Her name has come up so often at Sean Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial, a defense lawyer suggested Tuesday that the government’s case appears to “hinge largely” on her alleged actions behind the scenes.
She’s Combs’ former chief of staff, the woman the music mogul called his most loyal lieutenant in a 2021 Facebook post. “She’s been my right hand for the last 8 years and has consistently proven to execute and get shit done. Don’t know how I’d function without her,” he wrote.
For more than a year, Kristina Khorram has been out of the public eye, remaining silent beyond a written statement calling the allegations against her “disturbing and unthinkable.” On Tuesday, prosecutors rested their case without calling Khorram to the witness stand. Combs’ lawyers then mounted a 25-minute defense without calling anyone at all.
After six weeks of sometimes tedious testimony, the trial’s sudden race to the finish line likely had jurors scratching their heads, wondering what happened to Khorram – and why neither side put her on the stand.
One legal expert says prosecutors may have interviewed Khorram but ultimately decided summoning her under subpoena was “too risky.” Instead, they apparently decided it was easier to tell their version of her story through text messages and what was found on her seized devices.
“She’s been very loyal to Combs. I’m not saying she wouldn’t be truthful on the stand, but what is your truth?” Alyse Adamson, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, tells Rolling Stone. “The government was trying to thread a needle by demonstrating that Kristina was complicit in some of these acts, but there might be another side where she wasn’t quite as in the loop, or she was trying to deescalate some of these things with Combs, not encouraging them. And that can be very confusing in the context of the RICO, where you want these folks acting with a unified purpose in furtherance of a corrupt enterprise.”
It’s also possible Khorram made it clear she planned to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and prosecutors didn’t want to give her immunity. Adamson says not calling her at all was a “tactical decision” with a possible downside. She says the defense could capitalize on the move in closing arguments, claiming “there are critical missing pieces that all add up to reasonable doubt,” because “Where’s Kristina?”
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Of course, jurors might also wonder why Combs didn’t call Khorram himself. But the defense made a tactical move as well, experts say. By resting so quickly with no witnesses, Combs’ lawyers likely hoped to suggest prosecutors put on such a shoddy case, the prudent response was to simply rely on reasonable doubt.
One expert said it’s possible Khorram was such a wild card, even Combs considered her a gamble. “I can only surmise the prosecution may have felt she might provide exculpatory testimony benefitting the defense, and the defense may have felt that what she allegedly saw or did as his assistant might be potentially useful to the prosecution,” Brad Bailey, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney in Boston, tells Rolling Stone. “That’s usually the reason a theoretically percipient witness is not called by either side.”
Prosecutors didn’t identify Khorram by name in their opening statement. Instead, they said Combs “relied on an inner circle of people closest to him, like his bodyguards, chiefs of staff, and other high-ranking employees who ran all aspects of his life.”
But Khorram was by Combs’ side when he was detained at Miami Opa-Locka Airport while Homeland Security agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach last year. Investigators later seized two cell phones linked back to Khorram and a laptop found in her suitcase. The devices contained contacts, texts, screenshots, and documents admitted during the trial through other witnesses.
Prosecutors say the evidence skimmed from the devices supports their allegations that Combs sex-trafficked two ex-girlfriends: the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a woman who testified pseudonymously as Jane. The material also helped prosecutors piece together Combs’ alleged bribery of the hotel security guards who handed over video showing Combs’ brutal assault of Ventura in a hallway of L.A.’s now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel, they said.
Without the jury in the room, Combs’ lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro, argued Tuesday that Combs deserved an immediate acquittal because there was no clear line connecting Combs’ alleged co-conspirators to the purported sex-trafficking of Ventura and Jane.
Shapiro placed Khorram, also known as KK, at the top of the list. “The government’s case really seems to hinge largely on their allegations about KK,” and the evidence fell short, she said. To bolster her argument, Shapiro pointed to text messages between Combs and Jane from April 24, 2023. In the exchange, Combs asked Jane to set up a hotel threesome with a male escort and suggested he was hiding it from Khorram. “You find place. I can’t have KK know. Damn,” Combs texted.
For their part, prosecutors allege Khorram, 38, knew what was happening with Jane. On June 13, they called Combs’ former assistant, Jonathan Perez, to the stand and asked him about a “freak-off” video that another colleague found on one of Combs’ iPads in 2022. Perez said the video showed Jane and a male escort “engaging in sexual activity” while Combs was visible in the background. Perez said he brought the issue to Khorram immediately, and that about six months later, Khorram secretly recorded a January 2023 conversation with him regarding the video.
