Alert – President Trump reveals whether he’d pardon Diddy if mogul is convicted in sex trafficking trial: Live updates

Trump was asked on Friday if he would pardon his former friend Diddy if he is convicted of sex-trafficking.

First, the president noted that Fox News’ Peter Doucey was the first to ask him the question even though many have been wondering.

‘I know people are thinking about it,’ the president said.

‘First of all, I’d look at what’s happening… I haven’t spoken to him in years. He really liked me a lot.’

To hear all the explosive testimony from singer Cassie Ventura and the other witnesses in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ trial, tune in to Daily Mail’s hit podcast The Trial.

From sworn testimony to video evidence and the rapper’s every subtle move, our team of journalists take you inside the courtroom of the world’s biggest celebrity case.

Daily Mail has been following Diddy’s downfall from the very beginning. Join us as we hear from experts involved in the case, and members of the rapper’s inside circle.

The mogul’s trial is not being televised, and recording devices are not allowed in the courtroom, because it is a federal case.

Federal trials generally do not allow recording devices.

Diddy’s lawyers have continued showing Mia messages and images that show her being loving to the music mogul in order to discredit her testimony.

When asked how she could say nice things to her aleged tormentor, she told the court that she is currently unraveling ‘a lot of this in therapy.’

‘That could be explained with any sexual assault victim and the shame they carry,’ Mia replied.

‘When you’re in it… I was young and manipulated and eager to survive…

‘I’m unraveling a lot of this now in therapy. Nobody was there to say these things were wrong

‘There were no documentaries, nobody around us that even flinched at his behavior. I don’t know how to explain that…

‘I was always in trouble and finding a way not to be in trouble.’

Diddy’s ex-assistant Capricorn Clark exposed the mogul's list of celebrity enemies and many other A-listers have come up in testimony.

The trial has even inspired deep fake videos that use AI-generated images to falsely claim that certain celebrities, such as Oprah and Jennifer Lawrence, have been mentioned in the mogul’s sex-trafficking case.

Here is a list of all the celebrities talked about in the trial so far:

Judge Arun Subramanian admonished Diddy’s attorney after they tried to sumbit last-minute video evidence to discredit Mia’s testimony that Diddy horribly abused her for years.

The defense introduced a video that showed Mia wishing Diddy a happy birthday in 2013. They said it would show the jury that ‘her affect on the stand is an act.’

‘We found this video on the internet,’ lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo told the judge.

‘I think there were people on the internet who figured out who Mia is…. we received emails from random people with the same video.’

But the judge denied the request of the defense in a stern tone saying they violated the rules to submit evidence.

‘Court’s order is very clear, if you don’t turn over those exhibits you need to establish good cause,’ he said.

‘If someone sent this to you at 1am yesterday that’s something but if you had this video in your possession for the past week, two weeks and you only decided to produce it now that’s a different story. I don’t think you’ve thought through this,’ the judge added.

The jaw-dropping images showed the guns, drugs, industrial quantities of ‘freak off’ paraphernalia and boxes of women’s high heels that were seized by investigators from Combs’ $40 million home on the ultra-exclusive Star Island.

Deonte Nash told the jury earlier this week that he witnessed Diddy threatening to release videos of Cassie having sex with other men.

He said he heard Diddy telling Cassie he would send the tapes to her parents’ workplaces if she did not do as the mogul told her to.

Nash said he told Cassie that she should let Diddy release the videos since he was also on them and would be affected.

But Cassie then apparently told him ‘[Diddy] wasn’t on the videos, it was [Diddy] taping her with other guys…. [She said] she was having sex with the other guys.’

Cassie then reportedly told Nash she did not want to have sex with other men but was doing it because ‘Puff wanted her to.’

Diddy’s team will continue cross-examining Mia after a lunch break.

‘How do you have a good moment with [Sean Combs] when you’re terrified of him?’ Diddy lawyer Brian Steel asked Mia during cross examination.

