Prince's security intervened when Diddy was starting to attack Cassie outside a party hosted by the "Purple Rain" singer ... one of Diddy's former personal assistants testified in court.
00:00So the Diddy trial has taken many twists, many turns, and today the turn was a Prince concert
00:09where there was a brutal confrontation between Cassie and Diddy.
00:15Yes, this story was told on the stand by Diddy's former assistant Mia.
00:21That is the name that she is testifying under. It is a pseudonym, and she is not showing her face at all.
00:29The judge instructed everyone in the courtroom there would be no recording of this and that she's using the pseudonym,
00:36and she testified about a night that, basically she testified about Diddy's control over Cassie.
00:44In particular, there was one night there was a party that Prince was throwing.
00:48They had found out about it. Diddy wasn't going to go.
00:51He said he was staying home with his kids, and he had told Cassie she can't go either.
00:56Well, Cassie was at home with Mia, and Mia says they kind of debated whether they should go.
01:03And they decided to go despite what Diddy said.
01:06And they went. They were having a good time.
01:09She says we watched Prince performing on a dining room table.
01:13It was a wonderful night.
01:14And then she looked up and saw Diddy entering the room,
01:18and Mia said she thought to herself, oh, crap, and turned to Cassie and said, we got to get out of here.
01:26And they did.
01:28And what happened after that was, I mean...
01:30Brutal.
01:31It sounds cinematic, really.
01:33Yeah, she said she and Cassie just ran out of the house party.
01:36They ran across to the street, kind of hid in some woods and some bushes.
01:39But she says Diddy saw Cassie, got her on the ground, and was about to attack her.
01:44And then that's when Prince's security stepped in and separated Diddy from Cassie.
01:49And this is all going towards the sexual trafficking by coercion.
01:53And now we've got more third-party witnesses, Prince's security, who is intervening here.
01:57It's looking really bad for Diddy because so many of these things were apparently done in public,
02:01where it's obvious that she was running in fear to a wooded area.
02:05I'm not sure how he deals with this on cross.
02:07You know, it's interesting to me.
02:09Derek, I don't know how you feel about this, but I agree with you.
02:12That's the point of this, to show that Cassie did not have free will.
02:17But it's like, why didn't they call Mia right after Cassie?
02:21And then, in other words, organize it so you're doing sex trafficking by coercion,
02:28and then you do racketeering and get into the Kid Cudi stuff.
02:31But they just seem to be hopscotching over a lot of this.
02:35It strikes me the same way.
02:36I would have delivered this in a much more organized fashion,
02:38where we could get all of the Cassie testimony together with people who observed abuse of Cassie,
02:43because that would stay organized in the jury's mind.
02:46I think some of the witnesses, it's difficult, because they're testifying to both types of issues.
02:50But not this.
02:50They witnessed some racketeering stuff, and they witnessed some coercion, so it's hard to do.
02:54But not this.
02:55I mean, this is primarily, I mean, even though she says she herself was a victim.
03:01Right.
03:02She says that she sexually assaulted her multiple times.
03:06Which goes to the whole coercion idea, that it just seems like she aligns so much with Cassie.
03:12Why did they separate the two of them with all these other witnesses?
03:17Yeah, at the end of the day, they're going to have to sort of organize their thoughts for the jury in their closing arguments to say,
03:22all of these things that this witness told you, that's about racketeering.
03:26All of these things were about sex trafficking.
03:27All of this is about interstate transport.
03:29So that the jury can go back there and actually look at all of the evidence and come to a conclusion.
03:34Because you're right, it's a morass right now.
03:35There's too much detail about too many different aspects of the case.
03:39Well, one of the days started, actually, with Deontay Nash, the friend and stylist of Cassie, still on the stand.
03:47And he was under cross-examination and talked a lot about Cassie's dating life outside of Diddy.
03:57And Deontay revealed that he was the one who actually set her up with Michael B. Jordan.
04:04We had heard Michael B. Jordan's name even before the trial started.
04:08And there was reference to prospective jurors about it as well, questioning about Michael B. Jordan.
04:13Right.
04:13And now it sounds like the two of them, at the very least, I mean, he kind of used the term, I think, hooked up.
04:20Yeah, said that he hooked them up or set them up.
04:23Whereas before, we had heard it sort of explained away as, yes, they did a movie together in South Africa, and that's all it was.
04:32But you had Deontay saying, no, I actually thought that they should get together and set them up.
04:38And they also mentioned an NBA player.
04:41Yes.
04:42He also mentioned the prosecutors asked him about an NFL player.
04:46NFL.
04:46And Deontay said, oh, you mean the cute football player, Andre Branch.
04:53And so we had heard reference to her dating an NFL player, but the name hadn't been revealed.
04:58Right.
04:58And there were a lot of people in the sports world sort of guessing who it was.
05:02But today, Deontay revealed it.
05:03And the point they're trying to make is that they're trying to show that Cassie has free will.
05:09Yeah, because this was cross-examination, that Cassie had free will and exercised it.
05:15And that's, I think, the point they're trying to make with this.
05:18How did that land with you guys?
05:19Does it seem as though her dating other high-profile people shows she's not scared of Diddy?
05:24Or will the jurors be able to sort of reconcile those two things?
05:27She was trying to get out of the relationship with Diddy.
05:29I'm not sure which way it cuts.
05:30I know the defense was trying to make that point, but I'm not sure it's a very strong one.
05:33Yeah.
05:34Well, I mean, those relationships, the fact that she had those relationships does show some free will.
05:40It's much different from the Kid Cudi relationship where there was clear signs of Diddy's jealousy.
05:48The idea is that the defense is saying, you know, here's our answer to she couldn't get out of the relationship.
05:56She felt free enough to date or to see other people.
06:00I think that's the point they're making, whether it lands or not.
06:02In those cases, and I don't know what the timing was of Michael B. Jordan or Andre Branch from Cuddy, where, I mean, we've heard plenty of testimony that Cuddy was not that.
06:14Cuddy was not that.
06:15It was not a free will situation.
06:16Which is why they're bringing up these other two.
06:18Right.
06:18Hi, this is Mel from New York.
06:20I believe Deontay Nash's testimony highlights Cassie's free will, but it also highlights how deep Diddy's influence may have run.
06:28It paints a picture of control that extends beyond the relationship with Cassie.
06:32Whether or not those claims can be proven true, what's clear is that this case raises plenty of questions about who has the ability to speak freely and who pays a price for doing that.
06:41Yeah.
06:41I mean, we've heard plenty of assistants talk about what threats that they say they've received for talking out of turn.
