• Sean "Diddy" Combs listed his Los Angeles mansion for sale a week before he was arrested.
• As his trial proceeds, the house is still on the market with the same asking price: $61.5 million.
• Cassie Ventura said "freak offs" weren't held there, but its link to Combs might still deter buyers.

Sean "Diddy" Combs is sitting in a Manhattan courtroom, facing off with his sexual abuse accusers at trial.

His mansion in Los Angeles, however, is sitting empty.

Combs listed the 10-bedroom, 13-bathroom mansion in LA's ritzy Holmby Hills neighborhood for $61.5 million a week before his arrest in September 2024 — and it's unlikely to sell anytime soon.

His ex-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, testified last week that Combs' South Mapleton Drive home was not used for any "freak offs," the dayslong sex performances that the trial centers on. In general, homes priced in the eight-figure range don't fly off the shelves that quickly. Still, most homebuyers are put off by its association with an accused sex trafficker, according to a consultant who specializes in selling homes tainted by murder or other disasters.

"When they buy a home at that price point, they like to brag about it," Michael Tachovsky, a partner at Landmark Research Group, told BI. "P. Diddy's reputation, at the current time, really isn't a positive bragging point for a potential buyer. It can play into perceptions, and when there's a negative perception with a property, it just makes it harder to sell."

Two Los Angeles-area real estate agents reached by Business Insider declined to go on record about Combs' property to avoid any association.

Combs has denied all wrongdoing. The music tycoon has consistently argued that all sexual encounters were consensual. The defense also argues that any violence fell far short of sex trafficking and that his accusers have a financial motive to implicate him.

The listing agent, Kurt Rappaport, didn't return multiple requests for comment by email and phone. A rep for Combs and his lawyer also didn't return requests for comment by email.

The history of Combs' LA mansion

Combs purchased the property on Mapleton Drive in 2014 for just over $39 million, according to Los Angeles County property records.

The main house's architecture excludes European vibes and contains a formal dining room, a wine cellar, a theater that fits 35 people, a kitchen, and a separate catering kitchen. A two-story guest house has bedrooms, a gym, and a recording studio.

The grounds, over 1.3 acres, have an oversize statue of a woman seemingly made from similar material to a disco ball, plus a swimming pool with a waterfall and grotto, a basketball court, a spa house, and an outdoor loggia with a barbecue, bar, and pizza oven.

Other homes for sale on the same street are asking similar prices.

Jack Harris, a real estate agent with The Beverly Hills Estate, has an eight-bedroom listing on Mapleton Drive just a few doors down from Combs' house, priced at $62.5 million.

"You normally can't buy into Holmby Hills for less than $20 million — Mapleton being one of the most prestigious streets in Holmby Hills," Harris told BI.

"It's a little pocket that's right between Beverly Hills and Bel Air — there's only a handful of streets," he added.

Combs hosted parties at his house, including a 2017 Grammys afterparty.

Combs also owns a seven-bedroom, 14,800-square-foot home on Star Island in Miami, where Ventura said in court last week that "freak offs" did take place. He bought the home in 2023 for $14.5 million and satisfied the $18.8 million left on his mortgage in August of 2024 to sure up his proposed bond package.

In March 2024, law enforcement officials seized "narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant" from his Los Angeles and Miami residences.

A buyer could be drawn to the renovation potential

Real estate investor Steven "Bo" Belmon made a lowball offer of $30 million in November of 2024.

Belmont said in a press release that he planned to renovate.

"I want to remove the stigma and focus on the charming elegance of this remarkable property," Belmont said in the release.

Belmont is no stranger to controversial properties purchased at a hefty discount. In 2024, he bought Kanye West's abandoned Malibu mansion for $21 million, less than half of its original asking price of $53 million.

Tachovsky pointed to other properties where negative events have taken place that sold years after they hit the market for well below the asking price.

The ongoing legal battles will inevitably limit the pool of buyers, he added.

"At the moment, it doesn't sound like anything nefarious happened at the property, but I don't think there's any certainty yet," he said. "When you've got notorious issues, like the Diddy case, that's not a no-name person. That can linger for some time."

• Cassie Ventura finished her fourth day of testimony in Sean Combs' sex-trafficking trial on Friday.
• Ventura spoke about participating in Combs' "freak offs" on the witness stand.
• In a statement, Ventura said testifying was "empowering and healing."

Cassie Ventura released a statement on Friday following her graphic testimony in the federal trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs this week.

The singer is a key witness in Combs' criminal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial and spent four days on the witness stand giving evidence about the abuse she says she endured during the course of their 11-year relationship.

Ventura's lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, shared a statement on behalf of the singer and another on behalf of her husband, Alex Fine.

"This week has been extremely challenging, but also remarkably empowering and healing for me," Ventura's statement said, per the Associated Press. "I hope that my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors, and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from the abuse and fear."

It continued: "For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget. I want to thank my family and my advocates for their unwavering support, and I'm grateful for all the kindness and encouragement that I have received."

Ventura, who is eight months pregnant with her third child with Fine, ended her statement by requesting privacy for herself and her family.

"I'm glad to put this chapter of my life to rest. As I turn to focus on the conclusion of my pregnancy, I ask for privacy for me and for my growing family."

In court, Ventura discussed in graphic terms the abuse she said she experienced during her relationship with Combs. As Business Insider reported, she broke down in tears while speaking about the drug-fueled sex marathons that Combs called "freak offs."

During her testimony, Ventura told the court that the "freak offs" made her feel "humiliated" and "pretty horrible" about herself but that she had taken part out of love for Combs and because she had wanted to make him happy.

In his statement, Fine, who has been present in the courtroom to support Ventura, expressed pride in his wife and said the couple wanted to put the trial behind them.

"Over the past five days, the world has gotten to witness the strength and bravery of my wife, freeing herself of her past. There has been speculation online surrounding how it must feel for me to sit there and listen to my wife's testimony," it read.

"I have felt so many things sitting there. I have felt tremendous pride and overwhelming love for Cass. I have felt profound anger that she has been subjected to sitting in front of a person who tried to break her," it added.

"This horrific chapter is forever put behind us, and we will not be making additional statements," Fine's statement concluded.

• Cassie Ventura finished her fourth and last day of testimony in Sean Combs' sex-trafficking trial.
• "I think it was $10M," she said, revealing a pending settlement with the InterContinental Hotel.
• The hotel was the location of a caught-on-video 2016 beating she suffered at the hands of Combs.

Cassie Ventura ended her testimony against Sean "Diddy" Combs on Friday, capping four days of detailing what she alleged to be coercive, humiliating sex by dropping a new revelation.

The R&B singer — the prosecution's star witness — revealed on the stand during Combs' criminal sex-trafficking trial that she is set to receive a multimillion-dollar settlement from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles.

"I think it was $10 million," Ventura told a federal jury in Manhattan of the money she says she's receiving from the hotel.

The InterContinental is where security camera footage captured Combs beating Ventura in a hallway in 2016, after what Ventura and federal prosecutors said was one of Combs' drug-fueled sex marathons, which he called "freak offs."

Under questioning by defense attorney Anna Estevao, Ventura told the eight-man, four-woman jury that she did not know the exact monetary figure, but described the settlement as a done deal.

"And have you reached the end of settlement discussions with the InterContinental?" Estevao asked Ventura to which she replied, "I have."

Representatives for the hotel declined to comment.

Outside of court, Ventura's attorney, Douglas Wigdor, would not confirm the settlement amount, only saying, "The record is the record."

At Combs' trial, which kicked off earlier this week, the jury was shown the 2016 footage of Combs attacking Ventura in the hotel hallway.

Prosecutor Emily Johnson said in her opening statements that at the time, the hip-hop mogul paid a security guard at the hotel $100,000 in a brown paper envelope in exchange for the footage.

Combs apologized for his actions in the video after CNN published the footage last year.