‘It’s easy because the dynamics would shift. When things were good you felt really safe and you almost forget about those things,’ she answered.

‘I said that when he was abusive I was in horrific fear. I was in fear any moment that were not the best friend good moments.’

She claimed the sexual abuse was ‘too horrible to think about’ and wanted it to ‘go away.’

In November 2012 while attending the star-studded premiere of the Brad Pitt film Killing Them Softly, Diddy subtly attacked Ventura.

Testifying to the court on Thursday, Mia said: ‘I was sitting with Puff and Cass and it was silent and Puff was talking to Cass but talking like this with his teeth clenched in an aggressive way.

‘I looked over and he was digging his nails into her arm.’

The mogul’s family has remained supportive of him, attending the trial on most days.

His daughters attended the first week but have stayed away since then.

Diddy’s attorney Brian Steel questioned Mia about images she posted on social media that appeared to show her having a good time.

One of the images from July, 2013, showed Mia on vacation with Cassie with the caption: ‘Custom made Cabo bracelets because it’s funny… #richasf**k’

Another from October, 2013, showed Diddy and was captioned: ‘Just the no.1 on the Forbes list getting me a vanilla latte. No big deal… Reglar people s**t.’

Steel then asked Mia if Diddy was ‘the person terorizing her.’

‘Yes,’ she replied.

Steel then read a birthday message Mia wrote for Diddy in 2013, four years after he allegedly raped her.

The text read: ‘Thank you for constantly inspiring me and giving me an extended family…

‘You are forever one of my greatest friends

Thank you for being funny. You’re really fu****g funny. I love you.’

After reading the message, Mia told the jury: ‘I wrote this because Instagram was a place to show how great your life was even if it’s not true.

‘I had his fans following me…I didn’t want my family and friends to know the misery I was in so of course you post the great times… The highs were high and the lows were low and he also saw my Instagram.’

The prosecution has concluded their questioning of Mia, who says Diddy abused her physically and sexually when he worked as his personal assitant.

Now the mogul’s attorney, Brian Steel, will cross-examine her in an attempt to defend the claims she made againt Diddy during hours on the stand.

On Friday, Mia testified that she has tried to work since her ten year tenure with Diddy but she has not been able to.

She explained that she suffers from ‘complex, severe’ PTSD after working for him.

‘I would be triggered by really normal situations with an overwhelming sense of fear, being in trouble,’ she explained, such as ‘misinterpreting simple emails.’

‘If someone says where are you [I would start] freaking out and trying to explain where I was and why I was there. [The other person would say] I just wanted to see if you want to get coffee.

‘If someone said my name from across the room, all those feelings of getting in trouble wold come flooding back.’

She said Diddy caused those feelings for her.

Several witnesses have said on the stand that Diddy’s friend Damion Butler, known as D-Roc, was one of the people making sure the mogul always got what he wanted.

The court has heard that D-Roc and his wife were some of the people who usually got Cassie to come back to Diddy after incidents of violence.

D-Roc gained notoriety as the right-hand man of the late rap legend Biggie Smalls.

On Friday, Mia said that D-Roc called her at the end of November 2023 to discuss the violence between Cassie and Diddy after Cassie filed her civil lawsuit against Diddy.

After what Mia initially thought to be a normal phone call between her and D-Roc, he started to say ‘you know Puff and Cass they would fight like a normal couple.’

She explained: ‘My radar went off I was like that’s not how D-Roc talks and D-Roc was around that a lot.’

‘He sounded nervous and was talking in circles saying the same idea and said “your boy Puff he misses you.” We were reminiscing about old family and he started talking about old people who were around, as though the agreed with the same sentiment, as though they were a normal couple who fought.’

After the phone call, Mia testified that she ignored several more phone call attempts from both D-Roc and Diddy as she felt terrified, threatened and scared.

