Sean ‘Diddy' Combs bribed hotel security guard $100K to hand over Cassie beating video, then called him on Easter: ‘God put you in my life for a reason'
Eddy Garcia said he accepted the cash in exchange for giving Combs what he believed was the only copy of a surveillance video of the 2016 beatdown — and then described getting a bizarre phone call from the music mogul not long after on Easter.
'He said, 'Happy Easter. You are my angel. God is good. God put you in my life for a reason,'' Garcia told jurors at Combs' federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.
'And he asked if anyone had inquired about the video,' Garcia added, noting he told Combs that he hadn't received any questions about the footage since the pair's March 7, 2016, deal.
Combs said 'Great' and then told Garcia to keep him posted if that changed, the witness said.
Garcia — who testified under an immunity deal, meaning he won't be prosecuted for his testimony even if it is incriminating — said he had been working for private security company Securitas at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles when he was told about a 'domestic dispute' involving the hip-hop mogul on March 5, 2016.
Within 48 hours, Garcia testified about how he was allegedly hounded by Combs and his chief of staff Kristina Khorram to help them make the video go away.
During one phone call with Khorram, she put a 'very nervous'-sounding Combs on the phone who tried to justify his actions, he said.
'He was talking really fast, a lot of stuttering,' he said.
'[Combs] was just saying he had a little too much to drink,' Garcia said, adding that Combs told him, 'With women, one thing leads to another, and if this got out, it would ruin him.'
Diddy trial live updates: Shocking new details about hotel beating video revealed; security guard says mogul bribed him to bury footage
Sean 'Diddy' Combs bribed hotel security guard $100K to hand over Cassie beating video, then called him on Easter: 'God put you in my life for a reason'
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Diddy trial drags Madonna, Judd Apatow, Chadwick Boseman into weekslong battle over rapper's sex-trafficking, racketeering charges
Later, Garcia said Khorram called him on his cell phone — the number for which he hadn't provided — and put Combs on again.
'He stated that I sounded like a good guy,' Garcia testified, adding that Combs again told him, 'Something like this could ruin him.'
When Garcia told Combs he didn't have access to the server to obtain the video footage of the attack, Combs replied that he believed Garcia could make that happen and said 'he would take care of me,' which Garcia took 'to mean financially,' he said.
Garcia checked with his boss and was told he would sell the tape to Combs for $50,000, he said, adding that the music mogul 'sounded excited' when he told him the news.
'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.'
Garcia gave Combs a storage device containing the footage in exchange for $100,000 in cash that Combs fed through a money counter before placing in a brown paper bag.
Garcia said that he signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement at an office building in the presence of Combs' bodyguard and Khorram.
The declaration, which stated that there was no other copy of the video, required that Garcia pay $1 million if he breached the deal, the court was told.
Garcia, who at the time said he was earning $10.50 an hour working hotel security, added that he didn't fully read the documents.
'The goal was to get out of there as soon as possible,' he said.
After he signed the document, Garcia said Combs asked him what he planned to do with the money and advised him not to make any big purchases, which Garcia said he took to mean avoid drawing attention to himself.
Garcia told the court he gave $50,000 to his boss Bill Medrano, $20,000 to another security officer, Henry Elias, and pocketed the remaining $30,000, using some of the money to buy a used car in cash.
He never put the money in a bank to avoid a paper trail, he added.
Garcia also asked Combs if he might have future work with him, to which he said the rapper sounded receptive, although he never responded to his inquiries, he added.
The footage of the attack on Ventura was aired last year by CNN.
Another hotel guard testified that he recorded the footage on his phone so that he could show it to his wife.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that could send him to prison for life, if convicted.