The hotel settlement is the second settlement Ventura revealed during her testimony. She also told jurors that Combs paid her $20 million to settle her civil lawsuit against him in 2023.

In the lawsuit, Ventura accused Combs of of rape, physical abuse, and controlling her during their more than decadelong relationship. She also detailed Combs' InterContinental Hotel attack in the suit and said in the court papers that Combs paid the hotel $50,000 for the footage of it.

While under questioning by Johnson on Friday, Ventura said she would give the $20 million back if it meant never having joined Combs' freak offs.

"If I hadn't done freak offs, I would have had agency and autonomy," she said. "I wouldn't have had to work so hard to get it back."

Sean "Diddy" Combs is on trial. From Kid Cudi's relationship with Cassie to her settlement, here are the most striking revelations so far.

News broke yesterday that researchers in Philadelphia appear to have successfully treated a 6-month-old baby boy, called KJ, with a personalized CRISPR gene-editing therapy. The treatment corrects an ultra-rare mutation in KJ that breaks a liver enzyme. That enzyme is required to convert ammonia, a byproduct of metabolism, to urea, a waste product released in urine. Without treatment, ammonia would build up to dangerous levels in KJ—and he would have a 50 percent chance of dying in infancy.

While the gene-editing treatment isn't a complete cure, and long-term success is still uncertain, KJ's condition has improved and stabilized. And the treatment's positive results appear to be a first for personalizing gene editing.

Now, who doesn't love a good story about a seemingly miraculous medical treatment saving a cute, chubby-cheeked baby? But, this story delivers more than an adorable bundle of joy; the big triumph is the striking timeline of the treatment's development—and the fact that it provides a template for how to treat other babies with ultra-rare mutations.

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Meta thinks there's no reason to carry on with its defense after the Federal Trade Commission closed its monopoly case, and the company has moved to end the trial early by claiming that the FTC utterly failed to prove its case.

"The FTC has no proof that Meta has monopoly power," Meta's motion for judgment filed Thursday said, "and therefore the court should rule in favor of Meta."

According to Meta, the FTC failed to show evidence that "the overall quality of Meta’s apps has declined" or that the company shows too many ads to users. Meta says that's "fatal" to the FTC's case that the company wielded monopoly power to pursue more ad revenue while degrading user experience over time (an Internet trend known as "enshittification"). And on top of allegedly showing no evidence of "ad load, privacy, integrity, and features" degradation on Meta apps, Meta argued there's no precedent for an antitrust claim rooted in this alleged harm.

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• Cassie Ventura testified for more than 20 hours at Sean "Diddy" Combs' criminal trial.
• Her testimony revealed big settlements, "freak off" details, and a Playboy Mansion overdose.
• Here are 8 of the biggest revelations to have come out of the trial so far.

The R&B singer Cassie Ventura — Sean "Diddy" Combs' ex-girlfriend and the catalyst for his public downfall — testified at his criminal trial last week about humiliating sexual violence she says she endured throughout their 11-year relationship.

Ventura spent more than 20 hours on the witness stand over the course of four days, at times giving tearful testimony, in a packed Manhattan federal courtroom as Combs sat opposite her at the defense table.

The singer, while eight months pregnant, played a central role in Combs' ongoing sex-trafficking and racketeering trial as the prosecution's star witness. During the trial's opening statements, a prosecutor told jurors that Combs used "lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce" Ventura and later an anonymous Jane Doe into dayslong sex performances that the hip-hop mogul called "freak offs."

Combs was arrested in September on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution — the culmination of months of lawsuits and public accusations of sexual assault and other misconduct.

It was Ventura's November 2023 lawsuit that began this avalanche of accusations. Filed about 10 months before the criminal charges, it accused Combs of rape, physical abuse, and controlling her during their relationship. The lawsuit was settled a day later for what Ventura testified was $20 million.

Combs has denied all wrongdoing. The music tycoon is arguing through his defense team that all sexual encounters were consensual, including the drug-fueled freak offs. The defense also argues that any violence fell far short of sex trafficking and that his accusers have a financial motive to implicate him.

Here are some of the most striking moments from the trial so far.

Dawn Richard's testimony highlighted a brutal beating, an alleged death threat, and flowers

Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard was the fifth prosecution witness, and her testimony on May 16 alleged that in 2009, Combs brutally beat Ventura after she took too long to cook him dinner.

"Where's my fucking egg?" Richard recounted Combs shouting in 2009, as he stormed into the kitchen of his rented Los Angeles mansion.

"He took the skillet with the eggs in it and tried to hit her in the head, and she fell to the ground," Richard testified.

Ventura cowered on the floor "in a fetal position" as Combs punched her and kicked her, she said. Then he dragged her upstairs by her hair, she said, adding that she then heard the sound of screaming and breaking glass from the third floor.

The next day, Combs called Ventura and Richard into the mansion's first-floor recording studio, she said.

"He said that what we saw was passion, and it was what lovers in a relationship do," Richard said.

She said Combs told the two women that "he was trying to take us to the top, and that, where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, like, if people talk. And then he gave us flowers."

While back on the stand on May 19, Richard re-emphasized that she felt this was a threat to her life.

The details in the testimony came as a surprise to Combs' lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, who called it prejudicial and "just a drop dead lie."

"It didn't happen," the lawyer complained to the judge. "And the reason we know it didn't happen is that Ms. Ventura didn't talk about it" during her four days on the witness stand.

On cross-examination on May 19, Richard agreed that she only recalled the alleged death threat in speaking with prosecutors earlier this month. It had gone unmentioned, she agreed, during a half-dozen prior interviews with prosecutors.

Combs attacked Ventura over bathroom use, prosecutor and ex-bestie say

Ventura was beaten by Combs for the most minor of perceived infractions, including taking too long in the bathroom, prosecutor Emily Johnson said in her opening statement.

"He beat her when she didn't answer the phone when he called. He beat her when she left a freak off without his permission," Johnson said.

Ventura's ex-best friend, Kerry Morgan, was called to the witness stand on May 19 and told jurors about two attacks on Ventura she witnessed, including one while on vacation in Jamaica in 2013.

Morgan said Ventura at one point went to the bathroom at the residence where they were staying, and Combs said, "She's taking too long."

"A few minutes later, I heard her screaming — like guttural. Terrifying," Morgan said. "He was dragging her by her hair on the floor."

Morgan told jurors that she saw Combs push Ventura to the ground, causing her to hit her head on the paving bricks.

"She didn't move. She fell on her side," Morgan said, adding, "I thought she was knocked out."

Ventura, too, had testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.

Ventura —who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018 — described six separate times when Combs' attacks left her with injuries, with the most severe beating occurring in Los Angeles in 2009 following a party Combs had hosted at a club called Ace of Diamonds.

Ventura said she punched Combs in the face after he called her a "slut or a bitch" for talking to a record producer. Combs retaliated in the back seat of a chauffeured luxury vehicle by punching and kicking Ventura throughout a ten-minute ride to the rapper's rented mansion, she said.

She said she hid under the back seat to escape the attack. Combs demanded she stay hidden in a hotel for a week so her bruises could heal, she said.

The surprising things Combs kept in his luxury NYC hotel room while waiting to be arrested

The prosecution's fourth witness took the witness stand briefly on May 16 to detail what she and other Homeland Security investigators say they found inside Combs' suite at Manhattan's Park Hyatt New York after his September arrest.

Combs had checked into the luxury Midtown hotel, his lawyers have said, in case federal prosecutors in Manhattan had asked him to surrender voluntarily.

Special Agent Yasin Binda told the Combs jury she photographed what her colleagues found inside the room.

Those items included a clear plastic bag of baby oil bottles found inside a duffle bag. There were three more bottles of baby oil in his bathtub, alongside two bottles of personal lubricant.

Two more bottles of lubricant were recovered from a nightstand drawer, next to a prescription pill bottle she said held two small baggies containing a pink powder.