On Feb 4th, 2024, Diddy consequently texted her:

‘Hey I don’t wanna be blowing up your phone. Just needed to talk to you for 10 minutes. Just need my memory jogged on some things. You were my right hand for years so I just to speak to you to remember who was even around me.’

Mia told the court that she was first sexually assaulted by Diddy during his 40th birthday party in 2009 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, which was attended by many celebrities like Bono, Denzel Washington, Kim Kardashian, Gayle King and Al Sharpton.

She said the mogul approached her in the kitchen and complimented her on her work before pouring shots for her.

‘I felt like they hit me kind of hard,’ she said of the drinks.

‘I was in my 20s in New York. Two shots would not have made me feel that way.’

Mia told the jury what happened next: ‘He was talking and all of a sudden his face [was] far closer, my eyes couldn’t focus on his face because it was so close.

‘I didn’t really know what was happening… he put his am next to my head against the wall and leaned in to kiss me and put his other hand up the side of my dress.’

Mia said she did not want to kiss Diddy or have his hand up her dress.

‘I was shocked and I froze. I didn’t even process what was happening,’ she added.

The next morning, she woke up clothed on a chair in the mainroom of the penthouse Diddy had rented.

Martha Stewart takes a picture of Diddy at the party below.

Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner.

Media executive Lorne Michaels (L) stand swith Sean 'Diddy' Combs (R).

Gail King and son Will Bumpus.

Mia told the court that during a trip to South Africa, Diddy kept threatening her job because Cassie would not pick up his calls.

She said that Diddy’s right-hand woman, Kristina Khorram, would also repeatedly call and text repeating the threats, though in a kinder tone.

One text from Khorram to Mia read: ‘He just called me again….he does not want to listen and said you need to call him him now.

‘Mia I’m sorry I don’t know what else to do, If you don’t call him in the next two minutes you don’t have a job.’

When Mia eventually picked up his phone calls, she explained that Diddy was ‘slurring quite a bit and saying irrational things. Threatening my job, threatening to kill me, lots of threats.’

The threats made her feel ‘panicked, terrified, and really, really sad.’ She described how she went on to have horrible night terrors and anxiety about Diddy during that trip.

Mia said on Thursday that sometime in 2009 or 2010, she woke up in Diddy’s Los Angeles home and he was on top of her.

‘I remember it was sort of like him telling me, shhh, be quiet and using one hand to get his pants off.’

Mia said the mogul then raped her.

‘I just froze, I didn’t react,’ she said as she cried, adding she felt ‘terrified and confused and ashamed and scared.’

When asked how long the assault lasted, Mia replied: ‘It was quick but it felt like forever.’

Diddy’s alleged victim said on Friday that she stopped working for the mogul in 2016 after he blocked one of the projects she was working on at Revolt.

Mia hired a lawyer to negotiate a severance package, which reportedly enraged Diddy.

Diddy’s right-hand woman Kristina Khorram then told her he ‘couldn’t believe she had stabbed him in the back.’

Mia’s lawyers then made a $10million offer.

She said she felt bad about speaking to the lawyers ‘Because I was breaking this idea of confidentiality and I felt like I was betraying [Diddy], like I was telling the secrets. I felt really wrong and shameful for telling on him.’

Mia sais she told the lawyers about incidents of violence but not the alleged sexual assaults. ‘I was going to die with that,’ she said about the alleged rapes.

When asked if she would return the money if it means Diddy never did ‘all the things we’ve talked about,’ Mia replied: ‘Absolutely, in a second.’

Diddy’s lawyers asked the judge for a mistrial on Wednesday after arguing the prosecution made an unacceptable suggestion in front of the jury.

The defense said it was ‘outrageous’ when prosecutors appeared to suggest the mogul had destroyed fingerprints taken from Kid Cudi’s house after the January, 2012 bombing of his car.

Prosecutors had asked LAFD official Lance Jimenez about the fingerprints, and he said the evidence was destroyed in August 2012.