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Boston Globe
12 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Saturday brings twists of country to the Newport Folk Festival
Advertisement There was much more in between, of course, both of folk and allied roots forms. on 'Exile.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Bonny Light Horseman performs at the Fort Stage on Saturday at the Newport Folk Festival. Heather Diehl/For The Boston Globe Their performance Saturday concentrated on songs from their latest record, 'Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free,' along with a couple of older favorites. All of it served to display the band's singular sensibility as well as the marvelous twining harmonies produced by Johnson and the third Horseman, Anaïs Mitchell. Advertisement With his recent debut solo release, 'American Romance,' Lukas Nelson is touring under his own name, and so he came back to Newport in a new guise, without his long-running band Promise of the Real. That new guise leaned country, from the short back-and-sides and the cowboy hat Nelson sported, to the songs he played, and it brought a lot of looking back. He started with the first song he ever wrote, at age 11, the fiddle and steel-filled 'You Were It.' He prefaced 'Just Outside Of Austin' by saying 'let's go home,' and he sounded like he was channeling dad Willie Nelson's voice and guitar as he sang and played it. Later, he tacked a run-though of Willie's classic 'Bloody Mary Morning' onto his own 'Ladder of Love.' He ended with the title song from his new album, a song inspired by the life he lived coming of age on the road with his father. Katie Crutchfield, in the guise of her Waxahatchee project, has also been doing something new of late, exploring country-folk territory with her elliptical lyrics and her remarkable, off-kilter vocal style on her latest LP, 'Tigers Blood.' The bulk of what she played Saturday came from that record, along with one ('Problem With It') from Given that several of the songs on the new record are also evocative of Bob Dylan, it seemed apropos to be hearing them at Newport in the wake of last year's Dylan biopic, Advertisement Waxahatchee performs at the Fort stage in Fort Adams State Park on the second day of the Newport Folk Festival. Heather Diehl/For The Boston Globe What was new about He sang seated for most of the set; his band was more acoustic, and more dialed back (until he brought it home by going electric) and he featured songs from the understated acoustic 'Fathers & Sons' project that he released last year (one of them, 'Whoever You Turn Out to Be,' written about and for his sons, caused the heart-on-his-sleeve Combs to choke up mid-song). Fans enjoy Waxahatchee's performance during the second day of the Newport Folk Festival. Heather Diehl/For The Boston Globe He added a couple of covers, too: Darrell Scott's deep-holler lament 'You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive,' and, yes, 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' (his version following Keb' Mo's, Combs noted). If at the end of the day, much of what we heard still sounded a lot like the mainstream country world from which it came, Combs attempted to fit what he did to where he was, and he largely succeeded. NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL At Fort Adams State Park, Newport, R.I., Saturday Stuart Munro can be reached at


Hamilton Spectator
17 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Trump once decried the idea of presidential vacations. His Scotland trip is built around golf
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Trump was also talking trade in separate meetings with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer . Trump is staying at his properties near Turnberry and Aberdeen, where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third on Aug. 13. Trump played golf over the weekend at Turnberry and is helping cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday. He's not the first president to play in Scotland: Dwight D. Eisenhower played at Turnberry in 1959, more than a half century before Trump bought it, after meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. But none of Trump's predecessors has constructed a foreign itinerary around promoting vacation sites his family owns and is actively expanding. It lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family's profits in a variety of ways, including overseas development deals and promoting cryptocurrencies, despite growing questions about ethics concerns. 'You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetize his presidency,' said Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern presidency at American University. 