On the living room floor was a large blue party light of the kind Ventura testified were used to illuminate freak offs.

Similar bags of pink powder have previously been seized from Combs and tested positive for ecstasy and other drugs, a prosecutor had said in court the day after Combs was arrested.

Ventura's big settlements after her lawsuit and that infamous hallway-beatdown video

In some of her final moments on the witness stand, Ventura was asked by the defense about a legal settlement that she said she is on the verge of receiving from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles.

"I think it was $10 million," Ventura said of the settlement, hesitating when asked for the total amount agreed to.

The InterContinental is where security cameras captured Combs beating Ventura in a hallway in 2016, as she tried to flee what prosecutors say was one of Combs' freak offs.

The jury was shown the infamous footage at the beginning of the trial.

Johnson, the prosecutor, said in her opening statements that at the time of the attack, Combs paid a security guard at the hotel $100,000 in a brown paper envelope in exchange for the footage.

Combs apologized for his actions in the video after CNN published the footage last year.

It was the second big-money settlement revealed in Ventura's testimony.

Earlier in her testimony, Ventura told jurors that Combs paid her $20 million to settle her civil suit against him in 2023.

Britney Spears and Michael B. Jordan became the biggest celebrity mentions of the trial

Pop icon Britney Spears and actor Michael B. Jordan were both name-dropped on May 15, on Ventura's third day of testimony.

During a cross-examination, Ventura was asked to tell the jury about the 21st birthday party Combs threw for her in 2007, at a club in Las Vegas.

The party was a significant moment in the Combs-Ventura story. Ventura testified that Combs, who recently signed her to his record label, gave her an uninvited kiss in a bathroom, sparking their relationship.

"I believe there were other celebrities there in attendance?" defense attorney Anna Estevao asked Ventura, who answered yes, there were.

"Sean was there, and he brought Dallas Austin, he brought Britney Spears," Ventura said, referring to the "Oops!… I Did It Again" singer and the record producer. "I think those were the two people that stand out to me," Ventura added.

Asked how a 21-year-old of limited fame was able to attract such big names to her party, Ventura credited Combs, saying, "That was all him."

Jordan's name came up as the cross-examination focused on 2015, when Combs became suspicious that she was having an affair with the actor.

"Is Michael B. Jordan a celebrity?" Estevao asked.

"I would say so," Ventura answered, sounding surprised.

Combs overdosed on opioids at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura said

Both Combs and Ventura were heavy opioid users, the R&B singer testified — and on one late night in February 2012, the pills he took made the rapper seriously ill, she said.

"Was that around the time that Whitney Houston died?" Estevao, Combs' defense attorney, asked about the timing.

"Yes," Ventura said.

That evening, the pair went to a sex club in San Bernardino, California, and then she went home, and Combs went to a party at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura told jurors.

"Well, from what he told me, he took a very strong opiate that night, but we didn't know what was happening, so we took him to the hospital," Ventura testified.

There, she said, she learned that he had overdosed on whatever painkillers he had taken, she said.

Combs was said to be enraged over Ventura's romance with Kid Cudi

Ventura told jurors that she briefly dated rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, in 2011 and that it sent Combs into a violent rage.

Combs discovered the relationship during a freak off in Los Angeles when he went through Ventura's phone, she testified.

"I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me," Ventura said, adding that Combs' "eyes blacked out, super angry."

"And I just had to get out of there," she said. "It was actually another time I was able to get out of a freak off."

When Ventura saw Combs at his home later that day she said he was "irate" and threatened to release freak off videos of her and "hurt Scott and I."

On her way out, Ventura said Combs kicked her in the back so hard that she fell to the floor.

Ventura, whose lawsuit first suggested that Combs was responsible for blowing up a car that belonged to Kid Cudi in 2012, told jurors that Combs said Kid Cudi's car "would be blown up" when they were out of the country.

"Sean wanted Scott's friends to be there to see the car get blown up in the driveway," she testified.

Prosecutors alleged in court papers that Combs ordered his underlings to torch a vehicle "by slicing open the car's convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside the interior."

Ventura said she first joined Diddy's freak offs out of love

Ventura testified on May 13 that she was initially nervous, but felt a sense of responsibility to participate in Combs' freak offs.

"I was just in love and wanted to make him happy," Ventura told the jury.

Ventura testified that in 2007, Combs first proposed "this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me have a sexual encounter with a third man, specifically another man."

"I didn't want to upset him if I said it scared me or if I said anything aside from, 'OK, let's try it,'" she said.

Johnson said in her opening statements that Combs eventually made it Ventura's job to find and book escorts to participate in the sex encounters.

While on the stand, Ventura described in detail what went on during freak offs. Prosecutors say Combs arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded the sex performances.

Ventura testified that Combs would urinate and ask escorts to urinate on her during the freak offs.

"It was disgusting. It was too much. It was overwhelming," she said. "I choked."

• Sean "Diddy" Combs came face-to-face in court Monday with his key accuser, Cassie Ventura.
• The R&B singer dated Combs between 2007 and 2018.
• Prosecutors allege Combs sex-trafficked Ventura and another woman.

The R&B singer Cassie Ventura, a longtime girlfriend of Sean "Diddy" Combs, broke down on the witness stand Tuesday as she testified she felt "worthless" joining in on the drug-fueled sex marathons that he called "freak offs."

"I felt pretty horrible about myself. I felt disgusting. I was humiliated. I didn't have the words at the time to tell him how I felt. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it," Ventura, who is eight months pregnant, told a jury in Manhattan, breaking into tears as she sat opposite Combs during his criminal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.

Ventura testified that she did not want to have sex with the male escorts that she says Combs recruited for the sessions, but she said she wanted to be intimate with Combs. She craved one-on-one time with Combs, and freak offs, she said, were "the only time I could get."

"I wanted him to know that doing this made me feel horrible. It made me feel worthless," Ventura said, adding that he was "pretty dismissive" when she told Combs how terrible she felt, including in emails and texts.

She called him "Pop Pop" in these exchanges — at his request, she said, after he asked her to call him "what I call my grandfather."

Jurors were shown photographs of six men Ventura said were paid by Combs to have sex with her "almost weekly," and sometimes two at a time.

Their names included "Dave," "Jules," and "Daniel," she said, as the images were shown one by one.

"I knew him as 'The Punisher," she said of the photo of one male escort hired "a couple of times."

Ventura said she took drugs, including Molly and Ecstasy, to numb herself to what was happening.

She described in graphic terms the encounters that she said would leave the hotel furniture and linens stained with blood, urine, candle wax, and baby oil.

The air would often be thick with the smell of body odor and the smoke from a half-dozen Glade candles, she said.

"I hated it," she told the jury, calling the hired men "strangers."

Early in her testimony, Ventura told the jury that she loved Combs and felt a sense of duty to join in the freak offs, which are at the core of the indictment against Combs.

"I was just in love and wanted to make him happy," Ventura said.

Ventura, who dated Combs from 2007 to 2018, described herself as a "people pleaser" and told the eight men and four women on the jury that Combs was often violent with her.

She testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.

"He would bash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head," Ventura said, adding that Combs beat her "too frequently."

"I would get knocked in my forehead, busted lips, swollen lips, black eyes," Ventura said, "bruises all over my body."

When he became violent, "His eyes would go black," she told the jury of Combs.

Ventura is the prosecution's key witness in the case.

Prosecutors allege that for two decades, Combs led a criminal enterprise that involved the sex trafficking of Ventura and an anonymous Jane Doe.

Ventura's climb to the witness stand — she is eight months pregnant and wore a stretchy brown dress and mustard-colored overcoat — came amid the first time she and Combs were in the same room since 2018. That's when she attended the funeral of Kim Porter, Combs' long-term girlfriend and the mother to four of his children.

