It's the fourth week of testimony in Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking and racketeering trial. A witness said he watched Combs personally count out a $100K bribe to kill the Cassie hotel video.
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00:00Week four of testimony in the Sean Combs trial catches Diddy's hand in an actual paper bag full of cash.
00:07Now this video, and we've all seen it, it shows Combs beating Cassie Ventura inside the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles.
00:16A former security guard for the Intercontinental named Eddie Garcia testified with immunity that in the days after the hallway beating,
00:22Combs called the hotel repeatedly, begging to buy the video.
00:26And Garcia said Combs did just that.
00:29Garcia said Combs told him to bring the video on a USB thumb drive to an office near the hotel.
00:35And there in that office, Garcia said he watched as Combs used a money counting machine and that, quote,
00:41there were stacks of money being put into it, stacks of $10,000 at a time.
00:46Prosecutors call the cash a bribe.
00:48They say that Combs hoped it would buy and bury the Intercontinental Hotel surveillance video so that no one would ever see it.
00:55This is the first time we've heard that Combs may have had a direct role in this alleged cover-up with his hand actually in that bag of cash.
01:02This is called by both the prosecution and the defense, the single most important piece of evidence in the trial.
01:08Prosecutors have already said this video captures Combs in the very act of sex trafficking Ventura in the act of coercing her through physical force into engaging in commercial sex acts.
01:19In this case, that means forcing her to have sex with a male escort who Ventura said was still inside their hotel room when Combs hit her in the eye and she ran out of the room.
01:27But Combs is also charged in his indictment with racketeering and that count requires proof of at least two underlying crimes.
01:35Prosecutors can now argue that this video, this single piece of evidence, implicates him in at least three underlying racketeering crimes.
01:43That's not just sex trafficking but also bribery and obstruction of justice.
01:48Both sex trafficking and racketeering carry maximum sentences of life in prison.
01:52Before stepping off the witness stand, Garcia described how at least two Combs employees helped arrange the alleged bribe and the jury saw a heavily lawyered non-disclosure form that Garcia had assigned.
02:03Garcia said he split the $100,000 in cash that Combs gave him with two other security guards.
02:09He said he used his $30,000 cut to buy what must have been a very nice used car.
02:14Garcia also testified that Combs had told him, quote, if this gets out, it would ruin me.
02:19But years later, Garcia learned there was still at least one copy of the video out there.
02:24It was on the phone of a fourth hotel security guard who had not been cut in on that paper bag full of cash.
02:30To read all of our coverage on the Diddy trial, head to BusinessInsider.com.