'In this case, using the trip as a PR opportunity to promote his golf courses.' Presidents typically vacation in the US Franklin D. Roosevelt went to the Bahamas, often for the excellent fishing, five times between 1933 and 1940. He visited Canada's Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had vacationed as a child, in 1933, 1936 and 1939. Reagan spent Easter 1982 on vacation in Barbados after meeting with Caribbean leaders and warning of a Marxist threat that could spread throughout the region from nearby Grenada. Presidents also never fully go on vacation. They travel with a large entourage of aides, receive intelligence briefings, take calls and otherwise work away from Washington. Kicking back in the United States, though, has long been the norm. Harry S. Truman helped make Key West, Florida, a tourist hot spot with his 'Little White House' cottage there. Several presidents, including James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, visited the Victorian architecture in Cape May, New Jersey. More recently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama boosted tourism on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard, while Trump has buoyed Palm Beach, Florida, with frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate . But any tourist lift Trump gets from his Scottish visit is likely to most benefit his family. 'Every president is forced to weigh politics versus fun on vacation,' said Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who added that Trump is 'demonstrating his priorities.' 'When he thinks about how he wants to spend his free time, A., playing golf, B., visiting places where he has investments and C., enhancing those investments, that was not the priority for previous presidents, but it is his vacation time,' Engel said. It's even a departure from Trump's first term, when he found ways to squeeze in visits to his properties while on trips more focused on work. Trump stopped at his resort in Hawaii to thank staff members after visiting the memorial site at Pearl Harbor and before embarking on an Asia trip in November 2017. He played golf at Turnberry in 2018 before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. Trump once decried the idea of taking vacations as president. 'Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job,' Trump wrote in his 2004 book, 'Think Like a Billionaire.' During his presidential campaign in 2015, he pledged to 'rarely leave the White House.' Even as recently as a speech at a summit on artificial intelligence in Washington on Wednesday, Trump derided his predecessor for flying long distances for golf — something he's now doing. 'They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One, and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back,' he said. Presidential vacations and any overseas trips were once taboo Trump isn't the first president not wanting to publicize taking time off. George Washington was criticized for embarking on a New England tour to promote the presidency. Some took issue with his successor, John Adams, for leaving the then-capital of Philadelphia in 1797 for a long visit to his family's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. James Madison left Washington for months after the War of 1812. Teddy Roosevelt helped pioneer the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by chartering a special train and directing key staffers to rent houses near Sagamore Hill , his home in Oyster Bay, New York, according to the White House Historical Association. Four years later, Roosevelt upended tradition again, this time by becoming the first president to leave the country while in office. The New York Times noted that Roosevelt's 30-day trip by yacht and battleship to tour construction of the Panama Canal 'will violate the traditions of the United States for 117 years by taking its President outside the jurisdiction of the Government at Washington.' In the decades since, where presidents opted to vacation, even outside the U.S., has become part of their political personas. In addition to New Jersey, Grant relaxed on Martha's Vineyard. Calvin Coolidge spent the 1928 Christmas holidays at Sapelo Island, Georgia. Lyndon B. Johnson had his 'Texas White House,' a Hill Country ranch . Eisenhower vacationed in Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy went to Palm Springs, California, and his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, among other places. Richard Nixon had the 'Southern White House' on Key Biscayne, Florida, while Joe Biden traveled frequently to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while also visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. George H.W. Bush was a frequent visitor to his family's property in Kennebunkport, Maine, and didn't let the start of the Gulf War in 1991 detour him from a monthlong vacation there. His son, George W. Bush, opted for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, rather than a more posh destination. Presidential visits help tourism in some places more than others, but Engel said that for some Americans, 'if the president of the Untied States goes some place, you want to go to the same place.' He noted that visitors emulating presidential vacations are out 'to show that you're either as cool as he or she, that you understand the same values as he or she or, heck, maybe you'll bump into he or she.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .


San Francisco Chronicle
17 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump once decried the idea of presidential vacations. His Scotland trip is built around golf
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — During sweaty summer months, Abraham Lincoln often decamped about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of the White House to the Soldiers' Home, a presidential retreat of cottages and parkland in what today is the Petworth section of northwest Washington. Ulysses S. Grant sometimes summered at his family's cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey, even occasionally driving teams of horses on the beach. Ronald Reagan once said he did 'some of my best thinking' at his Rancho Del Cielo retreat outside Santa Barbara, California. Donald Trump's getaway is taking him considerably farther from the nation's capital, to the coast of Scotland. The White House isn't calling Trump's five-day, midsummer jaunt a vacation, but rather a working trip where the Republican president might hold a news conference and sit for interviews with U.S. and British media outlets. Trump was also talking trade in separate meetings with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump is staying at his properties near Turnberry and Aberdeen, where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third on Aug. 13. Trump played golf over the weekend at Turnberry and is helping cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday. He's not the first president to play in Scotland: Dwight D. Eisenhower played at Turnberry in 1959, more than a half century before Trump bought it, after meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. But none of Trump's predecessors has constructed a foreign itinerary around promoting vacation sites his family owns and is actively expanding. It lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family's profits in a variety of ways, including overseas development deals and promoting cryptocurrencies, despite growing questions about ethics concerns. 'You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetize his presidency,' said Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern presidency at American University. 'In this case, using the trip as a PR opportunity to promote his golf courses.' Presidents typically vacation in the US Franklin D. Roosevelt went to the Bahamas, often for the excellent fishing, five times between 1933 and 1940. He visited Canada's Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had vacationed as a child, in 1933, 1936 and 1939. Reagan spent Easter 1982 on vacation in Barbados after meeting with Caribbean leaders and warning of a Marxist threat that could spread throughout the region from nearby Grenada. Presidents also never fully go on vacation. They travel with a large entourage of aides, receive intelligence briefings, take calls and otherwise work away from Washington. Kicking back in the United States, though, has long been the norm. Harry S. Truman helped make Key West, Florida, a tourist hot spot with his 'Little White House' cottage there. Several presidents, including James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, visited the Victorian architecture in Cape May, New Jersey. More recently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama boosted tourism on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard, while Trump has buoyed Palm Beach, Florida, with frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate. But any tourist lift Trump gets from his Scottish visit is likely to most benefit his family. 'Every president is forced to weigh politics versus fun on vacation,' said Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who added that Trump is 'demonstrating his priorities." 'When he thinks about how he wants to spend his free time, A., playing golf, B., visiting places where he has investments and C., enhancing those investments, that was not the priority for previous presidents, but it is his vacation time," Engel said. It's even a departure from Trump's first term, when he found ways to squeeze in visits to his properties while on trips more focused on work. Trump stopped at his resort in Hawaii to thank staff members after visiting the memorial site at Pearl Harbor and before embarking on an Asia trip in November 2017. He played golf at Turnberry in 2018 before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. 'Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job,' Trump wrote in his 2004 book, 'Think Like a Billionaire.' During his presidential campaign in 2015, he pledged to 'rarely leave the White House." Even as recently as a speech at a summit on artificial intelligence in Washington on Wednesday, Trump derided his predecessor for flying long distances for golf — something he's now doing. 'They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One, and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back,' he said. Presidential vacations and any overseas trips were once taboo Trump isn't the first president not wanting to publicize taking time off. George Washington was criticized for embarking on a New England tour to promote the presidency. Some took issue with his successor, John Adams, for leaving the then-capital of Philadelphia in 1797 for a long visit to his family's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. James Madison left Washington for months after the War of 1812. Teddy Roosevelt helped pioneer the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by chartering a special train and directing key staffers to rent houses near Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, according to the White House Historical Association. Four years later, Roosevelt upended tradition again, this time by becoming the first president to leave the country while in office. The New York Times noted that Roosevelt's 30-day trip by yacht and battleship to tour construction of the Panama Canal 'will violate the traditions of the United States for 117 years by taking its President outside the jurisdiction of the Government at Washington.' In the decades since, where presidents opted to vacation, even outside the U.S., has become part of their political personas. In addition to New Jersey, Grant relaxed on Martha's Vineyard. Calvin Coolidge spent the 1928 Christmas holidays at Sapelo Island, Georgia. Lyndon B. Johnson had his 'Texas White House,' a Hill Country ranch. Eisenhower vacationed in Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy went to Palm Springs, California, and his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, among other places. Richard Nixon had the 'Southern White House' on Key Biscayne, Florida, while Joe Biden traveled frequently to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while also visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. George H.W. Bush was a frequent visitor to his family's property in Kennebunkport, Maine, and didn't let the start of the Gulf War in 1991 detour him from a monthlong vacation there. His son, George W. Bush, opted for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, rather than a more posh destination. Presidential visits help tourism in some places more than others, but Engel said that for some Americans, 'if the president of the Untied States goes some place, you want to go to the same place.' He noted that visitors emulating presidential vacations are out "to show that you're either as cool as he or she, that you understand the same values as he or she or, heck, maybe you'll bump into he or she.'