Ventura told the jury that it was soon after she started dating Combs that she learned he had sudden, violent mood swings.

"Make a wrong face and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face," she told the jurors.

He would lash out "if I wasn't smiling at him, if I didn't look the certain way that he liked," or if she was being "bratty," she said.

"Watch your mouth," she said he'd tell her if he thought she spoke out of turn.

Ventura's appearance followed a whirlwind first day of the trial.

On Monday, the jury heard opening statements and testimony from the first two witnesses, including an exotic dancer who testified he was repeatedly paid to have sex with Ventura as Combs watched.

The prosecutor Emily Johnson told the jury Combs used "lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce" Ventura and another woman into "freak offs."

Plenty of bathroom breaks

Prosecutors say Ventura, 38, will be on the stand testifying against Combs, 55, for most of this week.

She's due to give birth next month to her third child with her husband, Alex Fine, a source said. She's set to be given breaks every 90 minutes during her testimony.

Fine may be called to the stand as a defense witness, Combs' attorney Teny Geragos told the judge, who is allowing him to watch part of her testimony.

If Fine is asked to take the stand, he'll be asked to impeach the testimony of his wife, Geragos said outside the jury's presence moments before Ventura began testifying.

Fine may be asked about "several very threatening messages" in which he spoke of "beating the F-word out of" Combs, the lawyer said.

The criminal indictment against Combs accuses him of making Ventura engage "in commercial sex acts as a result of force, fraud, and coercion" throughout their decadelong relationship.

Prosecutors have alleged that the commercial sex acts involved the so-called freak offs.

Ventura's account of abuse could be bolstered by security video appearing to show Combs beating Ventura in the hallway of the now closed InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles. Prosecutors say the video shows Ventura struggling to leave the hotel after a freak off held there in 2016. Jurors were shown this video on Monday.

When shown a still from that video on Tuesday in court, Ventura told jurors: "We were having an encounter that we called a freak off."

During the first year of the relationship, "Sean proposed to me this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me have a sexual encounter with a third man, specifically another man," Ventura testified.

Ventura said she initially agreed to a freak off because she "felt a sense of responsibility, with Sean sharing something like that with me."

"Also, I loved him so much," Ventura said.

Combs apologized after the video surfaced in 2023, and his lawyers have conceded he was violent during the relationship. But they have alleged that Ventura was also violent. They say all sexual encounters were consensual.

"There was hitting on both sides," Combs' attorney Marc Agnifilo said in court on Friday. Ventura's lawyer has declined to comment on this allegation.

Since his arrest in September, Combs has maintained that he's never sexually abused anyone.

If convicted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, Combs could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

This story was updated with additional testimony throughout the day Tuesday.

• An ex-dancer took the witness stand in Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking trial.
• He testified that he would have sex for money with R&B singer Cassie Ventura while Combs watched.
• Combs faces a potential life sentence if convicted. The trial is expected to last two months.

When a male erotic dancer first met Sean "Diddy" Combs in 2012, the hip-hop mogul was unconvincing in how he described his career, the man testified Monday.

The dancer, Daniel Phillip, told Combs' federal sex-trafficking jury that he would then go on to be paid to have sex with R&B singer Cassie Ventura.

"He told me he was in importing and exporting," Phillip, the ex-dancer, said on the witness stand, giving the Combs jury its earliest firsthand account of what happened at a "freak off" — the elaborate performances at the center of the sex-trafficking case.

Prosecutors say that over the course of two decades, Combs coerced four girlfriends into participating in these staged sex shows, which the indictment describes as commercial sex acts because of the involvement of male strippers or escorts.

Combs has countered that the encounters were consensual.

"The government has no place in his private bedroom," defense lawyer Teny Geragos said in opening statements Monday morning.

On the witness stand in the afternoon, Phillip told rapt jurors that he believed he was called to Manhattan's Gramercy Park Hotel that first night in order to perform as a dancer for a bachelorette party.

"I was expecting to do a little strip tease and that's it," he testified.

Instead, "Cassie opened the door and asked if it was OK if it was just going to be us," he told the jury, describing her attire as red lingerie, red high heels, and a red wig.

"She said her husband wanted to do something special for her," he said Ventura told him.

Phillip testified Ventura told him his assignment would be to rub baby oil on her — and more, if he was up to it.

Combs, meanwhile, sat in the corner of the darkened room, wearing only a bathrobe and the bandana that covered his face from the nose down, he said.

"He wasn't going to try to touch me or anything," Phillip said Ventura told him of Combs. "I said that's good, because I wasn't with that."

In the room, Phillip said he saw velvet couches and a table topped with lit candles, bottles of baby oil, and Astroglide lubricant.

Phillip testified he expected to be paid $200, and that he recognized Combs "as soon as he spoke to me."

"I complimented the room, the hotel that we were in, and I asked him what he did for a living," Phillip testified. That's when Combs said his job was in imports and exports, he added.

"We ended up having sex," Phillip told jurors of his encounter with Ventura.

Prosecutor Maurene Comey asked Phillip, "Before you and Ms. Ventura had intercourse, what, if anything, did you rub on each other?"

Phillip responded, "Baby oil."

He told the jury that during the encounter, Combs sat in the corner and masturbated.

At the end, "Cassie gave me more money. I think a couple thousand dollars more," he said.

Phillip said they had several more similar sexual encounters, including in hotels across Manhattan, in Combs' personal residence in Midtown, and in Ventura's home on Manhattan's west side.

He testified that he would be paid anywhere from $700 to $6,000. The encounters could last half an hour or over 10 hours, with breaks in between.

"I would be sitting there waiting for hours," while Ventura and Combs retreated to another room, he said.

At one point, during an encounter at JW Marriott Essex House, Combs stopped wearing a mask, Phillip said.

"This was the first time that Sean Combs opened the door as himself. You know, dressed in a suit," he said, adding that these encounters went on until late 2013 or 2014.

As the encounters continued, Phillip said he saw an angry side to Combs.

During one, Combs threw a liquor bottle at Ventura because she did not immediately come over when he said, "Babe, come here," Phillip said. Phillip said Combs then dragged Ventura into a bedroom, and that he could hear Combs slapping her.

Several jurors smiled when Phillip described what he called the few encounters where he agreed to take drugs.

"He offered me a Cialis once or twice," Phillip said. Once, he accepted what he believed was a "Molly." It made him "euphoric," he said.

"I went out to Times Square and I handed out $100 bills to every single person I saw," he said, referring to the cash he said he'd received as pay from Combs.

"I handed out every single dollar he gave me," he said.

Combs is on trial for sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He faces up to life in prison if convicted on all counts.

• Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud, shares two kids with William "Billy" Evans.
• Evans is reportedly launching his own blood-testing startup now, with the imprisoned Holmes advising him.
• Here's what we know about Evans.

Elizabeth Holmes is infamous for the spectacular rise and fall of her blood-testing startup, Theranos, that saw her go to prison for fraud. Now, her partner is reportedly launching his own blood-testing startup.

William "Billy" Evans, with whom Holmes shares two children, is heir to a chain of hotels in California and was her daily companion at her monthslong trial. According to reports, his latest venture is a blood-testing startup, like Theranos, and Holmes is giving him advice from behind bars as she serves a years-long sentence in a Texas women's prison.

Here's everything we know about Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes' partner:

William "Billy" Evans grew up near San Diego, California.

He's one of three children born to his parents, Susan and William L. Evans, according to the Daily Mail.

The Evans family has lived in the San Diego area for generations.

Billy Evans' grandparents, Anne and William D. Evans, founded a hotel management group in 1953 called Evans Hotels, according to the group's website. The group manages three properties in the San Diego area.

After William D. Evans died in 1984, his widow, Anne, added two of her children to the Evans Hotels management team.

One of them was William L. Evans, who is Billy Evans' father.