Jimenez said ‘somebody within LAPD’ authorized the destruction of the evidence.

This is when Diddy’s team objected.

‘They know what they were doing,’ the defense said of prosecutors.

‘They were suggesting that someone in this courtroom has something to do with improper and suspicious destruction of these fingerprint cards and that’s outrageous.’

The attorneys added: ‘The only proper remedy to cure the outrageous prejudice is a mistrial.’

However, the defense’s motion for a mistrial was denied.

The mogul’s ex-employee has been mentioned about a dozen times by various witnesses who have taken the stand in the trial, and prosecutors claim she was kidnapped twice by Diddy or his bodyguards.

Mia told the court on Friday about an incident where she was in South Africa to accompany Cassie – on Diddy’s orders.

She said Diddy was enraged because he could not get in touch in with Cassie, who had seen footage of him out with another woman, Gia, in Miami.

Diddy texted Mia: ‘If you don’t call me now, f**k it all. And Imma tell everything. And don’t ever speak to me again. You have 2 min. F**k her (Cassie). Call my house now or never speak to me again. F**k abc and all lawyers. Let’s go to war.’

Mia told the court he was threatening to ‘tell Cass about the sexual assaults, but framed differently, as though it was my fault or that I had a part in it.

She also said the mogul was threatening to cut down a show she had pitched to ABC.

Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey said this week they are running ahead of schedule and even looking to cut some witnesses.

The prosecution is hoping to rest their case by the second week of June, but noted it may continue into the following week.

The mogul’s ex-assistant Mia told the court on Thursday that Diddy would sometimes get high at ‘inappropriate’ times, including board meetings and one chaotic Chelsea Lately appearance.

‘Like one time was a board meeting, one time was going to the Chelsea Handler show,’ she told the jury.

‘There were just a few times where I was like “Oh, gosh when am I going to have to pull him to the side and say you look a little crazy at the moment.”‘

Mia did not specify when exactly the interview with Handler took place, but Diddy’s 2010 appearance on the E! show made headlines for his bizarre behavior.

Chelsea told the audience Diddy was an hour late before the rapper offered to ‘pull out his shlong’ when the comedianne kept jokingly referring to him as ‘girl.’

At the time, Vulture reported Diddy appeared drunk.

Prosecutors on Thursday asked the court to cut the witness box from the live feed shown in the court’s overflow room when Mia takes the stand.

The judge declined the request, saying there was not enough space and the overflow room ‘is an extension of this room.’

However, the judge ruled that no sketches be made of Mia when she’s testifying and that there are no cellphones to document her appearance in any way.

Mia’s lawyer, Michael Ferrara, said his client will tell about the worst things ever to happen to her.

Those things, he said, she otherwise would have taken ‘to her grave.’ He said she will want emotional support during her testimony.

Through her horrific tenure as Combs’ employee, Mia said how she would tell Diddy she loved him even after the sexual assaults started happening.

‘Oh yeah, that’s how we talked to each other,’ she said.

‘When the dynamic would switch to the best fiend dynamic you’re desperate to keep it they’re because you’re safe.’

Mia returned to court on Friday in all white to take the stand against her former boss Diddy.

She testified that there were highs and lows when working for the rapper, but Combs’ sexual assault against her were the ‘lowest.’

Diddy employees referred to themselves as family, explaining ‘that’s what I was surrounded with all the time and we went through some horrible times and great times together. That’s how we all referred to each other as.’

On Friday morning in court, Diddy lawyers argued to extend their time to confer with the mogul in person as the case continues.

‘[The] access you have received is much, much greater than defendants in other cases,’ Judge Subramanian told the defense.

‘Instead of ordering something that may be infeasible, I need to speak to the parties and (find a solution that) makes sense.’

Diddy’s former assistant and alleged victim Mia will continue testifying for the prosecution on Friday.

After she is cross-examined, the state is expected to call radio personality Enrique Santos.

