As the 15th day of testimony got underway in Diddy's federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial in NYC, the prosecution called Eddy Garcia to the stand ... he was the security supervisor at the InterContinental in Century City, Los Angeles -- the site of the infamous Cassie beating video.
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00:00So today was a big day in testimony in the Diddy trial, a big day because we got some answers, not all, but some answers about that Cassie Beading video at the Intercontinental Hotel here in Los Angeles from 2016.
00:17Ever since this video came out just over a year ago now, the question has been how in the world this was kept quiet for eight years at that point.
00:28Right. It's something that didn't even happen in their room, Charles. It's in the hallway, the elevator bank at a popular hotel. It didn't make any sense.
00:35And we knew that there was hotel security that watched this video. There was a hotel security officer who came up there and interacted with them.
00:43So how did it not get out? And the answer is a brown paper bag. I mean, a brown paper bag filled with $100,000.
00:52This was the testimony from Eddie Garcia, who's part of the security team, was part of the security team at the Intercontinental Hotel.
01:02And he detailed the payment that Diddy made to get the silence and to get the video.
01:11So Eddie's testimony was pretty gripping because the details of exactly who contacted him, what they said, the fact that how Diddy got involved, because initially he wasn't.
01:27But this all started, Eddie said, with Diddy's chief of staff, essentially, Christina Coram, that she contacted him and said that this video could not get out.
01:42Right.
01:42That it would destroy Sean Combs' career if it got out.
01:49And so how do we make, how do we get a copy, how do we get the copy of the video and then have it destroyed from the hard drives?
01:59And how do we essentially keep you guys happy and silent?
02:03And that's where the payment came in.
02:05Right. Ultimately, the answer was $100,000.
02:07Yes. Now, Christina said, Eddie said that Christina, there was a conversation with her.
02:14It wasn't going the way Christina wanted to.
02:17And so she put Diddy on the phone to try and close the deal.
02:21Right.
02:21So Christina called a couple times to the security desk.
02:26And Eddie very politely kind of apologized and said, you know, you're going to have to get a Sabina or you're going to have to go through upper management.
02:33I can't really do anything about this.
02:35Eddie was 24 years old at the time and had only been working at the Intercontinental for a few months.
02:40So he was kind of new there and, you know, said he was the closest.
02:43Wow. So imagine that.
02:44Yeah, you're a 24-year-old.
02:46Right.
02:47And now you're talking to a member of Diddy's staff, this immense celebrity, and they're making this demand of you.
02:55Right. What do you do?
02:56Right.
02:56You've got to understand why he was trying to push it off to someone else.
02:59And then so after he apologized and, you know, kind of advised her what to do, she ended up showing up at the hotel and he got a call saying that a woman is looking for you in the lobby.
03:11And that's when he said the same thing and apologized, said, I can't help you.
03:16And then later on is when he received another call and she had to bring the big guy in.
03:22Yeah.
03:23Yeah. The reality is Diddy is incredibly famous.
03:26You know, him calling is likely going to have a different impact, a different effect than somebody who this security official has no idea who they are.
03:33So you can understand.
03:34I think it also shows how desperate he was for this to not get out.
03:39Oh, and ultimately, Charles.
03:41Charles, he also, Diddy said that he was intoxicated, you know, so he gave an excuse for his behavior.
03:48I think that flies in the face of then trying to cover it up, though.
03:51I agree that might have been a helpful excuse if you were so blacked out, something happened and you didn't remember, and then a video comes out.
03:57Once you're trying to cover up the bad act, you've sort of shown your state of mind.
04:01Now, I do want to be clear, this is not bribery because these are hotel workers.
04:05They're a private corporation that owns that hotel.
04:08You can buy someone's silence.
04:09You can say, I don't want this to get out.
04:11Here's money and make an exchange of that sort.
04:13The problem is once authorities start investigating, you can't lie about what happened.
04:18That would be obstruction of justice, and that's where this thing starts to fall apart.
04:22Now, since 2016, all the way up until it comes out in 2024, he did buy himself eight years of sort of yeast from this.
04:29Right, it worked at least for a period of time, and obviously that was, I think, the one, you know, you heard people talk for years, Charles, but that piece of evidence, seeing that video, that changed everything.
04:40It absolutely changed everything, and I know what you're saying, Derek, that this isn't a crime because they didn't pay any law enforcement.
04:47This was just a deal where the hotel employees ended up signing NDAs, but Eddie broke down how that $100,000 was spread out because, and this part does sound, even though they did not commit a crime, but it sounds like if you've seen Goodfellas, you know that when you get money in, you've got to pay up.
05:09And Eddie said that of the $100,000, he took $30,000, $50,000 went to his supervisor, a guy named Bill Medrano, and he testified that Bill is the one who actually said, yeah, I'll be, he can get the video for $50,000.
05:28So that's what, Bill got $50,000, Eddie took $30,000, and then another $20,000 went to another security officer named Henry Elias.
05:35Here's what's fascinating, the guy in the actual video is a man named Israel Flores, you can see because security intervened during the incident.
05:43That man is now an LAPD officer and was unwilling to take money to do this, and you can sort of see maybe he had a real conscience about it, didn't want to take money to cover something up, and he became a law enforcement officer afterwards.
05:55Right, kudos to him, gross to take the money, in my opinion, and to look the other way when you see clear domestic violence.
06:02How is this significant to the federal charges if it's not necessarily a crime to pay off?
06:11I mean, he's been accused of racketeering, Derek, tell me if I'm wrong here, if you're dispatching employees of yours to pay off security officials to cover up domestic violence.
06:20Is that racketeering?
06:21You're both right, this is the complication, because usually the predicate acts, the underlying things of racketeering are crimes themselves, bribery of officials, arson, other things that they have alleged, the arson of Kid Cudi's car.
06:33They're going to have to say that this is legal, but it was for an illegal purpose, to cover up a crime.
06:38And that's going to land with the jury, because that nicety is going to be lost, that actually having an NDA is an okay thing.
06:45But doing it to cover up this kind of incident is going to hit the jury hard.
06:49Hey, Tim, it's Malik Australia calling out of Detroit, Michigan.
06:53After just reading more about this story, it's really sad how people served us those as for these victims, such as Cassie, so many other people,
07:00in a situation that money, you know, eventually has to come back and bite you in the butt.
07:06And it's sad how, you know, it doesn't matter how much money it takes, these are real situations, and now you guys have been in consequences.
07:14Not only that, but Diddy is not the only person that fought here.
07:17It's so many other people who played a part in this situation.
07:20That is the whole point, whether or not Diddy, I mean, that's the racketeering part of this.
07:24Was it his company, was his company there basically to help him pull off all of these illegal acts?
07:32And that's, they're going to have to.
07:33Is he wanting a corporation or a mob family?
07:35Right.
07:36That goes to count one, which we will see how the prosecutors wrap that up if they can.