Billy Evans attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He graduated in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in economics. During summers between school, Evans worked at various financial and consulting companies in California, according to a version of his LinkedIn profile that has since been modified. He was also a student brand manager at Red Bull while at MIT.

While at MIT, Evans studied abroad in China on a full scholarship, his LinkedIn said.

He studied Chinese language and literature at Fudan University in Shanghai.

After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly tried to launch a healthcare startup for transporting wealthy Chinese people to the US for "concierge medical attention."

Although he studied Chinese in college, Evans wasn't fluent in the language, and the idea never took off, according to the New York Post.

After that startup idea failed, Evans worked at LinkedIn.

He was a strategy and analytics leadership program analyst there until February 2017.

Evans then moved to Luminar Technologies, a startup working on radar and sensor technology for autonomous cars.

His LinkedIn said he was a manager of special projects there, but employees told the New York Post he was fond of "wandering around with absolute purpose, but no one knew what that purpose was."

Evans was reportedly close with Luminar's CEO, Austin Russell. He acted as Russell's "secret police" who would "strut around the office and tell people what to do," the Post reported.

Holmes and Evans met in 2017, according to a letter Evans wrote.

In November 2022, Holmes' attorneys filed 130 such letters from friends and family seeking leniency in her sentencing.

In his, Evans, who is eight years younger than Holmes, talked about the couple's story, including his initial hesitation to pursue a relationship with Holmes, and gave a glimpse into their private lives throughout the trial as he made his plea for a lighter sentence.

Evans says they "immediately fell in love."

They met in San Francisco at a house party during Fleet Week to benefit wounded warriors, according to The New York Times. Holmes spoke with the Times for a profile in May 2023 in her first interview since 2016. Evans had gone to get ice for a party at his apartment but dropped by the benefit, where a mutual friend introduced him to Holmes, and they talked for three hours, per the Times.

"My friends were texting, 'Where are you? We're here," Evans told the Times. "To say we immediately fell in love isn't an overstatement."

Evans wrote in his letter to the judge that he and Holmes "walked away from the others, and it was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist."

He said Holmes wore a sunhat and oversized glasses to try to "stay under the radar," and he didn't initially recognize her as they spoke.

"It was strange to feel so comfortable and willing to share with someone who I didn't know. I was captivated by her childish wonder and authenticity," he added in his letter. "We spoke for hours, I lost track of time, and even if I didn't know it ... I fell in love. She pulled out her business card, scribbled her personal cell on the back and then it clicked who she was."

Evans said they remained "just friends" for six months, writing, "I was admittedly hesitant to dive in given all that had been said, Liz had been consistently vilified in every piece of media imaginable."

"The more I got to know her the more I loved who she was," he continued in his letter to the judge. "It was not long before the friendship turned into something more."

Evans said in his letter that Holmes swam the Golden Gate Bridge in 2022 while pregnant and shared other details about their personal lives.

Evans wrote that the couple's husky, Balto, was taken from their front porch by a mountain lion and killed. His letter, and several others in the filing, also said that Holmes is a volunteer for a sexual assault crisis helpline, and Evans said she was recently "working on draft state legislation to help ensure victims of sexual violence and rape will be granted their survivors rights and receive the care they need."

Holmes had testified during her trial that she was raped in her sophomore year at Stanford and separately alleged that she was emotionally and sexually abused by Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and former right-hand man at Theranos. Balwani's attorneys denied the abuse allegations during the trial.

Meanwhile, Evans said he and Holmes don't have privacy because of the trial and have moved multiple times after their home address was revealed. He said that their son has been "avoided by other families not wanting to expose their children to my family."

"This will follow us for the rest of our lives," he wrote. "There is no avoiding the scorn that accompanies Elizabeth Holmes."

The two were first spotted in public together in August 2018.

They were seen at Burning Man, the arts festival in the Nevada desert, just days before Theranos fully shut down, according to the Daily Mail.

Evans left his job at Luminar in January 2019.

Luminar employees told the Post they suspect the reason was the potentially bad publicity surrounding Evans' relationship with Holmes.

Today, Evans says he does "a lot of different stuff."

When asked by the Times' reporter, Amy Chozick, what he does for work, he offered vaguely, "A lot of different stuff — investing, starting companies."

As recently as 2019, Holmes and Evans shared an apartment in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, near the city's iconic crooked Lombard Street.

They lived in a $5,395-a-month apartment in San Francisco at the time, according to CNBC.

Vanity Fair reported in February 2019 that Holmes and Evans had gotten engaged.

That June, Vanity Fair reported that Holmes and Evans had tied the knot in a secretive wedding ceremony.

Evans' parents were reportedly "flabbergasted" by their son's decision to marry Holmes, the Post reported.

Evans was a fixture in Holmes' trial.

He accompanied her to court daily and was a key part of one of her Hail Mary attempts to avoid prison.

After Holmes was convicted, she made several attempts to avoid prison time.

As the clock was running out with a scheduled sentencing date fast approaching, she requested a new trial on the grounds that a key government witness visited her home in August 2022 expressing regrets that his testimony had helped convict her.

The witness was Adam Rosendorff, who was Theranos' lab director from April 2013 to November 2014. Holmes' motion relied heavily on a recollection of the encounter documented by Evans, who spoke with Rosendorff when he appeared at their home.

In an email to Holmes' attorneys recalling his encounter with Rosendorff, Evans wrote: "He said he feels guilty, it seemed like he was hurting. He said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad (in the company). He said that the government made things sound worse than they were when he was up on the stand during his testimony. He said he felt like he had done something wrong. And that this was weighing on him, He said he was having trouble sleeping."

The judge agreed to postpone Holmes' sentencing to hear Rosendorff out, giving Holmes a small victory, but it backfired on her when Rosendorff stood by his testimony in the hearing, saying, "She needs to pay her debt to society."

Rosendorff explained that he'd felt bad for Holmes because of the possibility that a child would grow up without a mother, but he stressed that his testimony was accurate.

Evans' dad, William L. Evans even made headlines at Holmes' trial one day.

NPR reported in September that a man who identified himself as a "concerned citizen" named Hanson defended Holmes to news reporters at her trial; in actuality, NPR reports, the man was the older Evans.

In May 2023, Holmes began her prison sentence.

She reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security women's prison located about 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up.

During her sentence, she'll be separated from Evans and their two children, a son born in July 2021 and a daughter born in February 2023.

As for Evans, it seems his next venture is a blood-testing startup of his own.

The New York Times and NPR report that he's launched a blood-testing startup called Haemanthus that has raised millions and has roughly a dozen employees.

Holmes is giving him advice on the new venture but doesn't plan to have a formal role at the startup, according to NPR. As part of a settlement with the SEC in 2018, Holmes is banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company for a decade.

Evan's LinkedIn lists his current experience as working at a "Not So Stealth Startup" since October 2022.

• Jury selection began Monday for Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan.
• Prospective jurors were shown a list of 200 names that could be mentioned during the trial.
• Combs has denied the charges and other allegations of sexual abuse.

Jury selection for Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking case is underway this week, and it has offered a glimpse of which celebrities may be name-dropped at the trial.

During day one of jury selection in Manhattan federal court on Monday, prospective jurors were shown a list of some 200 names of people who the judge said would at least be mentioned during the trial, which is expected to last eight weeks. No jurors were selected by the end of the day on Monday.

Like Combs' "white party" extravaganzas of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the trial too is expected to feature celebrities — at least by name, if not in person.

Combs was indicted in September 2024 on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied the charges against him and all other allegations of sexual abuse. If convicted on all charges, Combs could face up to life in prison.

Each prospective juror is being asked if they personally know anyone on the list. The list has not been made public, but some famous names were revealed during jury selection on Monday.

