Controversial rapper, Kanye West has been dragged into Diddy’s s£x trafficking trial during dramatic jury selection.
According to Mail Online, West was dragged into the case when a potential juror said they recognized his name from a list of people who may come up in the trial.
The man, a scientist in his 40s, said that nothing he knew about West would affect his ability to be impartial.
West was one of several celebrities who came up in Manhattan federal court on Monday as juror selection began in Diddy’s s£x-trafficking and racketeering case.
The rapper has recently defended Diddy, sharing controversial posts and claiming the two released a clothing collaboration together earlier this year.
It comes as comedian Mike Myers and actor Michael B. Jordan were also on a list of names handed to jurors. Their relevance to the case is unclear.
Other names mentioned on the list by a female juror who said she recognized them were Michelle Williams from Destiny’s child, actress Lauren London, who was the girlfriend of Nipsey Hussle, who was fatally shot in 2019, and rapper Kid Cudi.
Judge Subramanian said that the list of people and places runs ‘several pages’ and felt like an ‘appendix from Lord of the Rings’. To speed up the process, he ruled that jurors would be given the list to review before they are brought into court and questioned one by one before they seat a final panel of 12 jurors and six alternates.
Several dozen prospective jurors got a brief description of the s£x trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against Combs from the judge, Arun Subramanian, who reminded them that Combs had pleaded not guilty and was presumed innocent.
As the judge spoke, Combs sat with his lawyers. He wore a sweater over a white collared shirt and gray slacks, which the judge had allowed rather than jail clothing. Combs, 55, has been held in a grim federal lockup in Brooklyn since his arrest last September. His hair and goatee were almost fully gray because dye isn’t allowed in jail.
Several prospective jurors indicated they had seen news reports featuring a key piece of evidence in the case: a video of the hip-hop mogul hitting and kicking one of his accusers, the singer Cassie, in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016.
One prospective juror described a still image she saw from the video as “damning evidence.” That woman was rejected from consideration.
After another juror was dismissed, Combs asked for a bathroom break, telling the judge, ‘I’m sorry your honor I’m a little nervous today.’
The 17-page indictment against Combs, which reads like a charging document filed against a Mafia leader or the head of a drug gang alleges that Combs engaged in a two-decade pattern of abusive behavior against women and others, with the help of people in his entourage and employees from his network of businesses.
Combs and his lawyers say he’s innocent and any group sex was consensual. They say there was no effort to coerce people into things they didn’t want to do, and nothing that happened amounted to a criminal racket.
Prosecutors say women were manipulated into drug-fueled s£xual performances with male sex workers that Combs called ‘Freak Offs.’
To keep women in line, prosecutors say Combs used a mix of influence and violence: He offered to boost their entertainment careers if they did what he asked or cut them off if they didn’t.
And when he wasn’t getting what he wanted, the indictment says Combs and his associates resorted to violent acts including beatings, kidnapping, and arson. Once, the indictment alleges, he even dangled someone from a balcony.
The trial is expected to take at least eight weeks. If convicted, he faces the possibility of decades in prison.