NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs ' one-time personal assistant testified Wednesday that he was in charge of cleaning up hotel rooms after the hip-hop mogul’s sex marathons — tossing out empty alcohol bottles, baby oil and drugs, tidying pillows and making it look as if nothing had happened.
An implied part of the job was that “protecting him and protecting his public image were important to him," George Kaplan told jurors at Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial. “That’s what I was keen on doing."
Kaplan, who worked for Combs from 2013 to 2015, said the Bad Boy Records founder would sometimes summon him to a hotel room to deliver a “medicine kit,” a bag full of prescription pills and over-the-counter pain medications. He said Combs dispatched him to buy drugs including MDMA, also known as ecstasy.
Kaplan, 34, was granted immunity to testify after initially telling the Manhattan court that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Prosecutors contend Combs leaned on employees and used his music and fashion empire to facilitate and cover up his behavior, sometimes making threats to keep them in line and his misconduct hush-hush.
Kaplan testified that Combs threatened his job on a monthly basis, once berating him for buying the wrong size bottled water. Combs' longtime girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, testified that Kaplan quit after seeing Combs beat her.
Kaplan’s testimony resumes Thursday. He'll be followed by rapper and actor Kid Cudi.
Cudi, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi, is expected to testify about his brief relationship with Cassie in 2011. Prosecutors say Combs was so upset that he arranged to have Cudi’s convertible firebombed.
Also Wednesday, a federal agent showed jurors two handguns he said were found in a March 2024 raid at Combs’ Miami-area home, along with photos of ammunition and a wooden box marked “Puffy” — one of his nicknames — that the agent said contained psilocybin, MDMA and other drugs.
Investigators also found items prosecutors say were hallmarks of “freak-offs," including dozens of bottles of baby oil and lubricant, said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerard Gannon.
Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos suggested the search — which involved 80 to 90 agents, an armored vehicle smashing the security gate, handcuffed employees and boat patrols — was overkill. Combs’ Los Angeles mansion was also searched.
Gannon confirmed the federal investigation began the day after Cassie filed a lawsuit in November 2023 alleging that Combs abused her for years and involved her in hundreds of “freak-offs" with him and male sex workers. Combs soon settled for $20 million, she said.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he leveraged his fame and fortune to control Cassie and other people through threats and violence. His lawyers say the evidence reflects domestic violence, not racketeering or sex trafficking.
Jurors also heard from a psychologist who delved into the complexities of abusive relationships. Dawn Hughes explained victims often experience a “low sense of self” and tend to stay with abusers because they yearn for love and compassion they experienced in a relationship’s early “honeymoon phase.”
Hughes also explained how a victim’s memory can sometimes become jumbled — retaining awareness of abuse, but mixing up details. Hughes, who was paid $6,000 by the prosecution to testify, didn’t examine or mention Cassie or Combs, but her testimony paralleled some of what Cassie said she experienced with him.
Cassie testified that she started dating Cudi in late 2011. Although she and Combs broke up, they still engaged in “freak-offs," she said. It was during such an encounter that Combs looked at her phone and figured out she was seeing Cudi, Cassie said.
Cassie's mother, Regina Ventura, testified Tuesday that Cassie emailed her in December 2011 that Combs was so angry about the relationship that he planned to release explicit videos of her and have someone hurt Cassie and Cudi. Regina Ventura said Combs also demanded $20,000. Scared for her daughter's safety, she said she sent Combs the money, only to have it returned by Combs days later.
Cassie testified that she broke up with Cudi before the end of the year.
“It was just too much,” she said. “Too much danger, too much uncertainty of, like, what could happen if we continued to see each other.”
After Cassie reunited with Combs, he told her that Cudi's car would be blown up and that he wanted Cudi's friends there to see it, Cassie said.
__
Associated Press reporter Julie Walker contributed to this report.
FILE - Cassie Ventura, left, and Sean "Diddy" Combs appear at the premiere of "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story" on June 21, 2017, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
Sean "Diddy" Combs looks on as defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland cross examines Dawn Richard during Combs' sex trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan federal court, Monday, May 19, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
FILE - Kid Cudi appears at the Los Angeles premiere of "Sonic The Hedgehog 2," on April 5, 2022. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Twenty-three men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and seven other people are scheduled to be put to death in five states during the remainder of 2025.