Notable figures included on the list were:

• Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West
• Rapper Kid Cudi
• Music producer Dallas Austin
• Choreographer Laurieann Gibson
• Music producer Harve Pierre
• Former Danity Kane member Dawn Richard
• Former Danity Kane member Aubrey O'Day
• Actress Lauren London
• Destiny's Child alum Michelle Williams
• Actor Michael B. Jordan

Also on the list were members of the Combs family and several of Combs' exes and accusers, including:

• Late longtime girlfriend Kim Porter
• Rapper Yung Miami
• R&B singer and key witness Cassie Ventura

Reps for Ye, Kid Cudi, Austin, Gibson, Pierre, O'Day, London, Williams, Yung Miami, and the Combs family did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider.

Ventura's attorneys declined to comment.

Richard's lawyer Lisa Bloom, who was in the courtroom during jury selection, also declined to comment. Richard sued Combs last year, accusing him of sexual assault.

At the time, an attorney for Combs said in a statement that Combs was "shocked and disappointed" by the lawsuit.

"In an attempt to rewrite history, Dawn Richard has now manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday — conveniently timed to coincide with her album release and press tour," the statement said.

Meanwhile, Business Insider has learned that Jordan, the "Black Panther" actor, was referenced in the November 2023 lawsuit Ventura filed against Combs, accusing Combs of rape. The case quickly resulted in a settlement.

At one point during Ventura and Combs' on-again, off-again relationship, Ventura's lawsuit said in 2015 that she "began a flirtatious relationship with an actor." BI has confirmed that the actor is Jordan.

"She spent New Years Eve with this actor, but Combs soon found out," the lawsuit said, alleging that Combs then "called the actor and threatened him."

Jordan is not expected to appear as a witness during Combs' trial.

Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, was also mentioned in Ventura's lawsuit. The suit suggested that Combs was responsible for blowing up a car that belonged to the rapper in 2012 after Combs learned of a "brief relationship" that Kid Cudi and Ventura had.

Ventura is expected to be the star witness in Combs' trial. She is referred to as "Victim-1" in the indictment against Combs.

Being on the list of names shown to potential jurors does not mean that these people will be called to testify, but that their names may be mentioned during the trial.

Not one of the more than 30 prospects questioned on Monday said they knew anyone on the list personally.

Many told the judge they had never heard of any of the people, while several said the only one they had heard of was Ye or Kanye West.

The witness lists for both sides have not been made public.

Jury selection in the high-profile trial is projected to take several days.

At the center of the indictment against Combs are accusations he orchestrated "freak offs," which prosecutors describe in court papers as "elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded."

In these alleged drug-fueled sex sessions, prosecutors say Combs "used force, threats of force, and coercion" to get female victims to engage in sex acts with male commercial sex workers.

At the Meta monopoly trial, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom accused Mark Zuckerberg of draining Instagram resources to stifle growth out of sheer jealousy.

According to Systrom, Zuckerberg may have been directly involved in yanking resources after integrating Instagram and Facebook because "as the founder of Facebook, he felt a lot of emotion around which one was better—Instagram or Facebook," The Financial Times reported.

In 2025, Instagram is projected to account for more than half of Meta's ad revenue, according to eMarketer's forecast. Since 2019, Instagram has generated more ad revenue per user than Facebook, eMarketer noted, and today makes Meta twice as much per user as the closest rival that Meta claims it fears most, TikTok.

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The Meta monopoly trial has raised a question that Meta hopes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can't effectively answer: How important is it to use social media to connect with friends and family today?

Connecting with friends was, of course, Facebook's primary use case as it became the rare social network to hit 1 billion users—not by being acquired by a Big Tech company but based on the strength of its clean interface and the network effects that kept users locked in simply because all the important people in their life chose to be there.

According to the FTC, Meta took advantage of Facebook's early popularity, and it has since bought out rivals and otherwise cornered the market on personal social networks. Only Snapchat and MeWe (a privacy-focused Facebook alternative) are competitors to Meta platforms, the FTC argues, and social networks like TikTok or YouTube aren't interchangeable, because those aren't destinations focused on connecting friends and family.

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Starting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust trial Monday with a bang, Daniel Matheson, the FTC's lead litigator, flagged a "smoking gun"—a 2012 email where Mark Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook could buy Instagram to "neutralize a potential competitor," The New York Times reported.

And in "another banger of an email from Zuckerberg," Brendan Benedict, an antitrust expert monitoring the trial for Big Tech on Trial, posted on X that the Meta CEO wrote, "Messenger isn't beating WhatsApp. Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion... that's not exactly killing it."

These messages and others, the FTC hopes to convince the court, provide evidence that Zuckerberg runs Meta by the mantra "it's better to buy than compete"—seemingly for more than a decade intent on growing the Facebook empire by killing off rivals, allegedly in violation of antitrust law. Another message from Zuckerberg exhibited at trial, Benedict noted on X, suggests Facebook tried to buy yet another rival, Snapchat, for $6 billion.

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• Donald Trump is threatening publishers again.
• A New York Times editor who's out with a new book says we need to take him seriously.
• A landmark free speech case could be at risk.

Donald Trump, who is used to suing journalists and media companies about stories he doesn't like, says he's going to do more of it.

In a post published on his Truth Social platform Wednesday, Trump vowed to "sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general," arguing that they make up stories about him and "a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty."

"I'll do it as a service to our Country," Trump added. "Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!"

Trump is presumably referring to the newest book by Michael Wolff, an author who chronicled Trump's first term and is back at it with "All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America," which is out this week. Trump complained about the book in an earlier Truth Social post this week. I've asked Wolff and the White House for comment.

Complaining about people who say or publish unflattering things about him, threatening to sue them, and actually suing them are nothing new for Trump. And up until recently, it was relatively easy for media companies and journalists to shrug off those complaints and threatened suits. Even when Trump did lodge a claim, he rarely won in court.

But in Trump 2.0, it's getting harder to dismiss a Trump rant about the media. Since his election this past fall, he has already extracted a settlement from Disney and ABC over a defamation suit he filed last year, and he's in discussions with CBS and Paramount to settle another suit, this one over allegations of "election interference" because he didn't like a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. He has lodged a similar lawsuit against Gannett and its Des Moines Register.

How a key free speech ruling could be at risk

And while Trump's threat to create a law about defamation seems like a reach — in the US, laws are hard to pass, even when the same party controls the White House, the House, and the Senate — the direction he's headed is worth taking very seriously.

That's the underlying message of "Murder the Truth," a coming book from The New York Times' editor David Enrich, which details an ongoing push to tear down the legal underpinnings that support freedom of speech in the US. Enrich is specifically focused on New York Times v. Sullivan, a 1964 Supreme Court ruling that established the basic framework for defamation law in the US: In short, it should be very hard to successfully sue someone because you don't like what they say.

As Enrich notes in his book, this was both a landmark ruling and a popular one, cherished by free speech advocates across the political spectrum. But that has started to change in recent years.

There are multiple reasons for that, but the main one is Trump himself, Enrich told me on this week's episode of my "Channels" podcast.

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump mused about wanting to "open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money." Which, again, was easy to dismiss at the time, for multiple reasons. But Trump kept coming back to the idea — and as we're seeing now, he has already had success on the payments front.

Next up: a potential showdown at the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas has already said he's eager to revisit NYT v. Sullivan, as has his fellow Justice Neil Gorsuch. So Trump could end up getting his way without passing a new law.

There's been a slew of news about Trump and his allies battling with the press in recent weeks — see his fight with The Associated Press over the Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America, and his dustups with the press corps over who gets to ask questions at press conferences and who gets to participate in the White House press pool.

And those stories unsettle me and other observers. But they're ultimately about access, not about limiting what the press — who, as Elon Musk likes to remind us, is everyone now — actually says, writes, and publishes. Threatening lawsuits, filing lawsuits, and extracting settlements from lawsuits are very much about that. Actually changing the law to make those suits that much more powerful is something that should alarm all of us.

• Gainesville and Durham piloted guaranteed basic income for formerly incarcerated people.
• Many formerly incarcerated people in the US do not have access to traditional social safety nets.
• Participants reported better financial resilience but struggled with housing costs after the program.

