Federal prosecutors in the sex-trafficking trial of the hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs finished their three-day questioning of the alleged victim no. 2, a woman who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane. The social-media influencer dated the rapper for three years, until a month before his arrest in September 2024, and told the jury that Mr. Combs is still paying her attorney fees and her rent. On Monday, Jane also spoke about incidents of physical violence. The defense will begin its cross-examination on Tuesday. 

The final question an assistant United States attorney, Maurene Comey, asked her witness on Monday was how she felt now about her ex-boyfriend, the defendant.

“I just pray for his continued healing. I pray for peace for him,” Jane said. 

The witness, a single mother who was testifying under a subpoena, had told the jury last week how she met the rapper in 2021 and how she fell in love with him, as the Sun reported. But eventually Mr. Combs asked her to participate in what she called “hotel nights,” during which she would have to take drugs and have sex with male prostitutes while Mr. Combs watched and pleasured himself. These “hotel nights” could sometimes last up to 30 hours, or even several days. 

Jane had also told the jury that she relocated to California from the East Coast in 2021 and that Mr. Combs was paying her rent and giving her money every month, either in cash or via wire transfer. 

On Monday, the jury saw a series of text messages in which Jane voiced her aversion to the hotel nights.

“It’s dark, sleazy, and makes me feel disgusted with myself,” Jane said in a text message to Mr. Combs in September 2023, adding, “I don’t want to feel obligated to perform these nights with you in fear of losing the roof over my head.”

“I’m not a porn star,” she said in a text to Mr. Combs the next month. “I’m not an animal. I need a break.”

She also detailed an incident that allegedly occurred on June 14, 2024, two months before Mr. Combs’s arrest. Jane testified she remembered the date because it was “a very terrible day.” She said they had planned for a date night in the house where she lived in Los Angeles, after Mr. Combs returned from a trip to Utah. 

Jane testified that she believed he had taken another woman with him on this trip, one who was 25 years younger than him. Jane said she began accusing him of being a pedophile and cursing at him. At one point, the witness said, he was tying his shoe and she took his head and banged it into a marble countertop. Jane said that he had no visible injuries. She continued her jealous rage by throwing candles across the room.

As the fight began to escalate, she said, she attempted to lock herself in the master bedroom, but Mr. Combs kicked in the door. She then ran into the bathroom and tried to lock the door there, but again Mr. Combs was able to kick the door down, knocking it from its hinges. She tried the master closet because she figured, she said, she may need something to wear, but Mr. Combs managed to tear that door down, too. 

Jane then ran to the front door, but Mr. Combs caught up with her. “Sean kicked me from the back of my thigh and I fell down on my butt and then he picked me up in a chokehold and choked me.”

She said the defendant lifted her up, holding her so tightly that “I couldn’t breathe, and I was on my tippy toes.” She was able to free herself from his hold and ran outside, barefoot, and hid in the street six blocks away before she returned to the house, thinking that Mr. Combs would be gone. But he wasn’t. 

“I went on a really long way back to our residence, and I was, like, I walked like half a mile or so in the middle of the night, and I was just walking back thinking that he wasn’t going to be there, and I thought that within that timeframe he’d be gone by now. … When I turned the corner, I saw Sean walking towards me.” 

She said they quietly walked back to the house. “I was scared, but I was quiet and I just kept walking back to the house because I didn’t want to wake up the neighbors,” Jane said.

She went straight into the guest bedroom and locked the door, but Mr. Combs, who had followed her into the house, tore the door down again. She ran onto the patio and he followed, and there they began punching and kicking each other, she said. 

“I punched him and then he punched me,” she said. But she didn’t cause any injuries, she said, while he punched her in her forehead and in her eye. Eventually she ran to a grassy area and went down to the ground and curled up in a ball. 

“He started punching my head. He started kicking me. He started saying all kinds of things and just kept punching me,” Jane testified.

