By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Soon after viciously attacking his longtime girlfriend Cassie in a hotel hallway, Sean “Diddy” Combs sought out a security guard and predicted accurately that his iconic career would be ruined — his image as the affable, successful “Puff Daddy” destroyed — if video of the beating ever became public.
Eddy Garcia, 33, testified Thursday that the hip-hop mogul made the comment repeatedly before giving a brown paper bag stuffed with $100,000 in cash to the then guard, in order to buy what he hoped was the only copy of surveillance footage of the March 2016 assault.
Prosecutors at Combs’ sex trafficking trial in Manhattan have made the footage of Combs kicking, beating and dragging Cassie at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles a centerpiece of their federal case against him. They contend it supports the claims of three women, including Cassie, who allege the Bad Boy Records founder sexually and physically abused them over two decades.
Prosecutors say Combs’ persistent efforts to hush up the episode fit into allegations he used threats and his fortune and fame to get what he wanted.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
After the attack, Garcia said, he spoke several times to Combs’ chief-of-staff, Kristina Khorram, telling her he couldn’t show her the recording but “off the record, it’s bad.”
He said during one phone call she put a “very nervous”-sounding Combs on the phone, who “was just saying he had a little too much to drink” and that, as Garcia surely knows, “with women, one thing leads to another and if this got out it would ruin him.”
Garcia added: “He was talking really fast, a lot of stuttering.”
In the evening, Garcia said, he became nervous and scared when Khorram called him on his cell phone — the number for which he had not provided — and she put Combs on.
“He stated that I sounded like a good guy,” Garcia testified, adding that Combs again said “something like this could ruin him.”
When he told Combs he didn’t have access to the server to obtain the video footage, Combs said he believed Garcia could make it happen and that “he would take care of me,” which Garcia said he took “to mean financially.”
Garcia said he checked with his boss and was told he’d sell it to Combs for $50,000.
When he told Combs, he said the music producer “sounded excited.”
“He referred to me as ‘Eddy my angel,’” Garcia said, adding that Combs told him: “I knew you could help. I knew you could do it.”
Within two days of the attack on Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, Garcia gave Combs a storage device containing the footage in exchange for $100,000 in cash — with Combs feeding bills through a money counter and putting them in a brown paper bag.
Garcia signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement, shown in court, that required he pay $1 million if he breached the deal. At the time, he said, he was making $10.50 an hour working hotel security.
Garcia said he signed a declaration swearing that there was no other copy of the video.
He said he signed the papers in an office building with Combs’ bodyguard and Khorram present. Garcia said he didn’t fully read the documents, explaining that he was nervous and “the goal was to get out of there as soon as possible.”
After signing, he said, Combs asked him what he planned to do with the money and advised him not to make big purchases. Garcia said he took that to mean he shouldn’t do anything that would draw attention.
Garcia said he gave $50,000 to his boss and $20,000 to another security officer. He pocketed $30,000 and used some of it to buy a used car, he said.
He used cash and, avoiding a further paper trail, never put the money in the bank, he said.
A few weeks later, Garcia said, Combs called him and asked if anyone had inquired about the video. Garcia said no, recounting Combs’ ebullient greeting: “Happy Easter. Eddy, my angel. God is good. God put you in my way for a reason.”
Garcia said he asked Combs if the rapper might have future work for him, and Combs sounded receptive. But Combs never responded to his later inquiries, the witness said.
Last year, CNN aired footage of the security video. Another hotel guard has testified he recorded the footage on his phone so he could show it to his wife.