Six hundred dollars a month was the boost some formerly incarcerated people needed to rent apartments, cover unexpected expenses, and land steady jobs.

Gainesville, Florida, and Durham, North Carolina, recently tried using cash aid to help alleviate financial instability among formerly incarcerated residents, a demographic that is especially vulnerable to homelessness and food insecurity. Guaranteed basic income — which offers participants no-strings-attached payments — has been piloted across America as an approach to poverty reduction.

The cities aren't the only places that have tried similar cash aid programs: the Center for Employment Opportunities gave cash to over 10,000 formerly incarcerated people across the US in 2020.

In Gainesville, 115 participants received an initial $1,000 payment followed by $600 a month for 11 months, ending in spring 2023. In Durham, 109 participants received $600 a month for one year, ending in spring 2023.

Both participant cohorts were compared to control groups of formerly incarcerated people who did not receive GBI, and the pilot results were published by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania in February. The results are based on interviews with participants and surveys that were completed before, during, and six months after the program.

While some Gainesville and Durham participants struggled to maintain financial gains after their cash payments ended, most said the money allowed them to afford essentials and alleviated some stress, which helped their mental health. Rent, groceries, and household bills were commonly reported uses of the GBI payments.

"Guaranteed income really is just a tool to ensure, in the Gainesville and Durham cases especially, that no one is too poor to be free," said Sukhi Samra, executive director of the advocacy group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which partnered on the pilots. "We're not trapping people in a culture of poverty and in a culture of scarcity and lack."

Cash helped formerly incarcerated people afford essentials

Formerly incarcerated people face higher rates of financial insecurity and unemployment compared to the rest of the population. This can make it difficult to afford basic needs. Per data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2022, the most recent year available, about a third of formerly incarcerated individuals aren't hired in the four years after their release. Black people were also admitted to jail at more than four times the rate of white people as of 2022.

Most states give incarcerated people a small amount of money — between $10 and $200 — when they leave a prison or jail. However, some states restrict access to safety nets for formally incarcerated people. For example, Florida prohibits people who have been convicted of drug trafficking from accessing safety nets like SNAP and TANF.

Brianna Seid, a lawyer for the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Business Insider that $10 or $200 might help buy a train or bus ticket home, but it isn't near enough to pay court fees, lease an apartment, afford childcare, or establish reliable transportation — especially if people face limited access to safety nets.

"There's this idea that people get arrested or convicted, go to prison, and leave, and that's just the end of the punishment," Seid said. "I think for a lot of people, they don't understand the ways that we excessively and perpetually punish people for having a criminal conviction, and it really touches every area of your life."

Cash is a potential way to ease work and income barriers, she said.

In the Gainesville pilot, participants reported that guaranteed basic income helped them secure housing, have more hope, increase financial resiliency, and put food on the table. The share of participants who said they were "worried about having enough food" decreased from 59% at the start of the program to 49% six months after payments ended. The number of participants employed full-time also increased from 12% to 17% during that time.

Durham participants reported using GBI money to buy hygiene products, afford food, and build savings. The percentage of participants "worried about having enough food" also decreased from 59% at the start of the program to 44% six months after payments ended. Over that same period, the share of participants who felt they had enough money to support themselves rose from 3.7% to 18.35%.

Samra added that many participants in both Gainesville and Durham said that having extra cash helped them better adhere to probation requirements and prevent further arrests.

Many participants struggled with housing costs after the programs ended

Six months into receiving cash, 3% of Gainesville participants said they were experiencing homelessness. But six months after GBI ended, that figure had risen to 12%. In Durham, results showed that 29% of participants were severely housing-cost-burdened six months into the program, a number that rose to 41% six months after payments ended.

At the same time, Samra said that guaranteed basic income isn't meant to be a cure-all poverty solution. GBI pilots are temporary, and she said the financial challenges some participants faced after the program show that more support is needed.

For Samra, there's one major takeaway from the results: financial support is a step toward keeping people out of the prison system.

"These results show that if you provide a little bit of cash support, you're allowing folks the space and the ability to not only re-enter and breathe," she said. "And prevent the sort of harm and activities that they wouldn't be doing if it weren't for a simple lack of cash."

• Lawyers for Charlie Javice on Friday moved for a mistrial in her fraud case.
• Defense argued her right to a fair trial was "compromised" after opening statements were shortened.
• Prosecutors allege Javice defrauded JPMorgan Chase before it bought her student aid startup, Frank.

Lawyers for Charlie Javice on Friday moved for a mistrial in the fraud case against her, arguing her right to a fair trial had been "irreparably compromised."

Her lawyers argued that Javice's right to a fair trial was compromised when the judge unexpectedly ordered her defense counsel's opening statement to be shortened, which they called a violation of her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.

"Our motion for a mistrial was based on the fundamental principle that Ms. Javice has a constitutional right to a fair trial, which includes adequate time for her counsel to present a full and complete opening statement," a representative for Javice's legal team told Business Insider. "The abrupt and unexplained reduction in our time significantly hindered our ability to provide the jury with a clear and comprehensive presentation of the facts and legal arguments central to this case."

In addition to having the defense's opening statement cut short, Javice's lawyers argue that the court misstated jury instructions regarding the elements of wire fraud, which prejudiced them against the defendant.

The court told the jury that, in order to convict on the wire and bank fraud charges facing Javice, the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Javice made intentional false and misleading statements with the intention to deceive, her lawyers say.

However, her lawyers argued in their motion for a mistrial that the court did not adequately inform the jury panel about a key element of the law, which requires the government to prove any false statements amounted to material misrepresentations — a higher legal standard requiring the prosecutors to prove a reasonable person would have been convinced to act due to the false claims and that the false claims were relied on when deciding to enter the deal.

"To guarantee Ms. Javice's Fifth Amendment rights, a mistrial is the only appropriate remedy," the motion from Javice's attorneys says.

The mistrial motion stems from the trial's opening statements, which began Thursday in the fraud case against Javice and her Olivier Amar, who prosecutors say defrauded JPMorgan Chase before it bought the student aid startup.

Javice and Amar are charged with bank fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud after prosecutors say they exaggerated the customer base of their student loan-focused fintech startup in an effort to trick the bank into buying it.

JPMorgan Chase bought Frank in 2021 for $175 million after Javice and Amar said the company had more than 4 million users — a number that prosecutors now argue had been artificially inflated.

Representatives for the US Attorney's Office Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes gave her first interview from prison to PEOPLE Magazine.
• Her life behind bars includes clerking for 31 cents an hour and teaching French, according to the magazine.
• Holmes was found guilty in 2022 of fraud in connection with her blood-testing startup.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has given her first interview from behind bars.

More than 20 months since reporting to prison, her days are far different than the Silicon Valley boardroom and investor meetings she once knew, a new interview with PEOPLE Magazine reveals.

Her new routine includes waking up a little after 5 a.m. and having fruit for breakfast before exercising for 40 minutes, according to the magazine.

"I truly did not think I would ever be convicted or found guilty," she told PEOPLE. "I refused to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit. Theranos failed. But failure is not fraud."

An inmate handbook for the federal minimum-security women's prison in Bryan, Texas, where she is incarcerated, says all medically cleared inmates are required to have a regular job for at least 90 days. Holmes has several jobs in the prison, including one as a reentry clerk, for which she makes 31 cents an hour helping prisoners expected to be released soon, PEOPLE reported. She's also a law clerk and teaches French classes, the magazine said.

Holmes was vegan for years before entering prison and says she mostly sticks to that today, although PEOPLE reports she started eating salmon and tuna after she became anemic her first year behind bars.

Holmes told the magazine she spends some time reading; she recently finished the "Harry Potter" series and Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act: A Way of Being," among other titles. She also tends to talk to her family twice a day by phone. Holmes shares a young son and daughter with her partner, Billy Evans.

