Live updates: Witness testimony begins in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s sex trafficking trial

Members of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s family have reacted in different ways to today’s graphic testimony from male escort Daniel Phillip, who told the court the music mogul paid him thousands of dollars across a series of encounters to have sex with Combs’s then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura.

Three of Combs’s daughters attending the trial reportedly left the room during this portion of testimony, while the disgraced producer’s sons sat “stone-faced, at times passing notes to each other,” according to The New York Times.

Several news outlets, including ABC News, have hired people to sit in line to secure a spot in the courtroom on Tuesday.

The line for Tuesday started around 4 p.m. Monday.

Maurene Comey, one of the prosecutors, asked male escort Daniel Phillip why he didn’t call the cops on Diddy.

“My thought was that this was someone with unlimited power,” he replied, according to The New York Times. “and chances are even if I did go to the police, that I might still end up losing my life.”

Male escort Daniel Phillip testified that Cassie Ventura once appeared to be on drugs.

During one encounter, Sean Combs asked Phillip to see his ID for “insurance” before he had sex with Ventura, Inner City Press wrote on X.

When asked by the prosecutor how he interpreted that, Phillip said: “He was threatening me.”

Phillip said after the incident, during which Combs offered him Molly, he got high and handed out $100 bills.

After that incident, he stopped seeing Ventura and Combs, Phillip testified.

The final encounter also took place after Combs hit Ventura, Phillip said.

Male escort Daniel Phillip testified that while having sex with Cassie Ventura her then-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs would instruct them to use more baby oil.

Diddy also allegedly instructed the two to role play, pretending they had just met at the airport.

Phillip later noted that they weren’t good at roleplaying and had to skip over it.

Prosecutors called their second witness, Daniel Phillip, to testify.

Phillip, a male escort, was paid by Diddy to have sex with the rapper’s then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

Phillip said he was hired under the pretense of stripping for women at a bachelorette party at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

He testified that Ventura gave him a few thousand dollars and would tip him at the end of the encounter, according to The New York Times.

He also said that after leaving an encounter at the hotel, Ventura texted him to return for more sex with her, with Combs masturbating in the corner of the room.

Phillip testified that he returned to have similar encounters with Ventura for the next year or two.

He also recalled Diddy giving him specific directions for how he should be having sex with Ventura, including instructions to apply more baby oil onto their bodies.

“Cassie was actually the one that asked me urinate on her…she asked me if I had ever done that before, she told me to do it, apparently I was doing it wrong, because they both told me,” Phillip testified, according to Courthouse News.

Officer Israel Florez is now under cross-examination by Brian Steel.

Steel gained notoriety representing rapper Young Thug at his racketeering trial in Atlanta, Georgia.

Following Israel Florez’s testimony, prosecutors showed jurors the hotel security camera footage from March 5, 2016.

The footage features Combs in a towel, hitting and dragging his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, and hurling a vase in the elevator lobby.

Florez testified that he responded to a report of a woman in distress on the sixth floor of the InterContinental Hotel on March 5, 2016.

He showed up and found Combs in a towel and his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, on the floor.

Florez recalled Combs was only wearing a towel and was sitting on a chair “slouched down, like with a blank stare… like a devlish stare, just looking at me.”

Florez said they were arguing and there was a broken vase, which he told them would be charged to their room.

Ventura had said she wanted to leave, which Combs denied. After she eventually left, Combs offered Florez a cash bribe to keep quiet, which Florez refused.

Florez said he told Combs, “I don’t want your money. Just go back into your room.”

Prosecutors were using Florez, the trial’s first witness, to introduce recordings of Combs beating Ventura in 2016.

Diddy’s defense had unsuccessfully tried to have the footage banned because a recording aired on CNN; however, prosecutors say they aren’t using that recording. Instead, they plan to show jurors recordings that were taken within the hotel.

With Associated Press contributions.

New courtroom sketches showed Sean “Diddy” Combs sitting in court while his defense attorney Teny Geragos gave opening statements.

Combs was wearing a light gray or taupe colored shirt and glasses.