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Sean Combs’ former personal assistant Mia took the stand for a second day Friday, telling jurors the music mogul terrorized her with onslaughts of hostile messages, threatened to “frame” his alleged assaults of her as consensual, and once kicked her off a yacht for counting money too slow.
Testifying under the pseudonym Mia, the woman who worked for Combs from 2009 to 2017 recalled Combs sending her to South Africa as support for his then-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura but then angrily ordering her back with a barrage of 48 missed calls and texts sent while she was sleeping.
“If you dont call me now fuck it all. And imma tell everything. And dont ever speak me again. You have 2 min. Fuck her. Call my [house] now or never speak to me again,” Combs wrote in one message. “Let’s go to war.”
Mia said Ventura was in South Africa shooting a movie and had stopped answering Combs’ calls because she believed he was cheating on her with a woman named Gina. By that time in 2015, Combs allegedly had sexually assaulted Mia more than once, she previously testified. Mia told jurors Friday that Combs threatened to lie to Ventura that his alleged assaults of Mia were consensual if she didn’t intervene and smooth things over with Ventura.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser at Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan, Mia recalled speaking with Combs by phone that day and then sharing her distress with his chief of staff, Kristina Khorram. “He doesn’t sound in his right mind at the moment,” she wrote to Khorram in a message shared in court. Mia said Combs had been “slurring” on the phone, saying irrational things and threatening her life.
Mia said Combs also threatened to cancel a show she was developing that had just received a green light from ABC. “It was the most exciting thing to happen in my life, and he was threatening to take it all away,” Mia told jurors. Her testimony about Combs’ ultimatums could prove pivotal if jurors view it as evidence Combs attempted to use his business empire and its employees to control and coerce Ventura into sex-trafficking.
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Mia also told jurors Combs threatened her another time when she was working for him on a yacht in St. Barts while he was vacationing with Kim Porter and his family for the New Year’s Eve holiday leading into 2011. Mia said Combs became irate while she was handling money from his safe, telling her she was counting too slow.
“He told me, ‘You better learn to walk on water like Jesus, bitch. Get the fuck out of here,’” Mia testified, telling jurors that a crew member took her to shore after she was banished from the boat. She said Combs later ordered her back. She complied because she was in a foreign country and thought she would be fired otherwise.
Mia testified that after Ventura filed her bombshell sex-trafficking lawsuit against Combs in November 2023, Combs’ long-time security guard D-Roc reached out to her, saying Combs was trying to reach her. She believed he was testing her “to make sure I wasn’t a threat,” she testified.
Mia said D-Roc later asked for her contact information so he could send her what she believed was money. “Let me know how I can send you something,” he texted. When she gently waved off the attempt, D-Roc responded, “I’m allowed to send my sister a gift.”
She said Combs texted her and tried to call her directly, but she threw her phone behind her couch. “It was so triggering,” she testified. “I had to come up with a game plan. I wanted to play dumb. I didn’t want to be in danger.”
During her testimony Thursday, Mia broke down sobbing as she alleged Combs would sporadically and randomly sexually assault her throughout her employment. She said the alleged sexual assaults took place at Combs’ 40th birthday party at New York’s Plaza Hotel in 2009, while she slept in a staff bunk bed at his sprawling Los Angeles home about a year later, and inside his bedroom closet as she packed for him another time.
“It would go so oddly spaced out where I would never think that it would happen again,” she said. “There was no time to stop and think and reflect or anything. Just keep it moving like it never happened.”
Mia said she was kept off-kilter working around the clock for Combs with little sleep. She was expected to be at Combs’ beck and call for his every whim, once losing her vision and hearing from sheer exhaustion, she said.
Their professional relationship was a rollercoaster of highs and terrifying lows, she said. On good days, Mia was promised executive roles at Combs’ companies and felt the two were best friends. Other times, “he treated me like I was a worthless piece of crap,” Mia testified, detailing instances where Combs threw spaghetti at her, crushed her arm in a heavy door; and placed her on unpaid leave for daring to leave a hotel without his permission.
Like many other former Bad Boy employees who have already testified against Combs, Mia said she witnessed Combs become violent with Ventura on a number of occasions. “I’ve seen him attack her,” she said. “I’ve seen him throw her on the ground. I’ve seen him crack her head open.”