In January 2022, Holmes was convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit fraud on investors and three counts of committing fraud on individual investors in connection with her blood-testing startup, Theranos.

She was acquitted of all four fraud and conspiracy counts related to patients, and the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict on the three remaining counts of fraud on individual investors.

Holmes had said Theranos would revolutionize healthcare by testing for hundreds of diseases using only a few drops of blood.

At its peak, Theranos was valued at $9 billion and Holmes at one point became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. The company's public downfall began in 2015, when then-Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou reported Theranos was using third-party blood-testing machines because its own couldn't provide accurate results.

Federal agencies began investigating Theranos, the SEC brought charges against Holmes and the company in 2018, and the company shut down that year.

In May 2023, Holmes reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up, to begin serving her sentence.

Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison, though her sentence has since been shortened. Her expected release date is now April 3, 2032, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.

Holmes has therapy for PTSD once a week and counsels other prisoners who are rape survivors, PEOPLE reported. She testified during her trial that she was raped while a college student at Stanford University and that Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, Theranos' former president and COO who once dated Holmes, emotionally and sexually abused her. Balwani has denied the allegations.

In his trial, separate from Holmes', Balwani was convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison and three years of probation.

In addition to their prison sentences, Holmes and Balwani were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution.

One of the attorneys representing anonymous FBI agents suing the Department of Justice to block the public identification of agents who investigated Jan. 6 is a longtime anti-Trump lawyer who worked with House Democrats on President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. 

Norm Eisen is an attorney, CNN legal analyst and expert at the Brookings Institution public policy think tank who previously served as the U.S.' ambassador to the Czech Republic and special counsel for ethics and government reform under the Obama administration, when he earned the nicknames "Dr. No" and "The Fun Sponge" for reportedly ensuring the administration abide by ethics rules. 

Eisen appeared in court on Thursday for a hearing before U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb involving a pair of lawsuits filed by two groups of FBI agents who investigated the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol Building as well as former special counsel Jack Smith's investigations and cases against Trump. 

Eisen serves as executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the FBI agents who investigated Trump-related cases. State Democracy Defenders Fund is a nonprofit that bills itself as focused on defeating "election sabotage" and "autocracy in 2025 — and beyond."

FBI AGENTS SUE TRUMP DOJ TO BLOCK ANY PUBLIC IDENTIFICATION OF EMPLOYEES WHO WORKED ON JAN. 6 INVESTIGATIONS

"Credible reports indicate the FBI has been directed to systematically terminate all Bureau employees who had any involvement in investigations related to President Trump, and that Trump’s allies in the DOJ are planning to publicly disseminate the names of those employees they plan to terminate," State Democracy Defenders Fund wrote in its press release of the emergency order to block the public release of FBI personnel names involved in the Jan. 6 investigation. 

Fox News Digital took a look back on Eisen's rhetoric and actions across the past few years and found that he has repeatedly been at the forefront of the legal cases against Trump, notably serving as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Trump beginning in 2019. 

FBI AGENTS GROUP TELLS CONGRESS TO TAKE URGENT ACTION TO PROTECT AGAINST POLITICIZATION

House Democrats tapped Eisen — who early in his career specialized in financial fraud litigation and investigations — to help lead the first impeachment against the 45th president, which accused Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to allegedly seeking foreign interference from Ukraine to boost his re-election efforts in 2020. The House adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump, but the Senate ultimately voted to acquit him. 

Eisen revealed following the impeachment effort that he initially drafted 10 articles of impeachment against Trump, not just two, which would have included issues such as "hush money" payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Although the payments were not included in the impeachment articles, they were a focal point of the Manhattan v. Trump trial that found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in May 2024. 

FBI AGENTS DETAIL J6 ROLE IN EXHAUSTIVE QUESTIONNAIRE EMPLOYEES 'WERE INSTRUCTED TO FILL OUT'

"This was only the third impeachment trial of a president in American history, so it's remarkable that we even got those two," Eisen said in an NPR interview in 2020. "I will tell you that those two articles are a microcosm of all 10 of the impeachment articles that we drafted. They have features of all 10." 

Eisen told Fox News Digital, when asked about his history of anti-Trump cases, that he was initially open to working with the first Trump administration, but that the president, "turned against the Constitution."

"I was initially open to Trump and even advised his first presidential transition," Eisen told Fox Digital in an emailed comment on Friday. "But he turned against the Constitution and laws."

"In his first administration and now, he was and is using the presidency to break the law and to help himself and his cronies like Elon Musk — not the American people," he continued. "To ensure the integrity of our democracy, I am pushing back through the bipartisan institutions I work with such as State Democracy Defenders Fund, which has strong conservative representation on our board." 

Eisen is the co-founder of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which made waves in 2023 and 2024 when it helped to initiate a Colorado court case to remove Trump from the primary ballot in the state, The New York Times reported.  

The lawsuit, which ultimately landed in the Supreme Court, argued that Trump should be deemed ineligible from holding political office under a Civil War-era insurrection clause and that his name should thus be barred from appearing on the 2024 ballot. The group said that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters breached the U.S. Capitol, violated a clause in the 14th Amendment that prevents officers of the United States, members of Congress or state legislatures who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution from holding political office.

Other states made similar legal claims to remove Trump, but each of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled in Trump’s favor in a decision released last March, ending the Colorado case and all others that were similar. 

DOJ DIRECTS FBI TO FIRE 8 TOP OFFICIALS, IDENTIFY EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN JAN. 6, HAMAS CASES FOR REVIEW

The State Democracy Defenders Action, which Eisen co-founded, has also been involved with other Trump-involved court cases, including in the Manhattan v. Trump case. The group helped file an amicus brief in February, advocating that presiding Judge Juan Merchan sentence Trump just days ahead of his inauguration. Trump was ultimately sentenced to unconditional discharge, meaning he faces no fines or jail time. 

​​Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan case in May 2024. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office worked to prove that Trump had falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star, Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 election to quiet her claims of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

Eisen also founded another group, the States United Democracy Center, which filed an amicus brief in 2024 in Fulton County, Georgia, court, advocating that District Attorney Fani Willis' racketeering case against Trump not be dismissed. 

ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT RESPONSIBLE FOR OPENING JACK SMITH ELECTOR CASE AGAINST PRESIDENT: WHISTLEBLOWER

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in December 2024 that Willis and her office are barred from prosecuting the case. The case worked to prove that Trump had led a "criminal racketeering enterprise" to change the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia. Trump has maintained his innocence in that case, as well as the other federal and state charges brought against him between the 2020 and 2024 election, slamming them as Democrat lawfare. 

Eisen, in his capacity as executive chair and founder of State Democracy Defenders Fund, also sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking Committee Member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. on Monday to speak out against Kash Patel's nomination as director of the FBI under the second Trump administration. Eisen said he had ethics concerns surrounding Patel's previous work in Qatar. 

MAJOR FBI CHANGES KASH PATEL COULD MAKE ON DAY 1 IF CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR

The FBI lawsuits followed acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sending a memo to acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll in late January, directing him to fire eight FBI employees who worked on the Jan. 6 investigation, as well as a terror case related to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. The memo also informed the acting director to identify all current and former FBI personnel who took part in the case. 

The memo's directive to identify those involved in the case sparked the two FBI lawsuits filed Tuesday, which seek to stop the collection of names and their public release. 

"The individuals being targeted have served in law enforcement for decades, often putting their lives on the line for the citizens of this country," Eisen said in a statement provided in State Democracy Defenders Fund's press release announcing it filed an emergency order on behalf of the FBI agents. "Their rights and privacy must be preserved."

The judge temporarily barred the Trump DOJ on Thursday from disclosing information on the agents until she hears arguments and determines whether to issue a temporary restraining order. 

Fox News Digital's Breanne Deppisch and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

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