A South Carolina man's execution on Friday evening was the state's sixth in the past nine months. Stephen Stanko was put to death after a federal judge ruled that the man’s lawyers didn’t have evidence there were problems with the state’s lethal injection process.
A day earlier, an Oklahoma man was put to death after an appeals court lifted a temporary stay of execution issued by a district court. That followed the execution Tuesday of two men in Florida and in Alabama.
So far this year, executions have been carried out in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
States with scheduled executions this year are Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas, though Ohio’s governor has routinely postponed the actions as the dates near.
All of 2024 saw 25 executions, matching the number for 2018. Those were the highest totals since 28 executions in 2015.
Here's a look at recent executions and those scheduled for the rest of the year, by state:
Anthony Wainwright, 54, died by lethal injection Tuesday for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Carmen Gayheart in 1994. Gayheart was abducted from a grocery store parking lot with another man in Lake City, Florida.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, is set to die by lethal injection June 24. Gudinas was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for raping and killing Michelle McGrath near a bar. He would be the seventh person to be executed in Florida this year.
Gregory Hunt, 65, died by nitrogen gas Tuesday for the 1988 beating death of Karen Lane. She was found dead in an apartment in Cordova. Hunt had been dating Lane for about a month.
Alabama last year became the first state to carry out an execution with nitrogen gas. Nitrogen has now been used in five executions — four in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The method involves using a gas mask to force a person to breathe pure nitrogen gas, depriving them of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, died by lethal injection Thursday after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing a Tulsa woman in 1999.
A judge temporarily delayed the execution on Monday after Hanson’s lawyers argued that he did not receive a fair clemency hearing last month before the state’s Pardon and Parole Board. They claimed board member Sean Malloy was biased because he worked for the district attorney’s office when Hanson was being prosecuted.
Malloy has said he never worked on Hanson’s case at the time and was unfamiliar with it before the clemency hearing. Malloy was one of three members who voted 3-2 to deny Hanson a clemency recommendation.
On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals lifted the stay. The court wrote that the district judge didn’t have the authority to issue the stay.
Hanson was transferred to Oklahoma custody in March by federal officials following through on President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty.
Stanko was executed for killing his 74-year-old friend Henry Turner in April 2006.
Stanko, 57, was also on death row for killing a woman he was living with and raping her teenage daughter.
Stanko chose to die by lethal injection instead of in the electric chair or by firing squad.
Mikal Mahdi was executed by firing squad in South Carolina on April 11. Mahdi’s lawyers released autopsy results that show the shots that killed him barely hit his heart and suggested he was in agonizing pain for three or four times longer than experts say he would have been if his heart had been hit directly.
The state Supreme Court rejected a request from Stanko’s lawyers to delay his execution so they could get more information about the death of Mahdi. A doctor hired by the defense said Mahdi suffered a lingering death of about 45 seconds to a minute because his heart was not destroyed as planned.
On Wednesday, a federal judge allowed the execution to go on despite arguments from Stanko's lawyers that inmates in the past three lethal injection executions died a lingering death — still conscious as they felt like they were drowning when fluid rushed into their lungs.
Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate is set to be executed on June 25.
Richard Gerald Jordan, 78, was sentenced to death in 1976 for kidnapping and killing a woman in a forest. Jordan has filed multiple death sentence appeals, which have been denied.
Mississippi allows death sentences to be carried out using lethal injection, nitrogen gas, electrocution or firing squad.
Byron Black, 69, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Aug. 5. Black was convicted in 1989 of three counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters.
Harold Nichols, 64, is also scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 11. Nichols was convicted of rape and first-degree felony murder in the 1988 death of Karen Pulley in Hamilton County.
Blaine Milam, 35, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Sept. 25. Milam was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter during what the couple had said was part of an “exorcism” in Rusk County in East Texas in December 2008.
Milam’s girlfriend, Jesseca Carson, was also convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Ohio has two executions set for later this year, with Timothy Coleman scheduled to die on Oct. 30 and Kareem Jackson scheduled to be executed on Dec. 10.
However, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine already has postponed into 2028 three executions that were scheduled for June, July and August of this year. DeWine has said that he does not anticipate any further executions will happen during his term, which runs through 2026.
Associated Press reporters Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed.
FILE - A guard stands in a tower at Indiana State Prison on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024, in Michigan City, Ind. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)
This photo provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows death row inmate Glen Rogers. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)