Then, he grabbed her by her arm and hair and began dragging her back to the house. When she looked in the mirror, she said, she had a “golf-ball-sized” swelling on her forehead and a bruised eye. Mr. Combs, however, allegedly said, “we’re not gonna end the night like this.” She was told, she testified, to put some ice on her head and apply some makeup, and to get ready for the guest they were expecting, a male prostitute. 

“He said, ‘Just put some makeup on, put your hair to the side, you’ll be fine,’” Jane remembered. According to her testimony, Mr. Combs then gave her an ecstasy pill that she did not want to take. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to,” Jane remembered telling Mr. Combs, as she began to cry on the witness stand. 

That’s when Mr. Combs, she said, moved his face close to hers and asked, “Is this coercion?” As she testified, Jane broke down crying in the courtroom. 

She said that the male prostitute arrived, and she first performed oral sex on him, which felt like it took “forever,” and then proceeded to have sex with him, as Mr. Combs watched and pleasured himself. 

In the following days, she said, Mr. Combs had an assistant send her $10,000 to $12,000 to repair the doors he had damaged in her house. 

The alleged violent incident took place, Jane said, in June 2024, three months before Mr. Combs was arrested, and several months after officers from Homeland Security, which investigates “trafficking,” had raided his homes in Miami and in Los Angeles. 

Jane testified that she was dating Mr. Combs when the raids occurred and that officers from Homeland Security left a business card at her home. She said she never contacted the officers, but soon after the raids Mr. Combs hired an attorney to represent her and she is still being represented by that attorney. Mr. Combs is still covering the legal fees. 

“Who has paid for the lawyer the whole time you’ve had that lawyer?” the prosecution asked, referring to the lawyer currently representing her. Jane said, “Sean.”

Earlier in the day, the witness testified about her reaction when she heard about and eventually read the explosive lawsuit that Mr. Combs’s former long-time girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura, filed against him in November 2023. 

In that lawsuit, Ms. Ventura alleged and detailed more than a decade of physical and sexual abuse. The lawsuit was settled in one day, but because it was briefly made public, it is credited with having laid the groundwork for the criminal case. During her testimony at the trial, Ms. Ventura disclosed for the first time to the public that Mr. Combs paid her $20 million to settle the case. 

On Monday, Jane said that when she read the lawsuit, she felt like “I’m reading my own story.” She said she sent Mr. Combs a text message, “I was just in a complete state of shock, just messaging him, and just like, ‘What is this?’” 

Another text message she sent to the defendant, which was shown to the jury, read: “The sick part is you knew this was coming and you gaslit me and made me feel crazy about the sex trauma I was developing knowing you’ve been here before.” 

Another text message stated, “It’s all so clear that this was sexual exploitation that you framed as love for your sick fetishes.” 

Mr. Combs didn’t respond for two days, until he eventually sent a text asking her to call him. The phone call was recorded by his assistant, Kristina Khorram, and recovered from her phone.

On the call, Mr. Combs told Jane that their “hotel nights” were “just some kinky s— that I thought that we both — you know what I’m saying — enjoyed.” He added, “I need you to be there for me.” And he told her she would not need to worry, he would still be covering her rent. 

The jury was shown more text messages that Jane sent to Mr. Combs in the weeks after the lawsuit had made headlines. 

Jane wrote: “Please stop using women for your fetish” and “leave women alone who don’t want to do those nights with you. Hire prostitutes and stop emotionally harming women that love you.” 

When the prosecutor asked her why she never told anyone else about these “hotel nights,” Jane replied, “Because it was just a shameful dark secret of mine.”

During a Facetime call, the witness said, sometime in December, Mr. Combs asked her to “charge” him for the trouble he caused her, “charge me for your resentment,” he allegedly said to her.

So Jane wrote the defendant a long text message explaining her feelings and eventually giving him a monetary amount that she deemed fit. The message was shown to the jury. Jane expressed that she felt that she “couldn’t concentrate for three years” and that she felt “extremely exploited … heartbroken and manipulated” by him. 

