can ask my therapist.”

Mia testified she experienced dread and anxiety any time Combs was unhappy because the psychological abuse and physical violence was tied to her boss’s moods.

“I was in fear any time Puff wasn’t happy — I wanted to make sure he was because I knew I was safe,” she testified, echoing similar testimony from Cassie Ventura earlier in the trial.

“The highs were high and the lows were low,” she repeated multiple times during her testimony. “Of course you post the great times.”

“Instagram was a place to show how great your life was, even if it was not,” she testified. “Back then, at least, you didn’t post the low points."

In her testimony, Mia repeatedly emphasized that her abuse occurred prior to the #MeToo era of accountability and awareness around sexual violence.

“Adults [who] I thought were authority figures … they all upheld his behavior,” she testified Friday. “Nobody was there to say these things that were happening were wrong. There was nobody around us that ever even flinched at his behavior." She added: “There were no streaming documentaries.”

During direct questioning by prosecutors earlier on Friday, Mia testified she retained employment lawyers in 2017 to help her negotiate a severance and bonuses. She said Kristina Khorram — Combs’ longtime chief of staff, who spoke with her on behalf of Combs — believed the assistant had “stabbed him in the back” by lawyering up for severance negotiations.

While her original settlement offer sought $10 million from Combs and his companies, Mia’s attorneys ultimately settled for around $400,000 after months of negotiations. Of that, Mia said she only received about $200,000 after the lawyers’ fees.

Combs, 55, is standing trial on a five-count indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

If convicted on all charges, he faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life. He has pleaded not guilty.

The 12-person jury is composed of eight men and four women. There are six alternates: four women, and two men.

The trial, now in its third week, was expected to run up to eight weeks into early July. Prosecutors said Wednesday they appear to be running ahead of schedule.

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