Jurors also saw a text that Jane sent to Khorram on Dec. 28, 2023 in which Jane told Khorram that Combs allegedly threatened to share intimate video of her. “He said that he would expose me and send them to my child’s father. He has been bothering me for two months,” Jane wrote to Khorram in the text.
Prosecutors explicitly called Khorram an “agent and co-conspirator” earlier this month in comments to the court. She purportedly started working for Combs in 2013, but Shapiro said Tuesday that Khorram “doesn’t really even appear in the evidence in any significant way until March of 2016.” During Ventura’s four gut-wrenching days on the witness stand, she told jurors she communicated with Khorram “every day” in the latter half of her relationship with Combs. She said Khorram reached out to her directly after the incident at the InterContinental to let her know Combs was looking for her.
About six months later, Khorram and Ventura communicated again. According to a screenshot found on one of Khorram’s devices, Ventura texted Khorram in the days after Combs allegedly dangled Ventura’s friend Bryana “Bana” Bongolan over Ventura’s 17th floor balcony in September 2016.
“Hey, I just found out some crazy shit,” Ventura told Khorram in the screenshot dated Sept. 30, 2016. “He came into my house while my friends were here, and we were all sleeping. They woke me up. He was ringing the bell crazy at 3 a m. And when he came in, I went to my room, and he went to Bana and choked her, then dangled her feet off of the balcony. This is crazy. … I have to stay away.”
It was on Khorram’s phone that investigators also found images of the photo IDs for the hotel security guards who allegedly accepted a $100,000 “bribe” from Combs to cover up the incriminating video showing Combs kicking and dragging Ventura at the InterContinental. Security guard Eddy Garcia testified that it was Khorram who started reaching out repeatedly in the hours after the incident on March 5, 2016.
Garcia told jurors that Khorram first called him on the security desk, asking to view the video. She said Combs had been intoxicated and “didn’t remember exactly” what happened, Garcia testified. When Garcia told Khorram to contact hotel management or get a subpoena, she allegedly appeared in the hotel lobby a short time later, looking for him. Garcia said Khorram later called him on his personal phone and put Combs on the line. He said she also was present at the meeting when Combs handed over the brown paper bag stuffed with $100,000.
A copy of the non-disclosure agreement that Garcia signed in connection with the video was found on the laptop packed in Khorram’s luggage, prosecutors said. The government previously told U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian that Khorram was “acting in furtherance of the conspiracy” when she allegedly helped broker the video deal. Prosecutors say the alleged bribery is a predicate of the racketeering offense in count one of Combs’ indictment.
When Jane testified as Victim-2, she recalled dealing closely with Khorram as well. Jane said it was Khorram who helped place her in a shower after she had a bad reaction and almost “started convulsing” from some Ecstasy that Combs allegedly gave her during a trip to Turks and Caicos in 2021, at the start of their relationship.
Khorram first became associated with Combs’ sex-trafficking allegations when she was named in civil lawsuits filed against Combs starting in early 2024. In one, music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones compared Khorram to Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite who’s now serving 20 years in prison for helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex trafficking.
Khorram finally broke her silence after another former Combs assistant, Phillip Pines, named her as a co-defendant in a December 2024 lawsuit and detailed his allegations in a sit-down interview for the ID docuseries The Fall of Diddy, made in partnership with Rolling Stone Films. In his complaint and a subsequent interview with Rolling Stone, Pines said Khorram was his supervisor when he was dispatched to furnish drugs, baby oil, and other items to Combs during the extended hotel stays that Pines knew as “wild king nights.” Pines claimed he witnessed Combs turn violent with a woman at Combs’ Miami home in January 2021, kicking her in the stomach. When Pines told Khorram how upset he was, she allegedly told him there would be “repercussions” if he ever spoke about it again.
“For months, horrific accusations have been made about me in various lawsuits regarding my former boss. These false allegations of my involvement are causing irreparable and incalculable damage to my reputation and the emotional well-being of myself and my family,” Khorram said in her statement issued in March. “I have never condoned or aided and abetted the sexual assault of anyone. Nor have I ever drugged anyone. The idea that I could be accused of playing a role in – or even being a bystander to – the rape of anyone is beyond upsetting, disturbing, and unthinkable. That is not who I am and my heart goes out to all victims of sexual assault. I am confident that the allegations against me will be proven to be untrue.”
Combs was arrested in September and has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy. If convicted as charged, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
From Rolling Stone US
