NO FAMILY. NO FAME. JUST FEDERAL COURT.
The red light’s on. The handlers are gone. And the silence is breaking.
I couldn’t sleep the night before. Not because I was going to be in court. I wasn’t. I’m watching all of this unfold through a screen, like the rest of the world, but with about thirty tabs open and a bloodhound’s appetite for chaos. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing. Court transcripts, leaked videos, sketch memes, line-holder pay charts, witness lists, and red-circled screenshots from inside the building. I’ve been tracking this like that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme. Charlie in the mailroom, half-insane, connecting dots nobody else sees. Day 1 of United States v. Sean Combs wasn’t just another celebrity trial. It was a reckoning. And I felt it coming. There was this eerie pressure hanging over everything, like history was about to happen and nobody was ready for it. Least of all Diddy.
Me all day yesterday trying to track jurors, NDA leaks, and red-light confessions.
Diddy entered court in a charcoal gray suit and reading glasses, surrounded by lawyers but visibly alone. No family by his side. No entourage. He looked like a man trying to disappear into the seams of his own reputation. Quiet. Hollow. There was no bravado, no arrogance. Just a man trying not to combust in public. At one point, he asked to use the bathroom, and I’ll be honest for a second, I felt bad. Then for another second today, I did again. But that second passed. Because this isn’t just any celebrity on trial. This is a man who’s been dodging bullets, literal and legal, since the early ’90s. And not just in headlines. He’s been on my radio. He’s been on my TV. I’ve danced to his songs. Watched him on TRL. Watched him accept awards, give speeches, stand next to J.Lo and every other icon I admired. It messes with your head. To see someone so mythologized end up here. But here we are. In a federal courtroom. Watching the myth rot in real time.
Let’s rewind. In 1991, Diddy was still at Howard University when he threw a celebrity charity concert at City College. He oversold the venue. Over ten thousand people crammed into a gym designed to hold half that. A stampede broke out. Nine people died. Dozens more were injured. And Diddy? Walked away untouched. No charges. Not even a stain on his résumé. That moment set the tone for the next three decades. He didn’t rise to power. He trampled his way to the top. And now, for the first time in his life, there are no velvet ropes between him and the truth.
Line-Holders, HBO, and the Rolodex from Hell
Outside the courthouse was chaos. People were literally paying strangers $25 to $32 an hour just to hold their place in line. Yes, there’s now a freelance economy for this trial. Like Uber Eats, but make it felony clout. Media assistants. Industry plants. Influencer interns. It felt less like a criminal proceeding and more like the Grammys of disgrace.
Inside, the juror questionnaire was its own psychological warfare. They were given a 190-name celebrity list that looked like it had been pulled from a cursed Met Gala seating chart. Kanye West. Kid Cudi. Mike Myers. Yes, that Mike Myers. Wayne from Wayne’s World. Shrek. One of the jurors reportedly burst out laughing when they saw it. Another asked if it was a prank. Imagine getting called to federal court for a sex trafficking case and finding yourself scanning a list of DreamWorks voice actors like it’s a trivia night in hell.
Your favorite courtroom analyst with 30 tabs open and zero chill.
But behind the surrealism was the setup: the court would ask every single prospective juror if they had personal experiences with sexual assault, domestic violence, or exposure to disturbing media, including the infamous hotel hallway video showing Cassie, Diddy’s ex-girlfriend, being violently assaulted. One juror admitted to seeing a “damning image” and was immediately dismissed. Another said they’d seen the video and tried to explain it wouldn’t influence their decision. Didn’t matter. Gone.
The trauma screening wasn’t performative. It was strategic. Multiple jurors revealed that they or close family members had survived assault or abuse. Some were kept in the pool. Others were excused. It became clear fast: this trial wasn’t just about what happened. It was about who could stomach hearing it.
The Judge Is Not Here to Babysit
Presiding over the madness is Judge Arun Subramanian and let me tell you, this man did not come to babysit. He’s not dazzled by celebrity. He’s not playing PR. From the second proceedings began, he set the tone: fast, sharp, efficient. He gave the lawyers five minutes to make arguments that would normally eat up an hour. He cracked a sarcastic joke about the witness list being a “Who’s Who of Lord of the Rings” and didn’t wait for anyone to laugh. When Diddy’s lawyers requested time to show up at 7 a.m. to prep their client, the judge didn’t even blink. Just told them to check with the Marshals and keep it moving.