Santos is the President and Chief Creative Officer of iHeart Latino and host of several radio shows.

His daily program, ‘The Enrique Santos Morning Show,’ airs live from iHeart’s Miami station, and his weekend show ‘On The Move with Enrique Santos’ airs throughout the country.

Santos also serves as a Reserve Police Officer for the City of Miami Police Department, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In court on Thursday, Mia shared grim details of an instance when Diddy made her wake everybody up in his Los Angeles home around 3am, but he got ‘aggressive’ with her when she tried to go to her room to change her tampon.

‘I started to walk down to my room because we’d been out since right in the morning and barely got a break and I was on my period and needed to change my tampon immediately,’ she said.

‘He was pissed. (He said) when I told you to go, go now, don’t go to your f****** room yet. I tried to say something and it made him more aggressive and louder and going on a really humiliating rant in front of everybody.

‘After it went on for so long there was literally blood dripping down my leg and said I just have to change my tampon.’

‘He had a bowl of spaghetti in his hand and threw it at me aggressively and started cursing me, get the f*** out of this house and he chased me outside.’

She described how the bowl narrowly missed her and she ran out of the house barefoot and hid in a bush.

The disgraced music mogul showed no reaction in court on Thursday as his ex-assisant Mia emotionally told the court thart he sexually assaulted her several times.

Diddy continued passing notes to his lawyers as Mia spoke from the stand, often in tears.

After Diddy’s ‘freak off’ hotel nights with Cassie, Mia testified that assistants would have to ‘sweep’ hotel rooms to clean up the mess he left behind ‘wherever he was.’

This was so ‘a housekeper couldn’t take and run to TMZ and expose any of his private business.’

Mia alleged the hotel rooms were a ‘nightmare’ to clean.

‘They were destroyed, really messy,’ she described.

‘I saw a lot of candlewax that was impossible to get out, lots of wet towels, I’ve seen broken glass, water all over the floor, sometimes blood, oil all over furniture and walls and things.’

Diddy’s ex-assistant Capricorn Clark told the court on Tuesday she once heard the mogul discussing weapons as he spoke of his rivalry against rapper 50 Cent.

She said she and Diddy were leaving a press event at MTV when the mogul told an executive he was having issues with 50 Cent.

Diddy reportedly said, ‘I don’t lie the back and forth, I don’t like that. I like guns.’

Diddy has frequently dispelled any rumors of a feud between the legends, but Curtis Jackson, also known as 50 Cent, has been slamming his nemesis publicly for years.

Gene Deal, who protected the disgraced rapper throughout the 1990s, was seen being bombarded by several people on Tuesday – day 10 of the blockbuster trial. 

While he appeared to enter the courthouse, Gene stopped in his tracks as a man off-camera shouted at him: ‘Hey G, I talked to Randy Pittman last night, a white guy, who said in 2004, you was at a party with P. Diddy, and you held him down with two minor kids.

‘I did an interview with him on my YouTube last night. What do you have to say about that Gene?,’ he added in the video posted on TikTok.

Gene seemingly looked toward the man as he shouted accusations at him while a woman got close to him and shoved a phone in his face, and a man snapped pictures of him with a camera.

Death Row records founder Suge Knight has urged Diddy to take the stand in his trial so he can ‘humanize’ himself.

‘I feel if he do tell his truth, he really would walk,’ Knight told CNN from prison as he serves a 28-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

‘If Puffy goes up there and says, “Hey … I did all the drugs, I wasn’t in control of my life at the time, or myself’ – he can humanize his old self and the jury might give him a shot.”‘

Knight added: ‘But if they keep him sitting down, it’s like he’s scared to face the music… He should just have his faith in God, put up his pants and go up there and tell his truth.’

It’s not clear whether Diddy will take the stand in his trial – he will be able to decide if he wants to up until the last minute, but his lawyers will most likely advise him not to do so.