There was only one time Mia said she saw Ventura in the middle of a freak-off, which she knew as “hotel nights.” She was summoned to Combs’ hotel room in New York City to drop off some supplies, she said. Mia testified that Ventura answered the door in a bright blue wig, looking “like she was struggling.” Mia said she voiced concern, but Ventura quickly said she was okay and shut the door.
Mia was nervous throughout her testimony Thursday and Friday, barely looking up in the courtroom and choking out her words as she described the alleged assaults. “It is the most traumatizing — it’s the worst thing and most shameful thing that ever happened to me,” she told the court.
Combs, meanwhile, appeared to be unfazed, only passing a few sticky notes to his team of attorneys.
Under cross-examination by Combs’ lawyer Brian Steel, Mia was presented with a series of seemingly warm messages and social media posts she wrote to and about Combs in the years after he allegedly first sexually assaulted her. She said social media is a forum to show the best parts of your life, not the worst.
In one Instagram exchange in 2014, Mia reposted a birthday message from Combs. In the post, Combs wrote, “Beside every great man is a great woman” and, “Ps sorry I was acting crazy last night.” Mia told jurors that the apology was warranted. “He had threatened my life on the phone the night before and I guess this was his apology,” Mia testified.
“Nicest caption ever, thanks puff, love you, you’ve shown me the world,” Mia wrote in her repost of the message shared in court. Steel asked if it made sense that Mia posted such a glowing message during a time when Combs allegedly was subjecting her to unbearable abuse and had just threatened her life.
“Yes of course,” she testified. She said it was her job to promote Combs, and she feared upsetting him. She told jurors she felt safest when she was in Combs’ good graces. She also was trying to protect her family, she said. “I didn’t want my family to see the misery I was in,” she testified.
Mia said she stopped working for Combs in March 2017, a few months after learning that Combs was shutting down Revolt Films — a business arm she had been heavily involved in. “I saw snot dripping down my nose,” she said of her reaction to the devastating news. Mia said she retained employment lawyers to secure severance, unpaid bonuses and overtime pay. It infuriated Combs, she said, with the mogul allegedly telling her she had “essentially stabbed him in the back” and was “going against him.”
Mia said after nearly a year of negotiations with Combs and his attorneys, she received roughly $200,000. Mia testified she now struggles to hold down a job, saying she suffers from complex PTSD as a result of Comb’ alleged abuse.
Before the jury returned from lunch, defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo argued that a video of Mia wishing Combs a happy birthday in 2013 was fair game to show jurors even though the defense missed a deadline to admit it. He claimed that Mia’s devastated demeanor on the stand was an “act,” so the defense deserved a chance to undermine her testimony, according to CNN. The judge excluded the video as an exhibit but said Combs’ camp could ask Mia about it.
Mia testified she was able to wish Combs a happy birthday year after year, despite the date being the anniversary of the first time Combs allegedly sexually assaulted her, because she suppressed the purported attack. “I tried to forget that night and shove it down,” she reportedly told jurors. “I never wanted to think about it again.”
She refused to back down when challenged over the accuracy of her testimony. “What I said in this courtroom is true. I have not lied to anyone at all,” Mia said Friday. She said people in Combs’ world “normalized” his behavior, and she was a “people pleaser” and “rule follower” by nature.
“I just wanted to do my best and make everybody happy all the time. So I tend to take a lot more than normal people. I don’t know how to explain that. I don’t know if I should apologize for that. I forgive people all the time for things,” she testified, according to CNN.
Mia is one of two witnesses who the court is allowing to use a pseudonym after she declared that testifying about “extremely sensitive” details under her real name would result in “humiliating and retraumatizing publicity.” She is identified as Victim-4 in the Southern District of New York’s criminal indictment against Combs, with her allegations tied to the racketeering charge against the music mogul.
Combs, 55, 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.
Combs’ lawyers say he was a “swinger” who indulged his “kinky” proclivities with other consenting adults. They’ve acknowledged Ventura was the victim of an episode of domestic violence at the InterContinental hotel in 2016, but they deny Combs was a sex trafficker.
Prosecutors claim Combs ran a criminal enterprise that manipulated women, including Ventura, into drug-fueled, highly orchestrated sex marathons with male escorts that Combs watched and recorded. They say Combs relied on the employees, vast wealth, and influence of his “multi-faceted business empire” to fulfill his sexual desires through crimes including sex trafficking, physical assault, threats, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
From Rolling Stone US