There was no special treatment, no theatrical deference. Subramanian wasn’t interested in optics. He was interested in velocity. This isn’t Judge Judy. It’s a human paper shredder in a robe. You could feel it in the room: the message was clear. Diddy’s not the headliner here. The law is.
Victim 3: Anna Kane and the Nuclear Option
If you’ve been reading my Substacks about Anna Kane, then you already know. Her case has the structure of a federal indictment. She hasn’t been confirmed as Victim 3, but if you line up the mechanics of her lawsuit with what prosecutors are implying, it’s hard to ignore the symmetry. Her civil complaint, filed with barely a ripple in the press. Details a long pattern of psychological abuse, coercive control, and cross-state sex trafficking that mirrors everything this trial is about.
According to Anna, Diddy brought her into his orbit through industry connections, then used his power to isolate her, manipulate her, and break her. She says he flew her across the country. Miami, New York, Los Angeles, using private jets and hotels to traffic her to other men in the music industry, men she was told she had to “please” to keep Diddy’s favor. One of those men, according to her filing, was Pierre Delince, an alleged associate of Diddy’s who helped facilitate these “arrangements.” Pierre has since denied wrongdoing, but Anna’s account places him squarely in the machinery that moved her from one hotel suite to the next.
Anna says Diddy kept her under surveillance, monitored her phone, and threatened to destroy her life if she tried to leave. She describes being choked, screamed at, degraded, and told repeatedly that she “belonged to him.” In one terrifying moment, she alleges he slammed her against a wall, held a gun to her face, and told her she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone without his approval. And when she finally tried to get help? She claims law enforcement shrugged. The system protected the system.
Whether or not she’s Victim 3, it’s clear the prosecution has someone just like her lined up. And if it is her? Then the feds aren’t just coming for Diddy’s image. They’re coming for the entire supply chain.
Then a Juror Said “Al B. Sure” and the Room Tilted
Late in the questioning, one juror casually mentioned the name Al B. Sure and if you know, you know. The courtroom didn’t flinch, but for anyone watching closely, the air changed. Al B. Sure isn’t just a throwback R&B name. He’s the biological father of Quincy Brown, the son Diddy famously raised as his own. And Quincy’s mother? Kim Porter, model, actress, Bad Boy mainstay, and perhaps the biggest ghost haunting this entire trial.
Kim Porter was found dead in 2018. Official cause? Pneumonia. But nothing about her death ever sat right. She was 47. Healthy. A mother of four. And in the weeks leading up to her death, she was reportedly working on a tell-all memoir. One that would’ve named names. Al B. Sure has publicly said she warned him she felt unsafe. That she believed she was being watched. He’s even used the word: murdered.
Kim was in Diddy’s orbit for decades. She knew the deals. The threats. The girls. And she stayed silent. For her safety, for her children, maybe both. But what we do know is that her son, Quincy, became a tool Diddy used for image control. He wasn’t just family. He was branding. A son Diddy didn’t biologically father but lifted onto carpets and covers and into the empire. Kim gave Diddy that access. And then she was gone.
So when a juror uttered “Al B. Sure,” it wasn’t small talk. It was a ghost sighting. Because to invoke Al B. Sure is to summon Kim Porter. And to summon Kim Porter is to remember every secret she never got the chance to print.
When the Red Lights Came On, He Transformed—and So Did They
While the courtroom swirled in legal strategy and reputational triage, Aubrey O’Day was out here doing what the legal system failed to do for years, naming the monster. Her tweets weren’t drama. They were documentation. If you’ve followed her journey, then you know she’s been screaming into the void since Making the Band first aired. What looked like reality TV was actually a slow-motion breakdown captured on camera. Diddy playing mentor while building a psychological obstacle course designed to humiliate, degrade, and control. Behind the scenes, Aubrey says he was even worse. She’s accused him of verbal abuse, manipulation, and creating an environment so toxic it left her permanently fractured.
She was just 17 when she auditioned. By 20, she was a national name, only to be discarded, sexualized, and shut out the moment she stopped being easy to control. She’s spoken about it all: the public shaming, the internal surveillance, the way Bad Boy manufactured dysfunction for ratings while setting the girls up to fail. Her interviews read like diary entries from a hostage. And the industry let it happen. Because it was good TV.