She wrote that she “lost many work opportunities” as she followed him around, “being high and coerced into this dark and humiliating lifestyle.” 

“Meanwhile, my peers and colleagues excelled in both meaningful personal relationships and financial stability whereas in three years I turned down work opportunities and healthy relationships to later — to cater to all of your exhausting fetishes and needs,” Jane wrote. 

Because she felt “sexually exploited, mentally damaged and emotionally drained,” she asked him for $100,000 per year, 15 months of rent, and $450,000 “to move on from the resentment of feeling exploited, manipulated, heartbroken, drugged and all the loss of potential income.” 

Mr. Combs’s short answer, she said, was “F— you.” He later elaborated by calling her an opportunist, a liar, and a con artist, and according to her testimony threatened to show videos of her having sex with male prostitutes to the father of her child. When Jane told Ms. Combs’s assistant about the threats, the assistant said she would hide the videos and advised her to give Mr. Combs “some space.” 

The couple took a three-month break, she testified, before they got back together again. Then, when CNN in May 2024 first aired the now infamous hotel video showing Mr. Combs kicking and dragging his ex-girlfriend, Ms. Ventura, through a hotel hallway in Los Angeles, Jane said she was with Mr. Combs at his residence in Miami.

Jane testified that Mr. Combs’s son came into the bedroom and told the couple “something happened.” Jane said that she first left Mr. Combs alone with his friends and family to deal with the situation, but was later invited to join the support circle that planned and discussed an apology video that Mr. Combs released that same day. She said Mr. Combs also consulted her on the statement he posted on Instagram, where he also issued an apology for his violent behavior. 

About a month after the hotel-assault video went viral, shocking his fans and cementing his downfall, he allegedly beat Jane at her house after she accused him of taking a trip with another woman. 

During opening statements, Mr. Combs’s defense attorney, Teny Geragos, daughter of a celebrity lawyer, Mark Geragos, told the jury that her client takes full responsibility for the violence but emphasized that he is not charged with assault nor with domestic violence. 

However, Mr. Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, which requires the prosecution to prove two “criminal acts,” and one of those several criminal acts listed in the indictment is assault. 

In addition to the racketeering charge, Mr. Combs faces two counts of sex trafficking and two counts of transportation for the purpose of prostitution. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Mr. Combs has denied all allegations and pleaded not guilty to all charges.  

One of his defense attorneys, Alexandra Shapiro, filed a mistrial motion on Saturday, alleging that the prosecution brought “demonstrably false” evidence related to the allegation that Mr. Combs dangled Bryana Bongolan, a longtime friend of Ms. Ventura, off a 17th-floor apartment balcony in Los Angeles in 2016.

The Sun reported on Ms. Bongolan’s testimony, during which she told the jury that Mr. Combs first placed her feet on the bannister of the balcony and then threw her onto the balcony furniture. 

Ms. Bongolan showed the jury a photograph of her bruised neck. The metadata of the photograph proved that the photo of the bruise was taken on September 26, 2016. During cross-examination, the defense presented hotel receipts that proved that Mr. Combs had stayed at the Trump International Hotel in New York from September 24 to September 29, 2016, because he had a concert in New Jersey on September 25.   

“The government knew or should have known this testimony was perjured, and that Ms. Bongolan could not possibly have been injured by Mr. Combs on a Los Angeles balcony in the early morning hours of September 26, or even the day before that,” Ms. Shapiro wrote.

When confronted with the hotel receipts during the cross-examination, the witness remained steadfast and insisted that the incident occurred in late September. Prosecutors further argued that the balcony incident could have easily taken place on September 23, and the injury could have been photographed three days later. 

On Monday, the presiding district judge, Arun Subramanian, told the attorneys that he would give the prosecution a chance to respond to the mistrial motion and then make a decision.

Jane’s testimony will resume on Tuesday.