But the story doesn’t end with Danity Kane. Don Richard, later rebranded as Dawn Richard, went on to become one of two members of Diddy Dirty Money, his prestige project post-boy band era. And one of the lawsuits includes allegations that a member of Diddy Dirty Money was intimidated into silence after coming forward with allegations. It doesn’t name her. But based on timeline, context, and the sudden silence that followed? A lot of us connected the dots. It was either her or Kalenna. And Dawn’s abrupt pivot from fierce to mute, followed by Diddy’s public praise, felt familiar. Classic control. Praise as payoff. Silence as strategy.
Whether she’s named or not, Dawn was inside the machine. She saw the rage, the handlers, the leverage. And if she was threatened into shutting up, that’s not just intimidation. It’s obstruction. And it shows the lengths this empire would go to keep its old secrets buried while new ones leak through the walls.
The Unexcused: 12 Stranger Things
By the end of Day 1, the court had questioned dozens but here’s the part that’ll make your brain itch: these were the ones who weren’t excused.
Jurors 2, 5, 20, 22, 25, 28, 29, 51, 52, 55, 58, 75, 81, 84, 106, 112, 116, 118, and 127 were still in the pool by close of day. Some of them said they’d heard about the case on Joe Rogan. One casually mentioned Al B. Sure, another revealed his wife had literally deposed Diddy, and another straight up admitted to seeing Cassie’s hotel hallway video. “It was a damning image,” he said. Didn’t matter. Gone. Except he wasn’t gone. They kept him in the pool.
Juror 22 said he doesn’t watch TV, listens to Toots and the Maytals, and tends a community garden but gets migraines that might interfere with viewing graphic evidence. Judge Subramanian shut that down real fast: the evidence will be on screens. Brace yourself.
One woman openly flinched at the phrase “sexually explicit content.” Another juror said he didn’t know who Diddy was at all. One woman veered off into a tangent about Aubrey O’Day and seemed more interested in discussing Making the Band than the legal process. And of course, there was the HBO photographer. The one who works for the same network currently producing a Diddy documentary. The defense tried to get her tossed immediately. The judge said nope. She’s still in the running.
There wasn’t just diversity in race, gender, or background. There was diversity in exposure, opinion, and narrative control. Some jurors looked stunned. Others tried to project neutrality but cracked under questioning. And still, still, they weren’t excused.
It became clear fast: this wasn’t about filtering out the confused or the curious. The court was building a bomb shelter. They wanted people who could sit through the worst and still deliver a verdict.
This isn’t 12 Angry Men. It’s 12 People Who’ve Seen Too Much and Are Just Trying to Keep a Straight Face.
This Isn’t a Circus. It’s a Funeral with Cameras. Outside. Not in.
Diddy’s legal team even asked for special permission to enter the courthouse early, 7:00 a.m., just to prep him before court began. And I hate that it got to me. Because that’s not a power move. That’s a man unraveling. A man who needed handlers just to hold it together long enough to sit in a chair. And for another second—I felt bad for him. Like maybe he was human after all. But then I remember the Cassie video. I remember Jonathan Oddie, the bodyguard who says he had to physically stop Diddy from choking a woman unconscious. I remember the lawsuits I’ve had to take breaks from reading because they made my stomach turn. That flicker of sympathy? It dies fast. Maybe it’s the Christian in me that keeps trying to look for humanity. But whatever’s left of it in him. If it’s there at all, doesn’t cancel out what he’s done.
And me? I’ve got people inside. Names circled. Voices ready. Because Day One was just foreplay. We haven’t even started striking jurors. We haven’t seen who cracks, who lies, who’s hiding what. And when Victim 3’s story finally gets read aloud, it won’t matter how many prep meetings he’s had or how early they wake him up. He’s not walking out of this spiritually intact.
He’s not backstage anymore. He’s not in the editing room. He’s not holding the contracts. He’s sitting in federal court with the red light on. For real this time. And the people who built the myth around him? They’re no longer clapping.
They’re testifying.
And it’s only Day One.
Special thanks to Emilie Knows Everything and Matthew Lee. what they’re pulling from inside the courtroom is explosive. They’re inside bringing the heat. I’m outside making sure it spreads.
Keep it locked in and follow me in IG for LIVE UPDATES UNFOLDING TOMORROW.
I’m yours Alice. Great writing and insight. Will subscribe to get it all. Thank you!
Thanks Alice for including the questionnaire and stuff